- Top Features:
- War Room
- Glenn Greenwald
- Broadsheet
- Joan Walsh
- Camille Paglia
- Since You Asked
- Follow Salon:
Read other letters about this article
The final position for most religious people is that their 'sacred' experiences justify faith in ... something.
Indeed, so far science has a difficult time quantifying and analyzing feelings like romantic love, aesthetics, feelings of oneness with the universe, or happiness itself. I think further brain studies will actually be able to duplicate these emotions, however. Dopamine is definately the 'happy' chemical, for instance.
However, even now, it is not much of a stretch to say that without the physical body and brain, these modes of consciousness would not exist. Anyone who has done drugs knows that various chemicals can give you these feelings, in various heightened ways. Certainly a material issue, at bottom.
On a survival level, romantic love is part of the survival of the species. Positive feelings also play a role in survival - aesthetics, happiness, oneness with nature, can all be positive survival mechanisms, especially in bad times. And we are still on a Darwinian level.
Sometimes these feelings can lead to individuals giving their lives for others - which actually promotes the tribe, group, or family, or 'might' do so. Dying in warfare is certainly marketed as such, but for the survival of a whole species, might be a contra-indicator. Indeed, smal group 'survival' versus survival of the species as a whole is at the BOTTOM of many political disagrements.
So 'sacred' is just meat for analyses - and good luck on feeling sacred after your brain is gone. Science is not a be all and end all, it is only a method of ascertaining the truth. Science alone might not give ultimate meaning to life, but scientific method certainly leads in the direction of truthfulness. Giving meaning to life is not its ultimate job, after all. That is for you to do yourself.
