From: Kenneth Van Oost (kennethvanoost@belgacom.net)
Date: Sun 15 Jan 2006 - 16:24:46 GMT
----- Original Message -----
From: Derek Gatherer <d.gatherer@vir.gla.ac.uk>
To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, January 10, 2006 2:42 PM
Subject: Re: Dawkins on Channel 4 tonight
> I was a bit disappointed there wasn't more explicit memetical
> content, but then at the end he said that the "viral" stuff will come
> in the second episode. As far as the first episode went, he made his
> usual arguments:
>
> a) Religion varies from benignly bizarre to frighteningly dangerous.
> b) It is non-rational (which is bad)
> c) Science is rational (which is good)
> d) You can't be both religious and a scientist, because it requires
> you to be both rational and irrational at the same time
Derek,
Is this of any interest !?
<< Neuroscientists do engage themselves in more than the search for
what is good and bad_ they search also for the very bias of religion.
One of those scientists is Norman Geschwind.
He says that temporal-lobe-epilepsis plays a part.
Vincent van Gogh could be one of those who had this. Van Goghs
madness is well documentated.
Was is less more known are his days of extreme religiosiousness.
" Van Gogh had any symptom of what is known as the Geschwind-
syndrom ", writes Mike Gazzaniga in his book The Ethical Brain.
" During epileptic attacks people can hear abnormal sounds, can get
visions, smell scents and can get tactial sensations. Sometimes these
features are there when they don 't have an attack. One of the symptoms
is the tendency to be extreme religious, sometimes it leads to more than
one religious convertion. As a young man, van Gogh predicted the
protestant belief, he punished himself by not eating one bit. He had
also mystic visions, even one of the ' resurrected Christ '.
So is religion than still a disease, a malfunction in the brain !?
And was, for that matter, Christ himself a patient !?
Though, religion, like Socrated realized, is a source of moral knowledge
because religious leaders know which moral laws God wants is a bad
answer.
Says God that something is good because it is just that, Good, or is
something good because God says it is !? If it was the last, God laws
would be very arbitrary.
Regards,
Kenneth
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