I recently got a short email interview on the subject of science and spirituality. Now I should warn you: "spirituality" is one of those words that sets my teeth on edge and triggers a reflexive reach for my kukri. It's an empty buzzword that some people use as a placeholder for "deep feelings of connectedness to the universe", but that I read as "mindless blithering; brains on the fritz", so I respond to questions like that with an immediate rejection of the premise. The writer seemed like a nice person, though, and the questions are well-intentioned, so after barking out my answers I thought maybe the gang here would like to take a stab (or a slash, or a poke, or a bludgeon) at them, too. Go ahead, answer them yourselves in the comments, or on your own blog.
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
2.) We hear time and time again of the disputes between the scientific and religious communities, what is your response to the phenomenon of scientists exploring their own spirituality?
3.) Dr. Charles T. Tart established an online journal dedicated to scientists who wish to share their own personal transcendent experiences in confidence, known as TASTE. Many feel that they would be shunned by the scientific community if they shared their experiences with their colleagues, are you surprised by this?
4.) Do you feel that a scientist can be spiritual? Why is this?
5.) What do you say to some scientists who claim that a strong sense of spirituality and morality are essential in your line of work?
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the scientific community, when one considers the current religious climate in the U.S?
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it?
I've put my answers below the fold. Warning: there is a little profanity (I told you that 'spirituality' irritates me.)
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
No, definitely not.
2.) We hear time and time again of the disputes between the scientific and religious communities, what is your response to the phenomenon of scientists exploring their own spirituality?
There is an assumption here, that there is something to explore. I do not believe in the existence of spirits, of any kind of essence beyond the natural world, in the supernatural. Scientists can try to explore anything they want, but it's something of a waste of time to explore something that isn't there.
People have been poking around in this subject as long as there have been people. There has been no support of the spirituality hypothesis: it is the very definition of a failed, fruitless research program.
3.) Dr. Charles T. Tart established an online journal dedicated to scientists who wish to share their own personal transcendent experiences in confidence, known as TASTE. Many feel that they would be shunned by the scientific community if they shared their experiences with their colleagues, are you surprised by this?
No. I don't think the manifest Scientific Community would actually go so far as to shun, but I imagine They might roll Their collective eyes and sigh despairingly at such a silly pursuit.
There are some, of course, who would think it was kind of cool. The Scientific Community is not a monolith.
4.) Do you feel that a scientist can be spiritual? Why is this?
No, because spirituality is bunk. I think that some scientists can have an emotional attachment to ideas and objects, a sensation that they can call 'spiritual' — it does not interfere with their work unless they go off the deep end and start believing that their internal mental states necessarily reflect an external reality beyond the physical.
5.) What do you say to some scientists who claim that a strong sense of spirituality and morality are essential in your line of work?
"Fuck that noise."
Seriously, though, I disagree strongly. Science is not a spiritual or moral enterprise, so it's absurd to suggest that they are requirements. Spirituality is fluff and nonsense, so I'll pass on that. Morality is different — it is a required and good thing for human life and interactions in society. It does not, however, require spirituality. More often than not, spirituality seems to be used as an excuse to circumvent moral behavior.
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the scientific community, when one considers the current religious climate in the U.S?
Yes, even without considering the religious climate. Religion and its fuzzier sister spirituality represent the antithesis of good scientific thinking; they rely on dogma, superstition, and the uncritical acceptance of unevidenced phenomena. When we are training future scientists, we should not be endorsing bad, unscientific thinking.
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it?
Yes, many. The first mitotic division I made as a zygote is incompletely defined scientifically — scientists wouldn't be interested in cytological processes if they could all be scientifically explained. It's why we're in this business, because we love the interesting questions and the pursuit of the answer.
That something is incompletely explained by science does not imply, however, that fairies did it.
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Gee PZ,
And all along I thought you were this nice, mellow guy. You know, like a ... college professor.
You have a kukri!? Seriously, I only know what that is because of playing D&D. And from that standpoint I have to say that outside of serious roleplaying considerations you could have chosen a much more effective weapon. It does I suppose give some uniqueness (not a real word... I know, but I'm using it anyway) to your choice of weapons, but if you want to work on your "scary" persona I suggest you go for the spiked chain, or the double axe.
Better intimidation factor. People are less scared when you have to explain to them what a kukri is first.
Intimidate? Explain? Clearly, you don't know what that knife is for.
Read up on the history of the British Empire, and especially the Ghurka tribes of Nepal. You want scary fierce, there's where you'll find it.
"More often than not, spirituality seems to be used as an excuse to circumvent moral behavior."
BINGO
I have had many experiences which I could not explain scientifically. This is only to be expected, since both the state of science and my knowledge of it are limited. However, I have never had an experience which I could explain "spiritually", in the sense that a nebulous collection of words — the essence of "spiritual explanations" — has ever risen to the standards of rigor and usefulness satisfied by scientific explanations.
I would modify the answer to number five to this extent. In one way morality is necessary for science to progress. Scientists have a moral - ethical would probably be a better word - responsibility to report their results truthfully and accurately even when, hell, especially when those results conflict with their own and societies deepest held beliefs. However, that moral obligation has no connection to mouldering manuscripts of the toilet regulations of ancient desert dwellers.
I'd have to second that idea that "spirituality" is used as an excuse to circumvent morality. I was talking about morality and religion with my sweetie last night, and I had a revelation (pun intended). I'm sure it's not original, but it was to me, anyway. It was a realization that the more socially abhorrent an idea is, the more likely it is to be propped up by religion. Is it personally, morally acceptable to shun, abuse, and discriminate against someone just because they choose to sleep with someone of the same sex? No, there is no general moral argument that anyone can make to support this. But the bible says it's so!! So therefore I can support my immoral behavior by saying "it's what god wants." Should women be granted equal rights and privileges in all societies? Sure!! But many religions refuse to recognize women as equal (catholic church and female priests? islam and codes of dress/behavior?). I'm not saying all religious people do this, but if you see a morally reprehensible, indefensible position that has taken hold in any society, you can bet that the rationale for it is that "god (or allah, or vishnu, or odin) wants it that way."
If I recall, the kukri was used by the leader of a Gurkha war party to sever the head of a buffalo with a single strike. This was supposed to sanctify their militaristic outings.
Of course, I don't think I read that in a reputable history book or anything, so take it as you will. But I think you see a similar buffalo sacrifice in "Apocalypse Now".
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
No, definitely not.
You apparently have a very narrow view of spirituality.
One can be an atheist (or agnostic) and still consider oneself "spiritual".
In fact, I would go so far as to say that "spirituality" is hard-wired into the brain at birth (mainly on the right side). You can deny it all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that human beings have a sense of unity or connection with all other living creatures. This unity of life is the very essence of biology without which nothing else makes sense. It is not evolution that gives meaning to biology, it is this sense that we're all cut from the same cloth, that there is a profound underlying unity and a desire to make sense of our self and our place in the universe.
Sprituality manifests itself in two phases. The first phase involves the growth of self and the understanding of our place in the greater universe. The second phase is using this understanding to manifest changes in the physical environment that we live in that are consistent with this new understanding.
This process is manifested in humans as growth, experience and maturity, a process that every human being undergoes as one proceeds from birth to death. Spirituality is an essential component of one's holistic health and mental well-being. To deny spirituality is to deny one's humanity. It does not require a belief in any supernatural beings or "fairies" it only requires an understanding and acceptance of the complexity and organization of the human brain.
rjb said: "It was a realization that the more socially abhorrent an idea is, the more likely it is to be propped up by religion."
I tend to agree, but I'd make it "by religion or tradition." Not all abhorrent "traditional" behaviors are based on religion, although most are. Of course, tradition is no better a justification than religion is.
Sugarbear:
I don't agree with much of what you say ("sprituality is hard-wired into the brain at birth--on the right side??). But that's a different issue. I think that scientists need to avoid the "s" word, because even though it can be used to explain the completely natural connectedness we all feel to our environment, that is not the way it is interpreted by others, perhaps most people. If you say you are "spiritual", most people will assume that that means you believe in some sort of supernatural power or energy that cannot be explained by scientific, naturalistic phenomena. That is not denying that the personal spiritual experience exists. But we cannot use a word, or other language, that will cause misunderstandings.
I used to say that I was a "spiritual, but not religous" person years ago because I always felt an amazing sense of place when being out in nature. But I realized that what I meant by that term was not what others meant by that term, so I have stopped using it. If people ask me if I'm spiritual, I pretty much echo PZ's comments of "No, definitely not" as quickly and clearly as possible.
I'd say the operative word is "wonderment," as opposed to "spirituality." By which I mean I think scientists -- like most people -- are capable of (in fact motivated by) a sense of wonder at how marvelous and complex the world is. How exciting each new discovery is. That's a real and conceivably definable sensation/condition/trait. To morph the concept into "spirituality" is to attribute all to make-believe stuff. The one needn't imply the other.
Your evidence for this remarkable claim that 'spirituality' is hard-wired into the brain is...?
I notice that the rest of your comment is the same meaningless noise I always get from the fans of 'spirituality': "growth" (what is growing?), "process" (what is the process?), "holistic" (another term used incorrectly -- it assumes spirituality is a part of a whole).
I assure you I am well aware of the complexity and organization of the human brain -- probably more so than most of the proponents of 'spirituality'. I do not see any virtue in labeling any aspect of it with an over-used, vague to the point of uselessness term that also implies a whole lot of nonsensical interpretations.
Let's take a stab. My replies interspersed in bold:
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
No.
2.) We hear time and time again of the disputes between the scientific and religious communities, what is your response to the phenomenon of scientists exploring their own spirituality?
What would that exploration entail? If they feel a deep oneness with the cosmos on saturday afternoons I couldn't care less, if they base research decisions on conversations with "spirits" I have a problem.
3.) Dr. Charles T. Tart established an online journal dedicated to scientists who wish to share their own personal transcendent experiences in confidence, known as TASTE. Many feel that they would be shunned by the scientific community if they shared their experiences with their colleagues, are you surprised by this?
No.
4.) Do you feel that a scientist can be spiritual? Why is this?
I feel? Undeniably, there are scientists who claim to be spiritual people - what more is there to say?
5.) What do you say to some scientists who claim that a strong sense of spirituality and morality are essential in your line of work?
I'd tell them to mind their own business.
