Re: [asa] Sam Harris: Your Brain on Faith

I do not think that this is a valid conclusion. What Harris showed is
that objective and subjective beliefs are very hard to distinguish in
the brain.

See the full text of the research at
http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/fulltext/117858891/HTMLSTART?CRETRY=1&SRETRY=0

On Dec 17, 2007 8:08 PM, Christine Smith <christine_mb_smith@yahoo.com> wrote:
> Yes, I read this earlier today. I find it highly
> amusing that an Atheist concluded on the basis of a
> scientific analysis that "faith is essentially the
> same as other kinds of knowing or thinking." Doesn't
> this support our claim that faith is just as
> *trustworthy* a means of coming to understand
> "reality" as the means by which we "know" that 2 + 2 =
> 4? I highly doubt that because our belief in 2 + 2 = 4
> is an "operation of the brain" that he would suggest
> disavowing such knowledge. So why the double standard
> for religious "beliefs"? Perhaps all he was going for
> was to attack dualism? But in the process, I think he
> helped theism...
>
> Would anyone else agree with this assessment?
>
> In Christ,
> Christine
>
> --- John Walley <john_walley@yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> > This is a very interesting article on the front page
> > of CNN today.
> >
> >
> >
> > John
> >
> >
> >
> > What Your Brain Looks Like on Faith
> >
> > Friday, Dec. 14, 2007 By <javascript:void(0)> DAVID
> > VAN BIEMA
> >
> > Brain scan
>
> >
> > A scan of a brain.
> >
> > Owen Franken / Corbis
> >
> >
> >
> > Sam Harris is best known for his barn-burning 2004
> > attack on religion, The
> > End of Faith, which spent 33 weeks on the New York
> > Times best-seller List.
> > The book's sequel, Letter to a Christian Nation also
> > came out in editions
> > totalling hundreds of thousands. Last Monday,
> > however, the combative
> > Californian produced a shorter (seven pages) and
> > seemingly calmer
> > publication that will be a hit if it reaches 10,000
> > readers: "Functional
> > Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief and Uncertainty."
> > It appears in the
> > respected journal Annals of Neurology. And Harris,
> > 40, claims it has little
> > if any connection to his popular two books.
> > Believers, however, may draw
> > their own conclusions - and may want to read his
> > subsequent neurological
> > studies even more carefully.
> >
> >
> >
> > The current paper recovers Harris's identity as a
> > doctoral candidate in
> > neurology at UCLA, his occupation before he
> > commenced what he calls his
> > "extramural affair jumping into trenches in the
> > culture wars." It is an
> > addition to the growing field of brain scan trials,
> > and Harris thinks it may
> > be the first to detail how the brain processes
> > belief. At first read, it
> > seems less dangerous to Christianity than to another
> > cherished pillar of
> > Western thought - that "objective" beliefs like "2 +
> > 2 = 4" and "subjective"
> > beliefs like "torture is bad" belong to entirely
> > separate categories of
> > thought.
> >
> >
> >
> > Harris and two co-authors ran 360 statements by 14
> > adult subject whose brain
> > activities were then scanned by functional magnetic
> > resonance imaging (fMRI)
> > devices. It suggests that within the brain pan, at
> > least, the distinction
> > between objective and subjective is not so
> > clear-cut. Although more complex
> > assertions may get analyzed in so-called "higher"
> > areas of the brain, all
> > seem to get their final stamp of "belief" or
> > disbelief in "primitive"
> > locales traditionally associated with emotions or
> > taste and odor. Even "2 +
> > 2 = 4," on some level, is a question of taste. Thus,
> > the statement "that
> > just doesn't smell right to me" may be more literal
> > than we thought.
> >
> >
> >
> > Harris tested how the brain responded to assertions
> > in seven categories:
> > mathematical, geographic, semantic, factual,
> > autobiographical, ethical and
> > religious. All seven provided some useful data, but
> > only the ones relating
> > to math and ethics produced results clear enough to
> > give a vivid picture of
> > the way the simple and the complex, the subjective
> > and the objective
> > intertwine. Regardless of their content, statements
> > that the subjects
> > believed lit up the ventral medial prefrontal cortex
> > (VMPC), a location in
> > the brain best known for processing reward, emotion
> > and taste. Equally
> > "primitive" areas associated with taste, pain
> > perception and disgust
> > determined disbelief. "False propositions may
> > actually disgust us," Harris
> > writes.
> >
> > Is there a practical application here? He speculates
> > that if belief brain
> > scanning were sufficiently refined it could act as
> > an accurate lie detector
> > and help control for the placebo effect in drug
> > design.
> >
> >
> >
> > Harris says there is no critique of faith hidden
> > somewhere in his brief
> > paper. But his next neurological enterprise may be
> > another matter. He is
> > planning an fMRI run that will concentrate
> > specifically on religious faith,
> > which Harris thinks he now knows how to plumb more
> > deeply. He also plans to
> > set up two different subject groups - the faithful
> > and non-believers. "That
> > way," among other things, he says, "you can ask, 'Do
> > believers believe that
> > Jesus was born of a virgin the same way that
> > nonbelievers believe that
> > Chevrolet makes cars and trucks?'" It may turn out
> > that the brain treats
> > religious faith as its own special category of
> > belief unlike ethics and
> > math.
> >
> >
> >
> > But that is not what Harris expects to find. He
> > suspects the machines will
> > show that "belief is belief is belief." And that
> > conclusion, he admits, may
> > put him at loggerheads with familiar foes. No one,
> > he says, could accuse him
> > or anyone else of trying to disprove God's existence
> > on the basis of an
> > fMRI. But faith is more vulnerable. "People who feel
> > that religious faith is
> > a singular operation of the brain - if they admit
> > that it's an operation of
> > the brain at all - would object to what I'm doing,
> > since it may show that
> > faith is essentially the same as other kinds of
> > knowing or thinking. The
> > whole thing will seem fishy to anyone who thinks we
> > have immaterial souls
> > running around in our bodies."
> >
> >
> >
> > Which, of course, a lot of people do. And despite
> > the fact that, as Harris
> > puts it, his current literary mode "is not beach
> > reading," they may find
> > that they are keeping up with his academic writings
> > more avidly - and
> > nervously - than they do his bestsellers.
> >
> >
> >
> >
>

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Received on Tue Dec 18 01:46:36 2007