What does it mean to be spiritual?

[Edvard Munch]

Human beings are inertly meaning seeking beings. The idea of coincidences ("There are no coincidences" some people implore), connection of ideas can be explored pretty well in neuroethological (a science so new, BL doesn't even consider it a real word) means. NPR makes a great introduction into the science and can indeed get to Neurological-deterministic places that answer questions.


Once again, Science, not philosophy, to the rescue. All this jargon between Catholicism/Judaism/Confucianism/etc. are mere shadows from a flame in the cave we dwell within our minds.

 

[Edvard Munch]

NPR are also Communists.

 

[MyDoorsAreOpen]

Edvard, I looked at that site, and I find your summary of it a little one-sided.

Andrew Newburg, the neuroscientist who's pioneered all those studies imaging the brains of spiritual practitioners, is an agnostic, and has said nowhere that he's supportive of a purely physicalist account of all human experience. In fact, he's careful not to read too much into his and similar studies, and is adamant that all that's proven is that distinctive mental activities leave distinctive patterns on brain imaging.

Now, many physicalists do quote Newburg and D'Aquili, and one could argue that they leave the physicalist implications of their research unspoken because they're just so obvious to those who want to see them, and not worth arguing to those who don't want to see them. I'll be the perennial idealist who says they're just being good scientists, who are parsimonious with their interpretations of their work, and disavow a philosophical agenda or big-picture conjecturing.

 

[Edvard Munch]

Edvard, I looked at that site, and I find your summary of it a little one-sided.

Andrew Newburg, the neuroscientist who's pioneered all those studies imaging the brains of spiritual practitioners, is an agnostic, and has said nowhere that he's supportive of a purely physicalist account of all human experience. In fact, he's careful not to read too much into his and similar studies, and is adamant that all that's proven is that distinctive mental activities leave distinctive patterns on brain imaging.

Now, many physicalists do quote Newburg and D'Aquili, and one could argue that they leave the physicalist implications of their research unspoken because they're just so obvious to those who want to see them, and not worth arguing to those who don't want to see them. I'll be the perennial idealist who says they're just being good scientists, who are parsimonious with their interpretations of their work, and disavow a philosophical agenda or big-picture conjecturing.

Science as a practice does not disallow elements that are ethereal, or that are unknown and un-testable. Andrew Newburg is an agnostic as our understandings of science. No where is neuroethology making the assumption that spirituality, it's beliefs or its believers are entirely within the physical realm of the brain. It is merely corollaries and causations and nothing more. It's a great leap in thought, however, in trying to explain things in non-physical terms when something can't be explain merely because we are not smart enough or done our research. Other-wise, we are beginning to have a very good understanding of why humans lend themselves towards being spiritual. It's another subject that we cannot touch that is of ethereal physics of whom these spiritual believers place emphasis.