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the scientific community, when one considers the current religious climate in the U.S?
A threat to the scientific community? In social terms, spiritual-minded scientists are probably an asset - they make science more palatable to religious laypeople. It could pose a threat to scientific progress, since spirituality tends to go hand in hand with fuzzy thinking.
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it?
Strictly speaking, I suppose that, given my lacking understanding of neuropsychology, I've never had an experience that I could scientifically explain. This would seem utterly unconnected to "spirituality", however, unless we're to equate spirituallity=ignorance.
I wouldn't say that I was 'spiritual' in any sense that implied dualism. To me, 'spirituality' is an attitude that emphasizes unity, connection, relationship, communion with the natural world and (of course) each other.
I think this sense of 'spirituality' is entirely consonant with the pursuit of science...SH
Doggerel #9.
Spirituality is a word that has been pre-empted by religion and is therefore useless for reality-based living. Your word "connectedness" is much better, yet still misses the mark if it implies that some kind of rope connects humanity on one side to the universe on the other.
We are embedded in and part of the universe and we can choose to explore how our thoughts and emotions relate to it -- if we can find time in our cellphone-email-television lives.
I suppose the problem in a nutshell is that "spirituality" gets conflated with "awe and wonder at the mysteries of the universe". There's plenty of real things to be awed by without having to make more of them up.
sugarbear wrote:
You can deny it all you want, but that doesn't change the fact that human beings have a sense of unity or connection with all other living creatures.
If I have a sense of unity or connectedness with nematodes and ginkgos I must be really good at denying it.
Be that as it may, what I really want to know is how you have established this fact. Maybe it's true, but how do you know it?
There seems to be an awful lot of discussion over a word no one has yet bothered to define. It's like arguing about God. Nobody ever sets a working definition to be debated and just assumes that their understanding of what the word spiritual means is the same as everyone else's.
To me, being spiritual is the same as having an orgasm. Your brain shuts down and you get a wonderful sense of euphoria. And then you moan really loudly. Think I'm joking? Watch a pentecostal service sometime. Those people are having orgasms.
I don't think this is a good way to phrase metaphysical questions. "Are you [insert word of indefinite meaning]?" doesn't tell you a whole lot about someone. It would be more informative to ask expansive questions. For instance, how do you view your place in the universe? Instead of asking for a label, you are asking for an opinion.
I'm with Todd. Idon't think it is possible to answer these questions without knowing what how questioner defines "spirituality". I am surprised PZ answered them. What did the questioner mean by spirituality that led PZ to answer definitely not? How do you know?
Hmm... I'm going to go out on a bit of a limb here and say that I am a spiritual person, as long as 'spirituality' is defined as 'acknowledging or experiencing something greater than yourself.'
This sounds a little flakey to most of y'all, I'm sure, but it's only meant to capture the feeling of wonder I get when standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon (to find the perfect cliche), looking at the detail of things too small to see, or things to big to comprehend. Even thinking about science gives me this reaction a lot of times. I think of it as the same thing Einstein would have called the work of God and Feynman talked about so many times.
I have an emotional response to a lot of wonderful things in nature (and science) that I would label 'spiritual,' but I agree that the word has been taken over by a lot of very loopy people and probably means something far different to most.
Maybe we should coin a new word for that feeling that a lot of scientists have when faced with natural wonders.
"Religion and its fuzzier sister spirituality represent the antithesis of good scientific thinking; they rely on dogma, superstition, and the uncritical acceptance of unevidenced phenomena" PZ
"Believe nothing, no matter where you read it, or who said it - even if I have said it - unless it agrees with your own reason and your own common sense." ~Buddha
The most cogent usage of the term spirituality I ever come across is people explaining the ability to vary your sense of individuality, with lowering/removing it the pinnacle of spirituality.
It's not spirituality, though, it's just altering your state of consciousness. From what I've heard, it's a fulfilling emotional experience, but why pollute the matter by turning to loaded terms like 'spirituality'?
It seems like the whole "knowing why the sky is blue makes it uglier" meme peeople drudge up to try and make willful ignorance seem defensible...
I think that scientists need to avoid the "s" word, because even though it can be used to explain the completely natural connectedness we all feel to our environment, that is not the way it is interpreted by others, perhaps most people. If you say you are "spiritual", most people will assume that that means you believe in some sort of supernatural power or energy that cannot be explained by scientific, naturalistic phenomena. rjb
Oh, so we've allowed religious creationists to hijack the concept of intelligent design, andd now we're going to allow them to hijack the concept of spirituality?
Where does it end?
(troll on)
"Morality is different -- it is a required and good thing for human life and interactions in society."
Wow. Spirituality isn't real (no argument there, by definition) but there exists some magical thing called "Morality"? Which magical pixies bestowed this wondrous property on you/humankind? What are your (note "your", not "the", I assume this morality isn't some universal truth as such a thing would be dangerously close to invoking you know what) central tenets of this "Morality"? Was your personal "morality" the result to nature or nurture? Are flowers moral? Ants? My morals say that all humans should drive lexus cars and eat caviar from endangered whales, prove I'm wrong.
"Fuck that noise." Case in point, there is no such thing as morality, you can tell from knee-jerk responses from jackasses (and I say that in the kindest way) like yourself.
Nature red in tooth and claw for teh win.
(troll off)
My stepmother used to say to me, "But you're spiritual..." because of my love of nature, writing about it and just appreciating it, I suppose. She has some idea similar to yours, but the words, spirituality, spiritualism and spiritual have very much to do with spirits, otherworldliness, and religion - there's no getting around that. I think Sid Schwab's comment above is spot on.
I prefer to be "earthy" - ultimately. The best description is a sensuous approach to life. I'm certainly not much influenced by the spiritual, but the physical inspires. Fun to ponder and discuss, but at the end of the day I want my rock.
So, PZ. What do you think of auras, seances, and the healing power of crystals?
(Ducking beneath the swipe of the kukri.)
;-)
Russell,
Be careful! We all know PZ's really fucking fast with that kukri!
MikeG
Coward: morality can clearly be seen in action. It is a generally agreed apon code of conduct, a set of often-unwritten rules, and a willingness from individuals to follow those rules.
You think this isn't real? Have you ever interacted with humans before?
Where humans exist, morality exists.
Oh, so we've allowed religious creationists to hijack the concept of intelligent design, andd now we're going to allow them to hijack the concept of spirituality?
Where does it end?
Well, ID isn't scientific, so they can have it. Since spirituality isn't scientific, it doesn't apply either. Are some scientists "spiritual?" Yes. But if they let their spiritual beliefs bias their research in any way, they aren't good scientists. Hence the complete and utter failing of ID.
"Spirituality" is for those who are too chicken shit to call themselves atheists or who find reality too salty and bad for their blood pressure.
sugarbear:
I am confused. Please provide a solid, non-circular definition of spirituality.
Georges Bataille, the French philosopher, novelist, and pornographer, used to talk about the "job" of a word, not what it means or what it refers to but what it is used for. Like many other theological words, spirituality doesn't have very much to offer on a conceptual level--nobody is very interested in specifying what it denotes--but many people obviously find it useful.
Sometimes people appeal to spirituality as a way of complaining about the narrowness of the scientific outlook. Even the most souless secularist can certainly sympathize with that. To listen to the rhetoric of pan-scientism, you'd have to conclude that its supporters are unaware that science is a vanishingly tiny fraction of human experience. The question was asked "have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain?" as if it weren't obvious that almost every experience is not reducable to some sort of scientific explanation--"spiritual" experience, which always seems to be exemplified by sighing at a beautiful vista, is nothing extraordinary in this regard. Most of what we do--hoping, enjoying, hurting, arguing, sympathizing, cursing, laughing, trying, playing--isn't captured by the sciences and can't be, not because of some defect of science but because science is about knowing about things in a particular way while living is comprised of all the ways we do and suffer. One can imagine an explanation of a joke that accurately and adequately described it in terms of atoms and void, but the explanation wouldn't be funny. Category mistake. The best screwdriver in the world is a lousy adverb.
Another job of "spirituality" is less complicated. One insists on possessing spirituality as a no-fuss, short-hand way of asserting "I am not a philistine." If most of these folks really weren't philistines, however, you'd think their spirituality would amount to more than a verbal gesture about oneness with the all. Except for the odd mystic, however, who spends appreciable time communing the cosmos anyhow? Well, experiencing the unity of all things has this much going for it: it requires no complicated or expensive equipment or time-consuming training, you can do it anywhere, and nobody can prove you're faking it.
One small cavil: it's cheating to think that the absence of spirits is an objection to spirituality since the whole point of claiming that you're a spiritual person, as opposed, for example, to a Methodist, is that vaguing things out gets around the necessity of making unlikely empirical claims about the reality of ghosts or angels. That's part of the job of "spirituality."
Charles Tart? Shouldn't some kind of buzzer go off whenever his name is mentioned, thereby informing people that a free-association semi-science zone has just been entered?
Oh, so we've allowed religious creationists to hijack the concept of intelligent design, andd now we're going to allow them to hijack the concept of spirituality?
Where does it end?
Sugarbear, you're assuming that "spirituality" is conceptually valid and worthy of attention in the first place. Seriously, if "a feeling of connectedness with the world and all its creatures" and such like is the best and most succinct operational definition proponents of "spirituality" can give, then it sounds to me like there's just no "there" there. The word really sounds like nothing more than a label to slap on warm fuzzy feelings. Why not just say "I'm happy" or "I feel good"? Every time I hear "spirituality", it comes from a person who is simply using it as a synonym for "religious," when they're worried that "religious" is a word with too many negative associations that they don't wish to turn people off by using. Is there any concrete reason why the conventionally religious shouldn't be using it? Is there any reason scientists and rationalists should give it a moment's thought?
Whenever I use the word "spirituality" (which I do rarely) I usually have to make it clear that I only mean it to reference my feeling of awe regarding the natural universe. There's nothing else. But that's plenty enough for sure.
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
Yes, in the sense of "connection to something greater than oneself". Intellectually, since science methods are antithesis to solipsism. Emotionally, due to the awe of nature, the feeling of being a natural part of nature, and the ability to understand to understand nature.
But there is no spirit soul here, and the merely sensual part is not formally part of spirituality. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality ) It is just that some of this is indistinguishable.
