We will be convening here at the ZigZag café, Suisse, on Thursdays for conversation and dialogue. I invite you to stop by every Thursday for the question of the day. Your thoughts and participation are most welcome. Pull up a stool, avec un café, un thé, ou un chocolat chaud, et un croissant, and join in here on Thursday at the ZZ café.
For today:
Neuroscience is starting to show that religious belief may be a natural part of who we are. What do you think?
6 comments:
PO said: I am fascinated and thrilled by what science can teach us concerning our behaviour, our physiological, psychological and subliminal layers ... It's important insights into the created. Concerning your question: At times, science seems to support our interpretations. Other times, it seems less so. In both instances, I find it important to let nature speak as an informer. (The Bible encourages that in Psalm 19). Off course bearing in mind, that science is theories in progress. Still, so often in history, has interpretation been moved by new discoveries. Often, disclosing diluted theology. Galileo is a good example.
Charlie said:Epistemologically that would make complete sense...if God created us, God would also have to wire us to believe...and through belief would come more knowledge. The worrisome part is the wide array of scientific interpretation on the matter, as well as the possibility of what else the various regions of the brain are doing in the same places that they are finding may relate to relgious belief. For instance, if the area of the brain is excited in moments of deep awe or contemplation, Christians say of course that is God hard wiring us for belief...but isn't it just as easy for some scientists, naysayers and atheists to say that those areas of awe and contemplation are actually part of the deeper layers of some sort of self-defense mechanism left over from our early ancestors? But of course...it is basically impossible to follow the evolution of the internal workings of the brain, we can only surmise the internal by what we have found as outworkings in human culture, which doesn't leave us too much room. All in all though...it is exctiing to see the work progressing as it can!
PO, Thanks. Yes, that's a good way of putting it. Being open to the natural world informer today is an essential part of having credibility. Dialogue is crucial. Neuroscience can show us we have a direction, but it cannot tell us which one is any better than the other. For that we need another informer.
30 minutes ago · Like
PO said: Yes, that's important. Nature is an informer, but cannot tell me off Christ path to the cross, the job done there and what there is to follow. The Bible has the higher authority.
Charlie, Thanks. Good thoughts. Yes, it is just as easy and many are doing what you suggest. It seems to me that being hard wired for belief may be embedded, but what to believe is still open to possibilities. Maybe it's similar to trust and desire. The diffusion of each is already there in us, yet what expressed can be constructive or destructive. To believe, desire, trust, is not a choice, but who and what to believe, desire, trust is.
PO, Sometimes nature will be the primary story and other times the biblical informer will be. For me, it depends on what's being talked about. If it's cells, DNA, molecules - nature - if salvation and transformation - Bible - and then of course these two will have to enter into dialogue about the implications of their various areas of informing for the other informer.
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