05 June 2005

Religion is not about God

I may keep my eyes open for this book. I think it is important that we keep an eye on what psychological and cognitive studies are doing especially as they are increasingly throwing insightful vistas open on religious and spiritual experience. I don't think this is threatening, if there is something true about expeience of God then we should expect that it will be mediated to our awareness through psycho-somatic means; has to be. "Prayer taps into the cognitive processes of trance and relaxation. Meditation opens the gates of joy, transcendence and ego-dissolution. God understands human psychology better than we do. It is a true service that Rue performs in carefully studying the eyes that God gave us to see the beauties that he also bequeathed us. But there are always also going to be views like these " ...On the one hand, there’s the psychological bounty of religious life — religious people are happier, social scientists now say. On the other hand as Rue implies, maybe religion is but a Machiavellian parasite on the flesh of the mind."
The stubborn refusal of reality to pronounce deinitively on the truth or falsity of God persists, it goes all the way down, it appears.
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