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the scientific community, when one considers the current religious climate in the U.S?
Yes, the spirit mindset and its perpetuation are antithesis to science methods.
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it?
Yes, in the sense that I have made many failed experiments - it's how we learn how to make them work. Also, I don't have verified explanations for all the detail in everyday experiences.
No, in the sense that in a more coarse-grained view I can explain both these failures of detailed explanation.
I would go so far as to say that you have no evidence.
Btw, one nice explanation for left-right asymmetry, mostly but not unequivocally supported by the fine- and coarsegrained anatomical differences, is that the denser, more widely connected and more myelinated left hemisphere is simply specialized on the parts of events that contains high frequency spatial information, while the right hemisphere is specialized on the low frequency information. (DFF theory.)
Interestingly, the computationally based DFF theory seems to be the only theory that makes predictions instead of being descriptive - and they are confirmed! ( http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/01/post_7.php ; http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/01/asymmetric_archi… ; http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/01/hemispheric_asym… .)
But no one has observed a spirit setting up house there.
There's a difference between "currently explainable by scientific knowledge" and "explainable by science".
Lots of things do not have adequate explanations in current scientific knowledge. There's nothing that isn't explainable by science that's explainable in any other way.
1) No.
2) They're not very good scientists.
3) No.
4) No. The concept of 'spiritual' is incoherent.
5) They're not very good scientists.
6) YES!
7) Yes. I just ate an orange.
Spirituality is an essential component of one's holistic health and mental well-being.
*****************************
Not so much, methinks. We as humans have created this whole "holistic" view and it is a canard. It ends up that this is used in places of science and medicine to blame people for stuff that they have no control over. If everything is "balanced" then a person is expected to have optimum health. This includes the spirituality component.
I see this as a lie, because there are far too many people who are seemingly "balanced" that get completely hooped by medical problems, and there are some completely and unabashedly un-spiritual folks who manage to live to a ripe old age without a toenail fungus. Faith in the unseen does NOT help with medical problem onsets or outcomes (remember the prayer/heart study last year, I believe) and it really does not "cure" the ailment.
PZ says ********
No, because spirituality is bunk. I think that some scientists can have an emotional attachment to ideas and objects, a sensation that they can call 'spiritual' -- it does not interfere with their work unless they go off the deep end and start believing that their internal mental states necessarily reflect an external reality beyond the physical.
*********************************************************
Unfortunately, this is exactly what is happening in many areas of medicine these days. You have major hospitals selling woo on the side in order to "comprehensively" treat patients. Reiki, religion and right thinking are all prescribed with a straight face. (And that is not a comprehensive list.) In places like England, homeopathy is coming back into vogue, and is being supported, or at least not vigorously opposed, by those charged with the responsibility of using science and medicine to heal. We have a plethora of news articles that report on the benefits of woo, almost daily, and most people just don't think or investigate claims, but just "do" when an authority figure tells them that this is good for them- so try it.
There are a lot of things wrong here. One is the level of science education- the ability to solve problems think critically, ask intelligent questions, and the like. One is the nature of teaching. From the time we are little we are taught that it is impolite to question those who are supposed to be smarter than us. We are pretty comfortable and so we really are not affected by this dearth of inquisitiveness and knowledge until it is too late, usually. And by then our ability to think cogently has effectively been shut off by years of disuse, making us prime targets for the charlatans that purvey lies.
Your evidence for this remarkable claim that 'spirituality' is hard-wired into the brain is...?
Dean H. Hamer says so.
http://rex.nci.nih.gov/RESEARCH/basic/biochem/hamer.htm
Powers forfend that we should be impolite.
"Your evidence for this remarkable claim that 'spirituality' is hard-wired into the brain is...?"
-
I cannot answer for Sugabear, but I did watch a video once about a neurosurgeon who was working with epileptics and found some part of the brain that seemed crucial in a feeling of completness and oness with the universe, that lead him to question whether there was something in the brain that makes us liable to think in religious terms.
Sorry cannot remember all the details at this point - maybe someone else saw it?
1] No.
2] Pretentious wankers.
3] No.
4] No. Spiritual means nothing.
5] Wrong.
6] Yes.
7] Yes, many. So what?
...
...
I have deep, strong feelings about a lot of things. One of these things is "spirituality." "Spirituality" is usually a buzzword for some sort of fuzzy-minded bullshit that nobody can really describe - least of all the "deeply spiritual" people.
I hate buzzwords. I especially hate words that seem to mean something, but don't. But worst of all are those trick-words that PREVENT communication because you can't use them AT ALL without giving someone else a mistaken idea about what you're trying to communicate. You project the idea A at them, but it lands in their heads as idea B, and the head-nodding agreement makes you both think you've communicated. But it turns out later they've totally missed what you were trying to say. You say it again, and you use the same trick-word, and again they misunderstand. And over, and over, and over.
I would never, ever use the word "spiritual" to describe myself in any way. Not because I'm empty and cold and closed off. But because the deep, broad passions I do have are way too important to be left to the cheesy graces of a word which will ALWAYS be misunderstood by the listener.
"Spiritual" is the refined white sugar of communicating deep meaning, or deep feelings. It's empty of everything except the peppy zap.
Okay ... so. This question implies that "spiritual" equals "religious." Right, I get it.
If that's all it is to the guy who wrote this question, we're done here.
Should scientists be religious?
Duh. Should Superbowl athletes drink a case of Budweiser every weekend, and sit around watching TV for six hours a night?
Only if they want to fail to ever reach their stated goal. Only if they want to be stuck playing Shirts and Skins at the local high school field for the rest of their lives.
Should scientists have a sense of connectedness with the real world? Should they feel deep passions about their work, about the quest for understanding? Well, shit yeah.
On the other hand, should they also feel anger at the constant Greek chorus of Stupidity, the lolly-heads telling them "Luke, let go! Use the Force!"? Telling them all they have to do is FEEL? And maybe love the Sweet Baby Jesus a little bit more?
I'd say so.
If spirituality means something like "connectedness," and not just "religion," scientists are POTENTIALLY equipped to feel it in even greater measure than your average air-headed yokel sitting in a church pew, or buying yeast flakes down at the Vegan Mart.
If I know about the deep, intimate connections between me and all this other stuff around me, if I can not only hold the idea of a connected continuum between me and the rest, but actually know something of the REASONS for that connectedness, the EVIDENCE supporting the understanding, that's some serious heartfelt appreciation of the concept.
On the other hand, if I know next to nothing at all, but simply walk around saying "Oh, I just feel Jesus in my soul! I'm a sweet little lamb of the Lord! I'm just, like, totally EVERYTHING! I feel so SPIRITUAL!" ... well, props for the feeling, but the head of the person who says that is really just full of shit. He/she is an empty vessel - and a damned shallow one - just waiting for some parasite to come along and tell him/her to "Let go! Use the Force! And by the way, make sure you use the RIGHT force, which you can only get at my church."
Wha-?
Okay, we've moved on to "transcendent" experiences. How do I know this has nothing to do with one's first experience of intercourse? Or the time you experienced that blinding flash of insight in calculus class? How do I know it's nothing more than still more JesusJesusJesus, dressed up in a pretty buzzword?
Should they fear being "shunned"? (More telling religious-community terminology, by the way)
Speaking as a non-scientist, if a doctor listening to my chest starts sharing his thoughts about imbalances of black bile and yellow bile, or telling me health is really all about conserving my "vital fluids," and masturbation is therefore a bad idea, or that I should pray more and ask the Lord for forgiveness in order to be healed, I'm might still think he's a fine human being, but I'm gonna suddenly doubt his competence AS A DOCTOR.
Should they be "shunned"? No. But betchur ass I think they should be respected less AS SCIENTISTS.
Not in any sense you mean, chuckles. Probably not in any sense you're even capable of understanding.
But IN the sense you mean, absolutely not. Because it's mixing "goal of playing the Superbowl" with "six hours a night in the TV room with Cheez Whiz and Budweiser."
Okay, so now we get to it: Morality equals religion.
And everybody who doesn't have religion - probably YOUR religion - is immoral and sucky and can't do anything good, much less good science.
You know what? SCREW YOU.
And screw your religious brain-farts. Here you go with the simpering "Oh, you can't be a good moral person without having a strong sense of Jesus (religion)," which is a lie so many light years away from anything real it makes fairy stories look like rock-solid evidence in comparison.
What? What phenomenon are we talking about? Scientists getting goddy? Well, sure, that can damage science. Seeing as how godders in the US are already trying to destroy science, I think scientists should stay the hell away from allowing their private faith to adulterate the public image - or practice - of science.
Further, I think scientists should all avidly and openly OPPOSE every scrap of religion-creep into the important fields they represent.
(Just by the by: Science is no threat to religion, not a deliberate one, anyway. Catholic priests molesting altar boys is a thousand times greater threat to faith than knowing the significance of the speed of light.)
Yeah, one time the hearing in my right ear just STOPPED. I couldn't scientifically explain it. It came back after a few minutes, but it was weird.
If you're asking me personally, I can't SCIENTIFICALLY explain the aurora. Or why most of my hair fell out by the time I was 40. Or why a spot on my arm sometimes itches when I can see there's nothing there to cause it. Or why mockingbirds mimic sounds they hear in their environment. Or why a wintergreen Life Saver emits sparks of light when you bite into it in a darkened room.
I have a feeling NONE of those things is Jesus though. In fact, I'm pretty sure that no amount of "spirituality" would turn up useful answers to any of those things.
We humans were "spiritual" for twenty thousand years or so, and we were barely able to figure out sewers.
By contrast, we got "scientual" a few hundred years ago and today I'm a cancer survivor who watched the moon landings, sitting here with a computer on my desk and projecting my somewhat-lengthy thoughts out to thousands of people I've never even met.
Screw "spiritual." Give me science, performed by smart, energetic, passionate, curious men and women from every culture and every continent.
Give me people who are so MORAL they're not willing to let the least little lie into the mix, no matter how personally attached to it they or their neighbors might be.
Give me science. Not spirits.
...
...
Because "spirituality" has always, for whatever reason(s), meant something fairly mundane to me, I've never had a much of a problem with using the term.
On that note, I'd like to thank you, PZ, and Doc Dawkins as well, for reminding me that words do have specific and agreed upon definitions. According to the most commonly agreed upon def of Spirituality, the one you've given above, I've got to admit that I don't subscribe to that shit. LOL!
