At the conclusion of Elaine Pagels’ lecture on the Book of Revelation, the first question someone asked her was why does religion persist? Pagels answered: “I think because this is about emotion. This isn’t conceptual. People who talk about it as if it matters whether you believe in God or not, have got [...]
Tags:attachment·Elaine Pagels·emotions·fear·Future of An Illusion·Revelation·Robert Fuller·separation anxiety·Sigmund Freud·Spirituality in the Flesh
We have an extraordinary person living amongst us; she goes by the initials SM and suffers from a rare condition that has severely damaged her amygdala. She has been working with a group of neuroscientists who have just published a fascinating paper on her fear responses, or lack thereof.
The amygdala is an evolutionarily ancient brain [...]
Tags:amygdala·Antonio Damasio·brain·brain damage·Current Biology·damnation·Daniel Tranel·demons·devils·emotions·fear·fear response·Justin Feinstein·Ralph Adolphs·retribution·SM
As Charles Choi reports, archaeologist Brian Hayden suggests that the Neolithic domestication of cereals may have been driven by the ritual desire for proto-Budweiser:
[His] argument is that Stone Age farmers were domesticating cereals not so much to fill their stomachs but to lighten their heads, by turning the grains into beer. That has been their [...]
Tags:alcohol·altered states of consciousness·beer·Brian Hayden·cereal grains·Charles Choi·ecstasy·emotions·neolithic·ritual·saints·shamans·Sorcerers
There are some scholars — such as James McLenon and Stephen Sanderson, who contend that shamanic techniques of healing played in an important role in the evolution of religion. I tend to agree and discussed the issue in “Judge Not and Be Persuaded (or Healed):
“Essential to McClenon’s argument is that the people being treated by [...]
Tags:Antonio Damasio·Christian Science·emotions·healing·health·hypnosis·Jaak Panksepp·James McLenon·placebo effect·placebos·shamanic healing·shamans·Stephen Sanderson·suggestion·Tor Wager
Over at HuffPo Religion, Kate Fridkis ponders the protean term “spirituality” and reasonably wonders what it means. It is pretty common these days to hear someone say they are not religious but instead are “spiritual.” When asked what they mean by this, the response often involves some combination of the following words: peace, harmony, bliss, [...]
Tags:absolute unitary being·Andrew Newberg·biology of belief·cognition·connection·cosmic consciousness·David Lewis-Williams·Dean Hamer·emotions·Eugene d'Aquili·feelings·Kate Fridkis·meditation·mystery·self dissolution·self transcendence·spiritual·spirituality·The God Gene·Why God Won't Go Away
I must admit that when I saw the title of this article over at LiveScience, I was a bit skeptical and prematurely concluded the contents would be goofy. The picture in my head was something like this: “scientists show fetuses ultrasonic images of spiders and then image their brain activity using fMRI — the amygdala [...]
Though not the first to note that emotions and religion are inextricably linked, Sigmund Freud forcefully argued that religious belief is grounded in emotional or affective dysfunction. The Future of an Illusion remains a classic work in this vein. Freud’s ideas, unfortunately, carry with them a normative (and non-empirical) taint which makes them less persuasive [...]
Tags:emotions·Robert Fuller·Sigmund Freud·Spirituality in the Flesh
