Science vs Religion - All in the brain? New study...
by faithnomore 8 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
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Skedaddle
They're pitching science vs religion. I don't disagree with the articles, it makes sense but it doesn't have anything ultimately to do with God vs no God does it? If we think in a balanced way we should be using both sides of the brain to come to conclusions. So far, science cannot say God does not exist and religion can't prove God does exist. Only the individual can say he/she knows or doesn't know. Determining what side of the brain someones using to make that claim they know or do not know is telling. My ears always perk up when I hear anyone debating God from both sides - there's the endless rabbit hole!
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faithnomore
I think its basically saying that believing in a god/religion is using one hemisphere of the brain which then suppresses cognitive thinking and vice versa. I think its super interesting because I think back to when I was a jw believer and there was nothing you could say that would make me believe there is no god (which I tie directly to religion) so I feel like my cognitive thinking was for sure suppressed. -
Landy
I'll think you'll find thst most of our thoughts, ideas and beliefs are in our brain. -
prologos
In the struggle to produce better, implements, food, housing, the observer is forced to look at the immensity of the existing cosmos, it comes naturally to think (function of the brain ) that a more powerful being was doing THAT work. -
elbib
It’s all has to do with each one’s thinking. Among scientists, there are those who believe in God; and among religionists there are some whose actions show that they do not believe in the existence of a God, but use the religions as a means to their greedy ends.
“My experiences with science led me to God. They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But must we really light a candle to see the sun? … Science does not have a moral dimension. It is like a knife. If you give it to a surgeon or a murderer, each will use it differently. “
— Wernher von Braun
In letter to California State board of Education (14 Sep 1972).
Quoted in Bob Seidensticker, Future Hype: The Myths of Technology Change (2006), 11. Contact Webmaster if you know the primary
http://todayinsci.com/B/Braun_Wernher/BraunWernher-Quotations.htm
Other scientists too such as Charles Thaxton, Walter Bradley, Roger Olson, Dean Kenyon, Fred Hoyle ... have made similar statements.
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faithnomore
@elbib what I find so interesting about this new study though is that having a religious belief actually suppresses cognitive thinking and believing in science supresses morals much like your quote of von Braun "science does not have a moral dimension".
So my question is can one help it if their brain actually shuts down cognitive thinking? It appears from this one study that our brain can't marry the two because each of the the thoughts (science/religion) are from two different hemispheres of the brain and using one shuts down the other. Any way I just found that interesting and would love to have more info.
Perhaps this is what helps me not be so mad at myself for being hoodwinked:) for me to say I couldn't help it because my brain shut down all reasoning when I was a true believer:). It took months of fading before I started realizing that maybe what I was taught wasn't right. Almost like I had to be removed from the congregation for some time before my cognitive thinking kicked in.
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elbib
faithnomore,
Life cannot be known by analysis. Scientific knowledge is achieved through analysis. Religion is quite the opposite; it believes not in division and analysis, but in synthesis. Religion goes on adding, totalling. When everything is totalled -nothing remains outside; and this whole, taken as a whole, is looked at - the divine appears. That's why science can not say there is a God because the very process of scientific analysis can't lead to the total but leads to the part, the minutest part -never to the whole -because it depends on division.
Science can not come to any divineness in the universe, in existence, because divineness is like a perfume that comes out of the whole. It is not mathematical; it is organic. It is not mechanical; it is alive. You can divide me into parts; then put back all those parts, but I will not be found there. You have put everything again in its place; but I am not a mechanical device, I am not just parts accumulated and arranged.
Something more is there, more than all the parts - that something is lost. Logic is analysis, love is synthesis. Analysis can know the material, never the spiritual. That's why religion has always been illogical, and science sees only the trees (not the forest).
Hence neither science nor religion can be a help in the case of God.
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BluesBrother
Both Atheists and believers say that the other side have suppressed their cognitive thinking and that logical reasoning supports their own view.