For the record; I've always used it as a synonym for persona. The intangible qualities of a person's personality and approach to their life. It's encompassed their morality, style, lifestyle and whatever they may consider their raison d'etre.
But you're right. Unless someone discovers some kind o' "spiritons", there's really no reason, other than appeasement of folks who are afraid to admit their own intellectual affinity to the concepts of atheism and agnosticism, to continue using the term.
Thanks again.
L8
The entire survey is drivel. The definition of spirtuality is the state of being spiritual. The definition of spiritual is that pertaining to the noncorporeal and supernatural. Since science deals with the corporeal and natural, it is axiomatic that scientists can be spirtual but it has nothing to do with science. My physician can be spiritual but his medical treatment better be based on science.
I once found $52.00 in the road, just when I needed it real bad. Explain that, Mr. Einstein! You too, Mr. Eisenstein.
Mike G writes, "Be careful! We all know PZ's really fucking fast with that kukri!"
No worry, mon. PZ is a middle-aged academic. Oh.. wait. (Looks at driver's license, observes birthdate.) My bad. PZ is in the prime of life. Still, he's a professor at a midwestern university. All the really badass academics are on one of the coasts. ;-)
Exactly!
You Rock, Hank.
:)
I should note on my comment on DFF theory that it doesn't mean parts of the hemispheres has other specializations - apparently we have differences in gene expression down to small clusters, neurons, and parts of neurons. But it may guide the placement of the some of these.
Thanks Jim Harrison for a really good comment. I also see people using the term as a way of withdrawing from debate and from difficult choices. People will often use the term in a phrase like this: "I don't like organized religion, but I'm still a very spiritual person." Say what you like about "organized religion," it's usually pretty clear about what it believes and the choices entailed in belief.
"Spiritual," by contrast, connotes mystery, things we cannot know but can only feel or sense, the idea that that there is *necessarily* a realm of the unexplainable that must be called spiritual (this is the woo-woo part that pisses off scientists). Of course it also pisses of the properly religious because it makes the *same* implicit denial of religious truth. Maybe it's a sort of 2nd-degree agnosticism, a way to be agnostic without even committing to being agnostic if you see what I mean. I think also for some folks, being a deep spiritual thinker is a matter of being "open" to a whole range of low-rent hooey, from astrology to UFOs to mysterious energies, and when challenged they talk smugly about the limits of out current Physics -- these are people who wouldn't know that force equals mass times acceleration and they're talking about the limits of physics. You want to smack them. But I digress.
So yeah, "spirituality" is a way for someone to say "I have access to a plane of existence that you don't," and to dismiss any kind of logical or empirical challenge as just not getting it. There are, I hasten to add, smart mystics, and smart religious thinkers, and I'm much more sympathetic to disciplined, careful religious inquiry than 90% of the folks who post here.
But cripes, "a sense of unity or connection with all other living creatures" is contemptible, weak-minded hooey. I don't have such a sense. I could *cultivate* a sense of that kind, I suppose, but my own limited science reading just as often convinces me that the natural world is strange. Read Carl Zimmer's _Parasite Rex_ and the "unity of living creatures" takes on a very different complexion! So no, this cheap "unity" and personal growth and "holistic" stuff is an ideology, and a boring one at that.
For Torbjörn Larsson:
You should make friends with http://tinyurl.com.
Really.
Nony Cow:
Read a book (review), amigo. Personally, I look forward to reading the whole book.
The first half of my blog entry is my response. The other half is just anime junk, so you intellectual types can ignore it.
I have to say though, a lot of this "being connected with the universe" stuff I'm hearing sounds a lot like Scientific Pantheism. Just thought I'd throw that bone out there for you gnaw on.
Preach it, Hank.
Oh, posh! That's nothing. Try giving this interview to people who go to church:
1.) Would you consider yourself a person who knows science, as a reasonable person?
2.) We hear time and time again of the disputes between the scientific and religious communities, what is your response to the phenomenon of faith believers exploring their own knowledge of science and ability to determine things through reason?
3.) Dr. Charles T. Tart established an online journal dedicated to scientists who wish to share their own personal transcendent experiences in confidence, known as TASTE. Many Christians, Moslems and others feel that they would be shunned by the religious community if they shared their experiences with using reason with their colleagues, are you surprised by this?
4.) Do you feel that a religion follower can be reasonable and scientific? Why is this?
5.) What do you say to some preachers who claim that a strong sense of skepticism and reason are essential in your line of work, in order to act morally?
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the religious community, when one considers the current climate for science and reason in the U.S?
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience with scripture or an article or tenet of faith that you could scientifically explain completely? If so, what was it? Did it shake your faith?
See how far you can get with that one.
You mean like the University of Chicago? The Santa Fe Institute? Fermi Lab? Ohio State? University of Colorado? Cornell? Penn State? Northwestern? University of Michigan?
"7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it?
Yes, many. The first mitotic division I made as a zygote ..."
Wow! Your memory is better than Phillipe Gaston's!
No, what is truly unfortunate is that these people recognize that *state of mind* can have a major effect on recover and even survival, but, like all *religious* programs, they take the leap from the realization that "some" people are helped by their brand of Woo, to the "assumption" that *all* people would be equally helped by it. In reality, its a complex psychological problem with no clear answers, and you might end up killing someone with the same Woo you used to cure someone else, because the psychological interpretation of the first one is that, "Oh hell, I am in much bigger trouble than I thought", while the later's interpretation may be, "Wow! I am glad they are willing to help me even more by waving the magic Woo Stick in my face!", or what ever. They honestly think that its a one size fits all solution, which its not. And more to the point, people that are "not" helped are not likely to mention that it didn't help them, and its damn hard for someone the Woo helps to kill to tell anyone how badly if fucked up their recovery. Thus, only the "apparent" positives get reported in the annecdotal studies. The scientific ones though... Tend to show no or a negative result, because only the *actually* results are being examined, not the opinions of those people that bother to, or just can, report on the experience.
How is "uniqueness" not a word? I've often seen it used, e. g. in scientific articles. Google finds it seventeen and a half million times.
Now Sugarbear:
I don't understand. Please explain.
I have that sense of being connected to the nematodes and ginkgos. But it's evolutionary biology that has given it to me: I'm more closely related to the nematodes than to the ginkgos -- literally: sharing ancestors, real living beings that lived a guesstimated billion years ago, with the nematodes but not the ginkgos --, and more closely to the ginkgos than to the quadrillion bacteria in my gut (that's a thousand times as many cells as my own, BTW). Nothing remotely supernatural is involved; to the contrary. If I were standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, I'd be just as impressed as everyone else, but I'd marvel at time, water, sedimentation, erosion, and the like, not at anything supernatural. Truth is after all stranger than fiction!
Now please explain "meaning", "sense", and "place". I don't get what you mean by these words and don't want to attack a strawman.
PZ, I sometimes find it helpful in dealing with nutters like these to point out that there are two categories of Things-We-Do-Not-Know. These are UNKNOWNS and MYSTERIES. (Apologies for the capitalisation; I'll be trying to work these into acronyms at some point!)
I define the former as things that are in principle knowable, and hence they are not-yet-knowns. Even when they can't in *practice* be known, they are nonetheless non-mysterious.
MYSTERIES, OTOH, are things that we can never know *in principle*. They are beyond mere human ken. They are the realm of the pixies.
The problem for pixie-huggers is that there aren't any situations that fit into the latter category. They *claim* that there are, but there aren't. They will, furthermore, claim that certain UNKNOWNS are in fact MYSTERIES, but that is a leap that imposes upon them a burden of proof, and they are unwilling to be so gracious as to provide that.
So even your first mitotic division sits comfortably in UNKNOWN territory, but it sure ain't no MYSTERY. The vast tree of science is peppered with UNKNOWNS, but these are generally treatable as "black boxes", where we can establish the inputs and outputs of the system, even if we don't know the full details of the inner workings. But pixies cannot live in such black boxes, because these nasty old scientists have a habit of opening the lids and exposing the insides.
At first this question puzzled me -- could scientists who come out as "spiritual" be seen as a threat to the scientific community given the extremely religious climate in the U.S.? Huh? Does he mean that other scientists will be worried that their spiritual colleagues are going to get more money and praise? Does he mean that science will suddenly be seen as less important, since even scientists think religion is important? What?
Then I looked through all the questions again and realized that the likelihood is that the person who wrote the survey here is probably a New Ager of some sort, and thinks there is a big, huge, critical difference between being "spiritual" (directly connecting to the Higher levels of the Cosmos on a personal level) and being "religious" (man's way of trying to bring the transcendent down by degrading it into a bunch of rules, rituals, and buildings, leading to hatred, bigotry, wars, intolerance, and all the bad things you get when you fail to recognize that all paths lead to the same Source.)
If so, the writer may also believe that the religious fear and hate the spiritual, because they have not yet evolved to their higher levels of understanding. So if the religious fundamentalists find out that scientists are drifting towards the New Age, the scientific community will be THREATENED! It could be in danger!
If this is right, there seems to be a nice blend of paranoia mixed in with the smugness.
You mean like the University of Chicago? The Santa Fe Institute? Fermi Lab? Ohio State? University of Colorado? Cornell? Penn State? Northwestern? University of Michigan?
Haven't you ever watched Monday Night Football? It's the Ohio State University.
Those red and gray buckeye people are, from my experience, a little crazy.
So, when somebody says "that football team really has a fighting spirit" they are refering to a disembodied ghost and dualistic worldview?
Come on, go read Wilkins post on the definition species http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2007/01/a_spirituality_query.php -- all 26 of those definitions. Or mabye that sort of thing is too nuanced, shades of grey and all that, for many of the people here.
I'm about thirty pages from the end of "Flim-Flam," so you'd better believe that every woo-buzzer, bullshit-meter and nutjob alarm in my head started ringing as soon as I read that.
"Religious creationists" are welcome to both concepts, since neither are of any practical use anyway.
I get deeply spiritual from time to time, always after about 300 mL of Crown Royal...then I get either very sleepy or or very dizzy and eventually nauseous.
Spirituality leaves me with a banging headache the next morning.
"immediate rejection of the premise"? So a Cheney-Blitzer moment?
