Saturday, March 24, 2007

I don't know how to title this...

My son, Ryan, sent me this link yesterday. It is about a researcher who is doing CT scans on people praying to see what happens inside their brains. [note to my cessationist friends: I love you, but you're wrong :)] Here is an interesting snippet:

In earlier studies, he looked at what happens in the brains of Buddhist monks meditating and Franciscan nuns praying. The results were quite different from what happens in the brains of people speaking in tongues, whose brains, he found, went quiet in the frontal lobe — the part of the brain right behind the forehead that's considered the brain's control center.

"When they are actually engaged in this whole very intense spiritual practice … their frontal lobes tend to go down in activity. … It is very consistent with the kind of experience they have, because they say that they're not in charge. [They say] it's the voice of God, it's the spirit of God that is moving through them," said Newberg.

What does it prove? Absolutely nothing, actually, which is what the researcher himself admits. But, it does point to someone other than the person doing the praying being in control... OK, put away the aliens are in control nonsense! and look at I Corinthians 14:

For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful. What am I to do? I will pray with the spirit and I will pray with the mind also; I will sing with the spirit and I will sing with the mind also. I Corinthians 14:14-15 RSV

3 comments:

Tim Bulkeley said...

The first time I read this I was in a hurry, and understood that the researcher was "praying to see what happens inside [their=people's] brains". I thought well, yes, a researcher should pray as they start work [yawn] then on second look I realised what it was all about!

Sorry, not really on topic, but it amused me!

jps said...

Tim,

Now that is funny :)

James

Tim Bulkeley said...

t funny!

Though I do find this whole "brain activity in prayer" etc. research fascinating, I am too tired this week to really engage with it. And like you the fascination is tempered by the felling/belief that what they discover doesn't really matter anyway...