Quote:
Originally Posted by levite
Religion will never be proven by logic and science because it is not about logic and science: it is about faith and hope and morality and ethics and spirituality and community and so forth-- stuff that has nothing to do with logic and science.
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You know, something occurred to me as I read that. I've always felt the same way--that religion and science ought to stay in their own sandboxes and everything would be all right.
Thing is, I've been reading a lot of neuroscience lately. All those phenomena you list there are being picked apart, modeled, and in some cases replicated from a neuroscientific perspective. There's even an area of the brain that, when electrically stimulated, reliably produces religious epiphanies.
I read that sort of thing, and I can begin to fathom the panic that must be lurking behind the fundamentalist rejection of science. It must feel like they're standing on a fast-eroding rock in the middle of the rushing rapids, and if they just shout loud enough about how solid the ground is they're standing on, then everything will be okay.