Sure, I'm "spiritual" if you mean I'm filled with awe before (among other things) the "structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it."
I'm not "spiritual" if you mean I should conjure from my natural awe a grab bag of magical figments and pass them off to others as cosmic truths (or, worse, hold them out as grist for a scientific research program).
Re Charles Tart
This clown, along with his pal Hal Putoff used to work at the Stanford Research Institute. They had a number of studies involving ESP and PK, all of which have been thoroughly debunked by Martin Gardner. The fact that this writer even quotes a phoney like Tart probably tells you all you need to know about he/she.
Sugarbear, a personal (less flippant) observation:
I find talking with someone about their spirituality rather like listening to someone who's just woken up trying to describe an amazing dream... to them it is so full of meaning, but to others it's just a rambling account of something intangible. We are often at the mercy of our emotions, but attempting to rationalize these strong feelings into any sort of philosophical outlook is kind of pointless. A naturalistic world-view doesn't exclude having these feelings, it just doesn't try to read extra significance into them.
To feel at one with humanity is just a grandiose way of experiencing empathy, a trait which I believe most mammals exhibit. There's no need for holistic non-explanations (or more quackery things like morphogenetic fields etc).
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
sometimes
i do feel that sense of wonder and connecteness and i formally celebrate that occasionally but im not religious
2.) We hear time and time again of the disputes between the scientific and religious communities, what is your response to the phenomenon of scientists exploring their own spirituality?
since one has nothing to do with the other , my opinion of what others do with their free time is worthless
3.) Dr. Charles T. Tart established an online journal dedicated to scientists who wish to share their own personal transcendent experiences in confidence, known as TASTE. Many feel that they would be shunned by the scientific community if they shared their experiences with their colleagues, are you surprised by this?
yes, but thats because i feel that these feelings are personal and should be as accepted as any other minor quirks would be ....groupthink really isnt good for you no matter what it's about
4.) Do you feel that a scientist can be spiritual? Why is this?
yes, in the awe and connectedness sense ...most religious dogmas are too silly to withstand any sort of real scrutiny
5.) What do you say to some scientists who claim that a strong sense of spirituality and morality are essential in your line of work?
Spirituality is practically worthless here and just gets in the way of understanding whats going on while you're working. When youre not working it could enhance your creativity
Morality is essential, scientists rely on the honesty of their peers & we also can do a lot of damage misusing the knowledge weve acquired
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the scientific community, when one considers the current religious climate in the U.S?
Depends, if you talking about the kind of delusional based spirituality that, for example, YECs love to indulge in,then yes this would be harmful
If your talking about yoga classes then no; yoga's actually good for you (IMHO i think yoga triggers endorphins with those weird positions, and opiates do make you have a sense of well-being and relaxation The positions also tend to correct your posture )
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it?
no even the experience of a great peaceful light inside my head was probably due to dehydration ...but it sure felt good
Ghurka. Kukri. Not to be trifled with.
http://www.arco-iris.com/George/images/ghurka_ng.jpg
The movie Mondo Cane http://akas.imdb.com/title/tt0057318/ has footage of a bull being decapitated with one stroke from a kukri.
1. No.
2. I am not sure why they want to. I never was spiritual, and nothing bad ever happened to me because of it.
3. Not surprising at all. You get paid to think logically, and then throw out all that training and expertise the one time it may help your life the most?
4. Barely. There is always the threat that living with a paradoxal view of life will drive you nuts.
5. Theyre a bit crazy.
6. Yes. The only religious leader I know who is not completely opposed to science is the Dalai Lama. Unless Buddhism really takes off, religion and science will have huge problems getting along.
7. If I ever had one, it was so trivial I never bothered remembering it. So probably no.
I am going to write this before I read anything else so my responses are not colored by the others.
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
No, not according to any definition of the word I am aware of.
2.) We hear time and time again of the disputes between the scientific and religious communities, what is your response to the phenomenon of scientists exploring their own spirituality?
Considering the role it plays in human society, science exploring peoples' spirituality and the reasons for it could probably tell us a lot about human nature. Scientists looking at themselves may help determine some questions that would be worth asking. And that questions are asked, psychological, neurological, and genetic study of religion is one of those taboos that science is not supposed to deal with, but some people are willing to do it.
That is no the answer they wanted, but it's their fault for asking the wrong question (they seem to do this a lot).
3.) Dr. Charles T. Tart established an online journal dedicated to scientists who wish to share their own personal transcendent experiences in confidence, known as TASTE. Many feel that they would be shunned by the scientific community if they shared their experiences with their colleagues, are you surprised by this?
Not really. Scientists who speak out on spirituality don't seem to be shunned in any serious manner (unless they say something really outlandish), but some people like feeling they are in some sort of special group that is being repressed by the establishment. Tart is a Pigasus award winner and a member of several infamous parapsychology groups. At least from what I have seen it seems parapsychologists are particularly prone to delusions of persecution, perhaps as a way to explain their total lack of progress as a field.
4.) Do you feel that a scientist can be spiritual? Why is this?
Depends on the what you mean by "spiritual". If you mean religious, yes. People seem quite capable of separating different parts of their lives. That it is possible should be self-evident. The fact that such scientists exist (as stated in the previous question) should be proof enough of that. Whether this is a good thing or not is another question, but once again a question they did not ask.
5.) What do you say to some scientists who claim that a strong sense of spirituality and morality are essential in your line of work?
This is a loaded question. The question askers are lumping together spirituality and morality when there is no evidence of any connection between the two. Certainly morality is essential in all science. But as for spirituality, this has been studied and the evidence is firmly against this being required. The fact that there are many atheists and agnostics in science should be proof of that.
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the scientific community, when one considers the current religious climate in the U.S?
Depends on the extent. As long as it does not interfere with their work, no I do not see it being a problem. If all scientists were atheists it would probably be much easier for the fundamentalist war on science. And have differing opinions on subjects can help broaden points of view, which is good. Whether such an idealistic version of the religious scientist is actually possible is questionable. As of yet I cannot say one way or another.
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it?
Of course I have. If scientists had all the answers then they would be out of a job. The fact that no answer is known now does not mean no answer exists. You wake up every day. How does that work? Well, scientists know a large amount about that, but they don't have a complete explanation. As it stands now, sleep cannot be fully explained scientifically. Does that mean there is something magical in sleep? No, of course not. All it means is that there is still more study that has to be done. And there are people working hard to get the answers right now.
Even moving your arm, we know a lot about skeletal muscles but there are still some details that have yet to be figured out. That does not mean science will never figure it out. It just means people studying the problem still have a job for the time being.
And even if answers exist, there is no way I could know them all. My ability to give detailed, complete scientific explanations is limited to a few key topics. Scientists working in that area might have an answer, but I do not. All that means is that there is more known than any one person can learn.
And even if I do know the subject in detail I may simply not have enough information on one particular even to be able to answer it. Say I see a car going down a hill at twice the speed limit. Can I explain that? Not necessarily. The car was going too fast for me to get a good look. Was the driver speeding? Was he or she drunk? Was the car empty and the parking break left off? I may know everything about cars and drivers but still not be able to explain that particular event because I do not have enough information (I don't actually know that much about cars to be honest).
The unstated assumption here is that if I, one random person, does not have a scientific answer for everything I encounter then science is somehow flawed. That couldn't be more wrong. All it means is that I am not omniscient.
I have all kinds of ideas and thoughts about an afterlife and stuff like that. Especially when someone close to you dies. If someone else also has those ideas, especially right after someone dies, i obviously understand why.
But that shit ain't got nothin' to do with science.
And in my experience, virtually everyone who uses the word "spirituality" is stone cold scientifically illiterate. and they usually smoke dope.
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
In Breaking the Spell (p. 303), Daniel Dennett writes this, in response to his own characterization (and caricature-ization) of people trying to define spirituality:
I could consider myself spiritual by that definition.
It is an indisputable fact that people have transcendent (per definitions #1 and #2) experiences. These are worth studying. Such experiences need not proceed from an immaterial reality (and I don't believe they do), and they can be studied as material phenomena (the only way to study them, obviously). If someone has a mindfucking experience that they take as the work of the Deity, their interpretation can and should reasonably be challenged, but that the experience itself occurred and had a profound effect cannot. (My favoriter perspective on this is here. Note that as the note at the top says, you have to read the whole thing to get it.)
Of course, I still think the guy who sent that e-mail doesn't understand some important things.
Sam Harris writes in The End of Faith:
I see nothing to argue with there.
Also, the word "spiritual" has by now become meaningless and should probably be avoided by everyone. However, some people (including Sam Harris) use it to refer to transcendent experience without any connotation of immateriality. While someone who uses the word is probably a non-materialist of some sort, it's not true 100% of the time.
No, what is truly unfortunate is that these people recognize that *state of mind* can have a major effect on recover(y) and even survival, but, like all *religious* programs, they take the leap from the realization that "some" people are helped by their brand of Woo, to the "assumption" that *all* people would be equally helped by it.
****************************
I hate to disagree with someone who has taken the time to reply to something that I have said. But, I will have to, in a very limited way. One of the things that I found out about while researching the effects of chronic pain on a person's life was that cytokines are especially important in how we feel pain. There are cytokines that amplify pain, and there are cytokines that minimize pain. They are inflammatory or anti-inflammatory, in very basic terms. These cytokines can mess with brain function along the way, making you feel bad "psychologically" before you feel bad physically, to the point where you are unable to cope with pain. There are injuries that occur in the body that may be tiny, but have profound effects on people. There really is no "woo cure" that is going to help. Please google "slacker or sick" which deals with mice and inflicted RSD if I am remembering correctly. Their social/psychological behaviour changed before their injury physically manifested itself.
There is also the role of glial cells in pain that is being investigated. Pain is usually thought of as a neuron dysfunction. (remember I am not a scientist, and I am winging it from memory here). Glia signal assorted cytokines to act, and when this happens it can cause a mess. The problem is that because pain is seen as a neuron disorder, there is a tendency to see it as an up and down the nervous system ( the gate control theory of pain) which, if glia is involved, will have to be rethought, because glia do not work in the same manner. Essentially the Gate Control theory it is an incomplete theory, which is often trumpeted as the only explanation. Probably doesn't make much sense, but if you read Linda R Watkins (Colorado University) stuff, she has written hundreds of pages on pain research which says it ever so much better than I can summarize. There are also calcium and sodium channels that can whack out and things like conotoxins have been developed to manage that type of insult to a body.
