From: "Santosh Helekar" <[email protected]>
Let me state once again why Fr. Ivo's posts in this thread are compounding
the ignorance of Goanetters regarding neuroscience, and making them more
scientifically illiterate.
***Dr.Santosh is betraying his own illiteracy with this post.
Fr. Ivo does not understand that science has nothing to do with the
supernatural concepts of Christianity or any other religion. He keeps
trying to mix his religion with science, and misinforms readers in the
process. This is also true of his latest attempt at describing what is
written in some book that he has read. He seems to believe that what is
written in that book are scientific facts. This is a false belief.
***This is not to mix Science with Religion. Religion has a scientific basis
in universe and human being. This is what Dr.Santosh will not be able to
understand...
The book "Spiritual Brain" written by a neuroscientist called Mario
Beauregard and a journalist called Denyse O'Leary is not a scientific
book. It is a book about the religious and philosophical beliefs of the
neuroscientist Mario Beauregard. Anybody can write such a book, and get it
published, because it does not have to go through a rigorous scientific
peer review process. The fact that Beauregard happens to be a
neuroscientist is incidental. His religious beliefs have no more
credibility than those of anybody else.
***Totally wrong. This book is not "religious" or "philosophical". It is
scientific. It is based on neuroscientific experiments. I can challenge
Dr.Santosh on this point.
As I have said before, Beauregard has published two short peer-reviewed
scientific papers wherein he has merely recorded the activity of the brain
during mystical experiences in Carmelite nuns. That is all. These
recordings do not justify a belief or non-belief in supernatural entities
such as God or soul. They do not compel anybody, let alone a
neuroscientist, to believe anything about materialism or spiritualism.
Despite this, in their book Beauregard and O'Leary make wild unscientific
speculations about the former's supernatural religious and philosophical
beliefs. None of these speculations can ever be experimentally verified or
falsified. That is why they are unscientific. They do not contribute
anything to the genuine neuroscientific literature. Fr. Ivo has
unfortunately been fooled by these unwarranted speculations, and is trying
to mislead Goanetters into believing that they are scientific conclusions
of a neuroscientist.
***I am not fooled by anyone. We know to discern. I cannot be fooled by the
wrong conclusion of Dr.Santosh, namely that the reality of God is
"illusion", a "figment of mind" in the name of Science. Dr.Santosh cannot
proclaim this as "scientific dogma".
He also keeps bringing up the word "mediated" without understanding its
meaning in my field of neuroscience. He puts all kinds of words in my
mouth in doing so.
***Dr.Santosh cannot fool the readers. The word "mediated" has been taken
from the quotation given by Dr.Santosh from the scientific journal. I have
not put it in his mouth. All human experiences are mediated by neuronal
systems, but they are not all created, therefore they are not "illusion",
"figment of mind" or "hallucination". The mystical experience is mediated
but not created, as Dr.Mario Beauregard clearly said. The experience of God
is not an illusion. What Dr.Santosh accepts is "scientific", what he rejects
is "unscientific"... I understand very well the meaning of "mediated" in
every subject, in Physics as well as in Neuroscience. Let him not attribute
to me "scientific illiteracy". I find illiteracy in his writings.
The word "mediated" has a very specific meaning in biology. In the present
context it means that if you block the specific brain activity, you will
prevent or abort the spiritual experiences that are mediated by it. Of
course, not being a neuroscientist Fr. Ivo is not expected to know this.
***I am expected to know it. I know that if you block the specific brain
activity of any emotion, you will abort it. Why only spiritual experiences?
The point that Dr.Mario makes is that the mystical experiences are created
by a reality outside the brain. Therefore, they are not "illusion". By
blocking the spiritual experiences, you do not block the existence of the
Reality that causes these experiences (namely God and soul). I am expected
to know this also...
therefore, Dr.Santosh cannot fool the Goanetters.
Regards.
Fr.Ivo
Ivo C da Souza <[email protected]> wrote:
Dr.Mario has published a book on The Spiritual Mind.
He describes there his experiments and his scientific
conclusions.
.............................................
But he forgets that "mediated" does not mean "created" by the
brain, as Dr.Mario has clearly discussed in his book, which
was written in the light of brain-imaging studies of his
doctoral students.