I think that my problem with a lot of the woo is similar to yours, but I honestly do not believe that woo works for anyone. Anecdotally, having met people who have lived with varying degrees of pain, for very different reasons, the biggest thing I find is that their pain is usually only meaningfully diminished by medicines that work for their particular situation. Most people that I have met with pain have been through a multidisciplinary holistic program which has turned out to be ideological crap. But Botox for migraine is a huge breakthrough. BUT......... there are people who deny that it is effective because it only works for a limited time- usually two or three months. Then you have to get re-injected.
Now, think about that. Would we say to a diabetic that their insulin was not an effective treatment because they have to continue using it daily? No. But, for pain we dismiss it as a psychological or social construct- and try to manage it with thoughts of bubbles and happy places and invisible healing fields and a big "Buck Up!!!"
Rant over- got to go back to reality and make supper. Just wanted to get that clear though, and I do hope you look into some of that intriguing stuff, because it is just kind of neat. And the other people explain it ever so much better than I can.
Even the "secular" versions of spirituality seem like nonsense to me. I'm pretty sure I'm not connected to anything bigger than myself; and while the universe can inspire me with awe it can also bore me to tears. It's like everything else that way. Let's be honest here: "spirituality" does no work other than to discriminate against a certain class of people. When you see the word "spirituality" you're dealing with a bigot.
I'm fairly sure that the room you're in is larger than you. Not to mention, say, the planet. Or the star around which you're orbiting.
Like many others, being asked about "spirituality" is very nebulous. My two "bird friends" have used the word with me, and I have never quite understood it.
Some characterizations make it sound like any disinterested cultural pursuit is "spiritual" and some people (not the friends, but others) mean it as a euphemism for "religious" and everything else in between.
So until someone tells me what it is supposed to be about, I have to simply ask: "Huh?"
The word "spirituality" or "spiritual" makes my eyes roll. Either it's used in a retarded way, or a vague way to mean something better expressed by other words.
People who frequently talk about spirituality (except in the context of a discussion about the word "spirituality") well, the more they do it, the less highly I think of them. Spirituality is too dumb to be taken seriously.
(And if you're one of those who thinks spirituality means something else, like Carl Sagen and shit, well, there are better words. Find them, use them.)
Interesting. I take it that you feel native links are an annoyance due to the format. For me, they are not, they are just links.
Though in well formatted posts they may need reformatting, and I admit that it's a certain amount of laziness when choosing not to do so in comments.
tinyurl inconveniently hides the format and address of the source in sanely formatted links; I won't be friends with that. Instead, and with less effort, I can use html to make those links like this, which still can show source info when pointing with the mouse.
I will probably try to do so now, if it makes comments more readable. Thanks for the comment!
Science takes the objective view of reality. If you look at things a certain way we should all agree. It takes multiple views of the same thing and builds a better description of what it is and how it works.
Spirituality takes a subjective view of reality. You look inward to understand the nature of consciousness itself. You quickly realize all you ever see is yourself. There are many things to look at and places to view but there is only one viewer.
My current definition of God is simply "Reality". The scientific view has nothing to say about spirituality as it lacks the objectivity needed. Spirituality is based inside ones self, and is necessarily utterly personal. By looking inward there are only two things in the world - me and reality, or me and God. And ultimately I am simply made of God stuff and I can potentially find unity with God. This is why I am here. This is my life purpose.
All creativity comes from this spiritual subjective inner place. Take a crap, feel good and bingo you just had an insight. There is a reason it is called "in"sight.
What the hell IS this place inside us where we have these wonderful intuitive ideas. The science only verifies it. It is created inside us.
Subjectively there is only the present moment. Scientifically the present moment is only a theoretical point on a continuum.
Anyway - you can fill in the rest.
I get fed up with spiritual people who don't know what the hell they are talking about, and I find scientists hilariously egotistical. But I forgive scientists because they are humble. Show them the data that proves their favourite theory wrong and they will hate you and award you their highest honor. Spiritualists will kill you, if not physically they will consign you to eternal hell. What crap. Everyone is in - they just haven't noticed.
To get a better sense of the spiritualism I am talking about check out Byron Katie. She is a fully enlightened person living now with 4 questions to kill off any belief that is causing you suffering and lead you to inner Truth with a capital T. She has it right.
Warning: Acidic remarks ahead.
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
Meh. I'd say I'm kind of spiritual in that I do keep my mind open to the possibility that ghosts exist (although I don't think it has anything to do with the assumption that humans have some sort of immortal soul that just continues happilly along after they die), and kind of not in that I don't believe there's some sentience to the universe, nor do I believe we are born with a particular reason for living (aside from general survival instinct).
2.) We hear time and time again of the disputes between the scientific and religious communities, what is your response to the phenomenon of scientists exploring their own spirituality?
I don't think whether or not scientists do or do not explore their own spirituality has anything whatsoever to do with the arguement at large (being that the arguement is "Is X religion better at explaining the world or is Science?"). Unless Scientists all want to play follow the leader and not think for themselves (or Sheeple as some people call it) in which case I guess I'm not a scientist.
3.) Dr. Charles T. Tart established an online journal dedicated to scientists who wish to share their own personal transcendent experiences in confidence, known as TASTE. Many feel that they would be shunned by the scientific community if they shared their experiences with their colleagues, are you surprised by this?
Not at all. Although speaking for myself I'd rather be shunned by the scientific community than burned as a witch any day.
4.) Do you feel that a scientist can be spiritual? Why is this?
(Shrugs) Sure, why not? Lots of scientists still believe, to some extent, in their native religions (or rather the modified format which keeps all the desireable things about their religion while ditching the unneccessary crap). As long as a person's spirituality isn't imparing their scientific judgement it's not an issue. I should mention that in history there have been scientists that ignored a breakthrough because it didn't agree with what science had already established. For all intents and purposes it really doesn't matter if your handicap is religious or scientific if you can't accept that what you know to be true may be false.
5.) What do you say to some scientists who claim that a strong sense of spirituality and morality are essential in your line of work?
I'd say spirituality is not essential, and that moreover relying too heavilly on it is stupid (try boiling water with your mind and you'll realize that A) it's not possible and B) that's what the bunson burners are for). Morality is bunk, sort of like good and evil, make believe concepts to keep people from facing the fact that the people they are killing are just like them. Anyway if you're a scientist you're basically not the person determining what your research is going to be used for, so the only place Morality really plays a part is if a scientist refuses to do the research (and that scientist can probably be replaced).
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the scientific community, when one considers the current religious climate in the U.S?
That depends, can you separate what you think is right from what other people think is right (and accept that they have a perfect right to their opinion no matter how ludicrous)? If you can't than things get dangerous. Similarly as long as a scientist can separate what is scientifically proven from what they only believe (whether this belief is a logical sounding hypothesis or an illogical religious arguement) it doesn't really matter what they believe. As for how this does or does not effect the religious climate, the primary weakness of science has always been that it requires knowledge of language not used by the common folk (that language use to be latin, now it's physics/biology/chemistry terms).
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it?
Yes, I've seen ghosts. I know that some (OK most) of them can be explained by anxieties that I was just too buisy to face at the time, but a few of them I can't think up a plausable psychological explanation for. I've also had a couple instances where I saw the future (iminent future only, I can't see two years from next tuesday, even if I could remember what I saw that long).
As for the people that argue that ID was not hijacked from proper science, you are mostly right, but try explaining that for any given niche there is an ideal form for exploiting it (like a slim hydrodynamic form for free-swimming fish or spear-like teeth for a piscivore) to someone without having them think "inteligent design".
I don't get it. Spirituality is a purely natural aspect of being human. Note I said natural, not supernatural. That we cannot ascribe a natural causation for moment which have the spiritual aspect doesn't make them at all supernatural.
When someone says "the Eucharist doesn't undergo any physical change, but it spiritually transforms into the blood and body of Christ", what does that mean?
Do you really think that they only mean that the churchgoers view it as a symbol?
[i]My current definition of God is simply "Reality". The scientific view has nothing to say about spirituality as it lacks the objectivity needed. Spirituality is based inside ones self, and is necessarily utterly personal. By looking inward there are only two things in the world - me and reality, or me and God. And ultimately I am simply made of God stuff and I can potentially find unity with God. This is why I am here. This is my life purpose.[/i]
If your definition for God is simply reality, why do you need a definition of God at all? If this really is your definition, then you don't need to say that you are "made of God stuff." The equivalent statement would be "I am real and composed of the same matter as everything else." Moreover, how would one find unity with reality? That would be the same exact statement: "I am real." In this case, there's nothing to find. If you don't exist, we don't have much room for conversation about anything, as I'd simply be talking to a figment of my own imagination. Barring some mental illness on my part, we'd almost certainly agree on everything in that case.
[i]All creativity comes from this spiritual subjective inner place. Take a crap, feel good and bingo you just had an insight. There is a reason it is called "in"sight.[/i]
Semantics. Continuing with your "God = reality" definition, your "spiritual subjective inner place" is called esthetics, for which there is certainly a biological basis. "Insight" is just a realization, which takes place in the brain, and for which there is, again, a biological basis. The sensation can even be duplicated by purely chemical means, whether or not a novel thought is realized at all.
[i]What the hell IS this place inside us where we have these wonderful intuitive ideas. The science only verifies it. It is created inside us.[/i]
Our liver is also "created" inside us. This place is called the brain.
[i]Subjectively there is only the present moment. Scientifically the present moment is only a theoretical point on a continuum.[/i]
Objectively there is only the present moment, since future moments have ceased to exist and future ones haven't come into existence yet. It is memory of the past and speculation about the future that are objective, because they exist only in an individual brain and vary from person to person.
[i]Anyway - you can fill in the rest.[/i]
Of what, exactly? I don't mean to insult you personally, though may do so... but everything you've said up to this point sounds like the sort of obfuscation that I reflexively equate to New Age philosophy, most of which turns out to be nothing more than an effort to create mysteries out of simple principles as a means to sell goods to believers so that they can unravel the mysteries that have been so created. Really, what you've said up to this point boils down to:
1. Everything that exists is real (a tautology)
2. I am real.
3. I have a different set of experiences than other people.
All of this is pretty straightforward, so I'm not sure of what needs further filling in.
[i]I get fed up with spiritual people who don't know what the hell they are talking about,[/i]
Well we certainly agree on this much!
[i]and I find scientists hilariously egotistical.[/i]
I don't think the rate of egotism among scientists is much different than that among the general populace. Some are, some aren't. One could say exactly the same thing about any group of people, including those who generate complexity for no greater purpose than to make themselves a hero to the easily confused by explaining the complexity they've created.
[i]But I forgive scientists because they are humble. Show them the data that proves their favourite theory wrong and they will hate you and award you their highest honor. Spiritualists will kill you, if not physically they will consign you to eternal hell. What crap. Everyone is in - they just haven't noticed.[/i]
I haven't experienced this amongst scientists personally. I'm currently in the end stages of a study, for example, that is likely to disprove a theory about the relationship between a certain group of insects and a certain family of fungi. Some of the people who have supported the hypothesis that I'm working on disproving have been in contact with me and have been only too happy to share data with me. None have exhibited any hatred toward me for potentially overturning their hypotheses.
[i]To get a better sense of the spiritualism I am talking about check out Byron Katie. She is a fully enlightened person living now with 4 questions to kill off any belief that is causing you suffering and lead you to inner Truth with a capital T. She has it right.[/i]
After looking at Byron Katie's "four questions," all I can say is that what she's offering is another New Age self-help course that boils down to the simple proposition that one should be honest with oneself. She makes the whole thing sounds much more complicated, of course, but she's not saying much more than what Shakespeare was able to say much more succinctly: "To thine own self be true." One can "kill off belief" (i.e., be honest with oneself) by examining the data, of course, which is all she's suggesting. It's sad that people need to buy a book telling them how to be honest with themselves... but none of this is anything scientific. It's freshman-year psychology, really, and so is targeted to an audience that simply hasn't thought of the simple proposition of being honest with themselves on their own.
It's pop-guru stuff, much like the original questionaire that PZ posted.
Spirituality does not exist. When you have a feeling or sense of awe or connectedness. That is FEELING. It is not spiritual. Those feelings can be replicated by others at any given time. When I look at the Hubble deep field photos. I am in awe. It is a feeling, no spirits needed.
To give those feelings a spiritual spin is just plain dishonest. To claim a need of spirit to be moral is just plain dishonest. For any scientist to claim that spirit lead them to an outcome is highly suspect. So far as I'm concerned the spiritual/religious have been insinuating themselves into science for too long and a seperation is needed. Look at the damage ID has done by claiming it is science and it is NOT. What kind of science will develop if Spirituality and religion are allowed their respective influences?
The religious/spiritual need reassurance that they have IT right. They hijack science and have mislead billions into believing in fantasies and delusions for far too long. Their attempts at continuing to dictate science via spiritism needs to end. Nothing good can come from a mingling of scientific principles at the insistence of spiritual or religious ideaology.
Unless of course we get the opportunity at dictating to religion using the scientific method and only those things proven and tested are allowed to endure.
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
No. I honestly don't have a need for that word in my vocabulary. I would consider it higher praise to be called a sensible person. Double no if you are referring in any way to the woo purveyed by Deepak Chopra.
2.) We hear time and time again of the disputes between the scientific and religious communities, what is your response to the phenomenon of scientists exploring their own spirituality?
I shudder at the thought.
3.) Dr. Charles T. Tart established an online journal dedicated to scientists who wish to share their own personal transcendent experiences in confidence, known as TASTE. Many feel that they would be shunned by the scientific community if they shared their experiences with their colleagues, are you surprised by this?
Suprised that some bigmouth wants to make money by spewing a bunch of idiotic beliefs in all directions? No.
4.) Do you feel that a scientist can be spiritual? Why is this?
If spiritual means lacking material body or form or substance, then... NO! I'm getting the sense that you are obssessed with a WORD. Why is that?
5.) What do you say to some scientists who claim that a strong sense of spirituality and morality are essential in your line of work?
Why do some scientists say that gullibility, gross ignorance, and having one's head up one's ass are essential in the religious lines of work?
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the scientific community, when one considers the current religious climate in the U.S?
If the right-wing religious wackos continue their assault on the teaching of evolution in public schools, and the Bush government continues to ignore good science when it makes policy, then yes, the scientific community is being threatened.
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it?
I operate under the assumption that all experience is open to scientific explanation, including the experience of God.
Re "spiritual experience:" Spirituality != poetic coincidence.
Several years ago, I went out at 4 am with my girlfriend, whose mother had been ill for months, to watch a meteor shower . At the time we lived in an area with low ambient light, and there was no moon, so the display was terrific. By 5 am, we were chilled and ready to go back inside. As we turned to go in, there was a final spectacular burst of meteor trails. My girlfriend said, "Those are the angels welcoming my mother into Heaven."
Later that morning we got a call from the hospice 1500 miles away where her mother had been staying for the past few months, telling us her mother had indeed passed away. Time of death - 5 am.
No, I don't believe in angels appearing as meteor trails welcoming departed souls to Heaven. But the time coincidence and what the meteor display inspired my girlfriend to say lend poetry to the memory of that moment.
I'd like to join the raging controversy over the nature of the kukri. First off, there's a difference between the standard kukri and the 'giant kukri' used to behead large animals. The latter is nearly a meter long and weighs about 2 kg. This is one huge weapon; it cannot be wielded with one hand and is only effective in a mighty downward cut -- at which it is very effective!
The standard kukri is only about 20 to 30 cm long and is a general-purpose soldier's tool. It's an effective weapon but also very useful for chopping wood, cutting up food, even digging. The Ghurkas in the British Army in Italy in WWII preferred to shoulder their rifles and charge with kukris in hand, and the tactic was very effective both psychologically (it really scared the fecal material out of the Germans) and functionally (in hand-to-hand fighting a rifle with a bayonet really isn't that useful).
The kukri is unique in edged weapon design in that it is what I will call an "asymmetric leaf-bladed" design. The closest design to it is an ancient Spanish sword, probably based on a Carthaginian design. The shape must be precisely worked out, because the goal is to get the center of percussion very close to the most forward part of the leading edge. (The center of percussion is what's called the "sweet spot" in a bat or tennis racket. When the impact is on the center of percussion, you get maximum transfer of energy into the impact.)
The kukri is a cutting weapon, not a thrusting weapon. You can't stab anybody with a kukri, but you can slice them up pretty easily. Its big advantage is its compact size relative to its cutting power; its other advantage is that it doesn't require much skill to use. However, it's not a swordfighting weapon. A trained swordsman with a conventional sword could easily defeat anybody armed with a kukri.
So there you have it -- more about kukris than you ever cared to know. At last I have had something to contribute to the discussion!
I must admit I would answer a definate "no" to the first question for myself but in my job as a researcher/lecturer in the field of "health and life sciences" and as a therapist I have to use that word fairly frequently. It irks me somewhat but I just can't come up with a better or more meaningful substitute when I need to understand or relate to other people's experience. For example if I'm wanting to understand the sort of factors that make a difference to older people's quality of life I have to recognise that "Spiritual" beliefs and values are an important one - not for all, but certainly for many, and if I was to just subsume it into a "sense of awe and wonder at the universe" or "ephemeral psychological epiphenomena" I think for many people it would not be interpreted correctly even though I see it as no more than that myself. So I suppose perhaps, at least in the social sciences we're kindof stuck with it, at least until humanity grows out of it.
Of course I'm open to suggestions of alternative strategies I could use :)
"Spirituality" to me means the inherently subjective inherently nonscientific inherently unprovable inherently noncommunicable numinous experience. If you've had such an experience, it doesn't matter what others say or do, you know that you had the experience. It may change your life; it may change society if you're sufficiently influential.
There's nothing prohibiting scientists from having a numinous experience, although discussion of it can cause the aforementioned eye-rolling. I see no harm in having a venue for scientists to give their anecdotal reports of such experiences. Usually, scientists tell me such things after several drinks. Few do so in large scientific fora. One exception is Nobel laureate in Physics Brian Josephson. As a result of this, and related things, he was had a named chair at Cambridge University, but was not allowed to have postdocs, for fear that he would corrupt them into ESP or TM or the like. I've actually been to conferences where his paper was rejected, but he was allowed to give a poster session. There is a risk for such discussions.
Hypothetically, PZ, what do you suspect you'd do if you were mountain climbing and had the numinous experience of someone claiming to be God speaking to you from a burning bush? Not saying it's possible, but what if?
Thank you again for looking at my draft paper on channel capacity of evolution by natural selection. That, at least, is an attempt at doing science.
I don't have a blog... it's not laziness; I just don't like the feeling of shouting in an empty room. So first I'll answer the questions without reading the comment thread, to get the best answers possible.
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person? No. If I had been, it would have been much easier to get along in church when I was growing up, and in college when all my friends were into New Age mysticism. However, I seem to have more patience than usual with people who honestly believe in supernatural occurrences. I imagine sometimes, in a fairy-tale-telling way but quite without belief, that such things are true. Imagination is the fountainhead of creativity. If a reality-based "magic" is ever engineered, I might be one of the first people to step forward and try it.
2.) We hear time and time again of the disputes between the scientific and religious communities, what is your response to the phenomenon of scientists exploring their own spirituality? So long as they do so in a scientific and realistic fashion, I don't see why not. The only thing I can see wrong with it is that it's generally a waste of time to go over the same disproven ground time and again.
3.) Dr. Charles T. Tart established an online journal dedicated to scientists who wish to share their own personal transcendent experiences in confidence, known as TASTE. Many feel that they would be shunned by the scientific community if they shared their experiences with their colleagues, are you surprised by this? It doesn't exactly strike me as a journal that is strong on scientific rigor. I would say with confidence that those contributors who aren't simply attention-hogging liars have failed to adequately examine and insist on evidence for their so-called "experiences."
4.) Do you feel that a scientist can be spiritual? Why is this? A scientist can be any damned thing, including delusional. But science itself can't be spiritual, because as soon as something formerly regarded as spiritual is explained scientifically, it is show to be of the natural world.
5.) What do you say to some scientists who claim that a strong sense of spirituality and morality are essential in your line of work? I think they're getting them confused with, respectively, imagination and professional integrity.
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the scientific community, when one considers the current religious climate in the U.S? Oh, hell, yes.
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it? Science frequently attempts to explain phenomena that cannot be explained by current explanations. I was under the impression that was the way science works. Furthermore, not being gifted with scientific omniscience, I have frequently had experiences I couldn't scientifically explain, from why aspirin works better than Tylenol when I have a toothache, to why bread browns on the top when it bakes. But doctors and chemists probably have pretty good ideas about those things.
Vyoma said "After looking at Byron Katie's "four questions," all I can say is that what she's offering is another New Age self-help course that boils down to the simple proposition that one should be honest with oneself. She makes the whole thing sounds much more complicated, of course, but she's not saying much more than what Shakespeare was able to say much more succinctly: "To thine own self be true." One can "kill off belief" (i.e., be honest with oneself) by examining the data, of course, which is all she's suggesting. It's sad that people need to buy a book telling them how to be honest with themselves... but none of this is anything scientific. It's freshman-year psychology, really, and so is targeted to an audience that simply hasn't thought of the simple proposition of being honest with themselves on their own."
My post in its simplest essence is Science is objective, Spirituality is subjective. They look at the same phenomena with the same apparatus but in opposite directions.
Reality is external. God is internal. They are the same thing, and we need the words to indicate what we are talking about.
Katie has an anecdote of a cancer patient expected to die in a few weeks.
"The truth is that until we love cancer, we can't love God. It doesn't matter what symbols we use-poverty, loneliness, loss-it's the concepts of good and bad that we attach to them that make us suffer. I was sitting once with a friend who had a huge tumor, and the doctors had given her just a few weeks to live. As I was leaving her bedside, she said, "I love you," and I said, "No, you don't. You can't love me until you love your tumor. Every concept that you put onto that tumor you'll eventually put onto me. The first time I don't give you what you want or threaten what you believe, you'll put that concept onto me." This might sound harsh, but my friend had asked me to always tell her the truth. The tears in her eyes were tears of gratitude, she said."
Katie is not saying we should love cancer and propagate it. She is saying it exists and we should accept it. Don't argue with it. Strive to cure it? You bet... Allow ourselves to be made miserable? Not on your life!
The point is spirituality is concerned with our inner reality. It needs it's own terms and words. Science has no role to play here. There is no conflict for me between a devout spiritual life and a total love for science.
So if someone experiences something that they take as evidence of a supernatural reality, you're not just going to challenge their conclusion (as you should) but claim that they never had the experience? WTF? Did I read that right?
I like to quote Jesus Christ on this issue: "Render unto Caesar" etc. The real world and the spiritual world are completely separate and it's futile to let one intrude upon the other. I myself am atheistic, but if somebody else wants to believe in fairies, devils, or gods, that's entirely their business and I have no complaint so long as they don't push their beliefs on me, directly or indirectly. I see spiritual preference as of essentially the same character as gustatory preference. I cannot for the life of me understand how ANYBODY could like coconut, but so long as they keep their coconut out of my food, I don't much care. Let them eat coconut pie, barbecued coconut, basted coconut, coconut flambe', whatever they want. Just leave me alone with my toffee.
And to back that up, he has provided very little in the way of evidence.
Note, too, that even if the "God gene" was largely responsible for spirituality--and Hamer doesn't actually make that claim--50 percent of us don't have it. So at most, evolution has seen fit to hardwire some of us for spirituality, and not others.
You're probably thinking of VS Ramachandran, who found that a certain hyperactive group of neurons in temporal epileptics' brains was associated with that feeling of oneness, and with finding immense signifance in religious inconography.
You can find his talk about it at Beyond Belief on YouTube.
Well impatientpatient, you may disagree with me, but I think you are incorrectly interpretting what I said. I didn't mean that Woo works in the sense than 5% of people who see a witch doctor *actually* have their cancer magically removed, which seems to be what you seem to be implying by your complaint about my statement. Now, I don't think this is actually what you think I meant, but your complaint of my statements doesn't make any damn sense outside such a silly context.
Out of my own personal experience, my grandmother never used pain killers when going to a doctor. It wasn't that she *couldn't* feel any pain, its just that she could mentally block it. Even at 80+ years of age she had her entire leg sewn up, do to a nasty gash she got, *without* the use of anything to kill the pain. Yes, the mechanisms for this are not entirely understood, the theories that exist tend to be incomplete and some, wrongly, take gibberish from accupuncture and try to make it real, by talking about gates and pathways for pain. Since accupuncture is provably bunk, this is quite silly, but its not *entirely* impossible that some limited system exists that just happens to coincidentally work vaguely like the complete bunk. The phenomena is real, even if the totality of the explaination(s) is flawed. This is how Woo is able to work. The specifics of how it effects the patients psychology is incomplete, how that actually effects everything from tissue regeneration to pain is currently a bit vague and prone to more of the wacky ideas than solid hypothesis, and even what it means in any single case is only vaguely statistically predictable, if anyone *had* statistics to make an analysis (I presume this because almost any behaviour can be predicted with varying levels of precisions, if you have enough data on the beliefs, behaviours and psychology of a group), however, its still a real phenomena.
From a practical standpoint this means you might be able to make "some" predictions and get a *slight* benefit of a large percentage of people. By comparison, the medical establishments normal method of dealing with things is to either say almost nothing, make long lists of things the problem "could" be, or even more common, under-emphasize the dangers and problems, each of which are way to easilly interpretted *wrongly*, the overall detriment of the patients. At worst, the common practice of being over enthusiastic about curing them can eventually lead to distrust, if its done often enough and fails often enough, which would invariably produce the *opposite* of the intended result.
Its a complicated issue, made even more complicated by the prevalence of people looking for Woo Woo solutions, while ignoring the **real** physical and psychological effects taking place, and *not* looking for the real causes and effects of the phenomena. Basically, used right, it *could* greatly improve medicine. But nealy everyone involved in figuring it out has some Woo explanation, which fails to provide any valid data on how to apply it in anything close to a universal way.
So, I don't think you are really disagreeing with me, other than maybe by claiming that there is no point at all in figuring it out, which imho is just stupid. Now, letting the clowns that are currently inventing lots of silly programs to try to use it, without figuring it out, that I agree *is* pointless.
Excellent post.
I realize I'm coming into this a bit late in the day, but I posted a response to this on my blog.
Purely in the interest of accuracy, Hal Puthoff's cohort at SRI was Russel Targ. Charles Tart is an equally unreliable parapsychologist who worked at the University of California at Davis. Tart did get involved in some of the Targ/Puthoff tests, and was responsible for making the T/P test which appeared in Nature even more unreliable (and yet, a success, surprise surprise).
Just in case anyone was getting their charlatans and bullshit artists mixed up.
I've had several transcendental experiences of holistic oneness with the cosmos, but since they have tended to occur in conjunction wth indulgence in psychedelic drugs, I am certainly not going to argue with a belligerent athiest about them. Nor do I have any interest in pestering my local school board or political representatives about the subject. I am sure there are many discoveries science has yet to make that could have some bearing on the currently inexplicable aspects of consciousness, and until that time I will simply enjoy the enrichment of my life by a sense of the transcendent, even if it does offend PZ's sensibilities. We can't all be four-star materialists. No offense, PZ.
1.) Would you consider yourself a spiritual person?
Yes, in the sense of "connection to something greater than oneself". Intellectually, since science methods are antithesis to solipsism. Emotionally, due to the awe of nature, the feeling of being a natural part of nature, and the ability to understand to understand nature.
But there is no spirit soul here, and the merely sensual part is not formally part of spirituality. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirituality ) It is just that some of this is indistinguishable.
6.) Do you think that this phenomenon could pose a threat to the scientific community, when one considers the current religious climate in the U.S?
Yes, the spirit mindset and its perpetuation are antithesis to science methods.
7.) Finally, have you ever had an experience that you could not scientifically explain? If so, what was it?
Yes, in the sense that I have made many failed experiments - it's how we learn how to make them work. Also, I don't have verified explanations for all the detail in everyday experiences.
No, in the sense that in a more coarse-grained view I can explain both these failures of detailed explanation.
I would go so far as to say that you have no evidence.
Btw, one nice explanation for left-right asymmetry, mostly but not unequivocally supported by the fine- and coarsegrained anatomical differences, is that the denser, more widely connected and more myelinated left hemisphere is simply specialized on the parts of events that contains high frequency spatial information, while the right hemisphere is specialized on the low frequency information. (DFF theory.)
Interestingly, the computationally based DFF theory seems to be the only theory that makes predictions instead of being descriptive - and they are confirmed! ( http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/01/post_7.php ; http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/01/asymmetric_archi… ; http://scienceblogs.com/developingintelligence/2007/01/hemispheric_asym… .)
But no one has observed a spirit setting up house there.
I should note on my comment on DFF theory that it doesn't mean parts of the hemispheres has other specializations - apparently we have differences in gene expression down to small clusters, neurons, and parts of neurons. But it may guide the placement of the some of these.
How is "uniqueness" not a word? I've often seen it used, e. g. in scientific articles. Google finds it seventeen and a half million times.
Now Sugarbear:
I don't understand. Please explain.
I have that sense of being connected to the nematodes and ginkgos. But it's evolutionary biology that has given it to me: I'm more closely related to the nematodes than to the ginkgos -- literally: sharing ancestors, real living beings that lived a guesstimated billion years ago, with the nematodes but not the ginkgos --, and more closely to the ginkgos than to the quadrillion bacteria in my gut (that's a thousand times as many cells as my own, BTW). Nothing remotely supernatural is involved; to the contrary. If I were standing at the edge of the Grand Canyon, I'd be just as impressed as everyone else, but I'd marvel at time, water, sedimentation, erosion, and the like, not at anything supernatural. Truth is after all stranger than fiction!
Now please explain "meaning", "sense", and "place". I don't get what you mean by these words and don't want to attack a strawman.
Interesting. I take it that you feel native links are an annoyance due to the format. For me, they are not, they are just links.
Though in well formatted posts they may need reformatting, and I admit that it's a certain amount of laziness when choosing not to do so in comments.
tinyurl inconveniently hides the format and address of the source in sanely formatted links; I won't be friends with that. Instead, and with less effort, I can use html to make those links like this, which still can show source info when pointing with the mouse.
I will probably try to do so now, if it makes comments more readable. Thanks for the comment!