"Vitamin G" or B - for BUNK?

In a recent report in today's Denver Post (May 4, p. 4C), the headline in the Health section blared:

'Dose of 'Vitamin G' can keep you healthy'

The article begins:

"You want to live long and look good, so you do everything the experts suggest: you eat salmon, you wear sunscreen, lift weights, and jog. You floss, eat five fruits, take your vitamin D and you pray? Pray? Yes! God is now part of a healthful lifestyle. It turns out that God can save your life as well as your soul"

Of course, this is nonsense, never mind how the zany author (Diane Cameron) goes on to assert this is validated by "the newest research on aging and health". And that the push isn't coming from "churchmen" but from doctors, especially neurologists.

A top expert cited is Dr. Andrew Newberg who is claimed to be "a top spokesman in the new field of neuro-theology". This is claimed to be apparent in Newberg's book, 'How God Changes Your Brain'.

Neuro-theology? This is an oxymoron. One cannot have a science - a REAL science, wed to theology! Theology is poppyock, bunkum and gibberish. No serious scientists - I don't care if he's an astronomer or neurologist, marries his science to theology unless he prefers a one way pass to being marginalized.

Science, consisting chiefly of inductively formulated laws and postulates can stand in no meaningful relation to theology, since theology possesses no genuine knowledge about anything.

Knowledge presupposes open inquiry to obtain it in the first place. Theology’s multitude of dogmas and doctrines – not open to critical evaluation, forever forecloses such inquiry, and by doing so abdicates any claim to being called ‘knowledge’. As Sir A.J. Ayer has noted (‘Language, Truth and Logic’, p. 158):

“The fact that people have religious experiences is interesting from a psychological point of view, but it does not in any way imply that there is such a thing as religious knowledge.”

In the place of reason’s doubt and uncertainty, belief offers a pap in the guise of absolute certitude. A delusion purchased at the cost of intellectual gangrene. A gangrene rendered more ubiquitous now because bunkum and pseudo-science are now widespread, given that certain panderers (from the realm of science) have discovered they can get more books sold if they incorporate some religious subtext.

At least if I am told that electrons can sometimes behave like waves, there is experimental evidence, namely electron diffraction patterns, which I can find for support. If I’m told that such electrons can exhibit instantaneous connections, I need go no further than Alain Aspect’s 1982 experiment – and other more recent ones, which disclose this.

If I am informed, from Einstein’s special relativity, that the time for a moving object slows, I need look no further than the well-documented data for muons to find the empirical support.

If I am told there are solar explosions (flares) that can engulf twenty Earths, I need only go to my local Observatory telescope, put on a special H-alpha filter and view such flares with a superimposed graticule fashioned with the scales of Earth –sized objects, for support.

In other words, most physical concepts have a wealth of consistent and coherent data which, together with deductively formulated mathematical arguments, lend support to their existence. The same, unfortunately, cannot be said for theological ‘doctrines’.

While Newberg is not pushing theological doctrines, he is perilously close to pushing pseudo-science not much different from that already circulating compliments of physicist Frank Tipler in his 'Physics of Christianity' and 'Physics of Immortality' - both of which have been throroughly skewered in Amazon book reviews. Along with their flawed scientific assumptions and generalizations exposed.

Newberg, for example, never verifies a genuine, bona fide "God presence" in any of his subjects.
This means he's simply measuring the way the human brain creates its own subjective reality--basically, how we make stuff up. (An aspect that has actually been clearly and carefully exposed in truly serious work, such as Michael Persinger's 'The Neuro-psychological Bases of God Belief')

In Persinger's genuinely empirical research, electrodes were applied to the temporal lobes of the brain and inevitably triggered religious and "God ideation" by incepting temporal lobe transients (TLTs) - a kind of mini-seizure. Persinger placed TLT experience along a hypothetical continuum. Extreme symptoms included: circumstantiality, a sense of the personal (e.g. egocentric references (e.g. I am the one with whom God communes!) , divine guidance in one's life), perseveration (I can triumph through all) , hypergraphia (writing reams of one's experiences - beliefs to convert or convince others - like perhaps Newberg himself!) , altered affect, and most importantly an overwhelming sense of religiosity....fueling MORE faith. In other words, the faith achieved and the firm "happy" beliefs was little different from what one finds in a drunk who's imbibed too much Sterno or Ripple.

Even before Persinger there was Julian Jaynes in his landmark 1976 book: The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind. Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist, argued that the brain activity of ancient people - those living roughly 3,500 years ago, prior to early evidence of consciousness such as logic, reason, and ethics - would have resembled that of modern schizophrenics. Jaynes maintained that, like schizophrenics they believed they were beneficiaries of exceptional "divine" care, communications and "love". They were also able to directly communicate using "prayer" and actually had prayers answered.

Is this what Newberg and his ilk wish to take us back to? 3,500 years ago, to primitive-brained ancestors that were only able to think metaphorically? One is correct to ask this, if his subjects believe they are "in the presence of God or some other infinite power" - which may indeed dramatically affect the structures and functions of their brains- but Newberg does nothing to inform us whether these (subjective) apperceptions truly exist in the world outside those brains.

It evidently has escaped Newberg that scanning a brain for reactions to stimuli induced within the brain (meditation - whether on verbal or visual input) is unrelated to anything outside the brain. Hence, the problem is the sloppy way Newberg thinks about what he is allegedly researching. This also highlights the inherent flaw in his original hypothesis: which was to accept the validity of religious belief a priori.

Persinger, instead, adopted the more rational (skeptical hypothesis) that religious belief may not be healthy, may not be intrinsically valid, and may well be the result of a kind of pathology. It was via this more neutral stance, not accepting the positive outcome, that enabled him to expose the reality of TLTs and show precisely that God exists solely in the brain, as Jaynes earlier found.

Newberg's prescription, based on his hypothesis, is: "If it makes you feel good, about yourself, believe in it and it will change your brain and make you live longer, be happier".

Of course, then one can retain belief in Santa for the same reason, or the Easter Bunny, or even Saskwatch! Hey, if the belief gets you through the day and alters your brain!

This is why Michael Persinger's approach is the more truly scientific and open. Indeed, he makes his motivation clear in his book:

“As a human being, I am concerned about the illusionary explanations for human consciousness and the future of human existence. Consequently after writing the Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs (1987), I began the systematic application of complex electromagnetic fields to discern the patterns that will induce experiences (sensed presence) that are attributed to the myriad of ego-alien intrusions which range from gods to aliens. The research is not to demean anyone's religious/mystical experience but instead to determine which portions of the brain or its electromagnetic patterns generate the experience.

The research has been encouraged by the historical fact that most wars and group degradations are coupled implicitly to god beliefs and to the presumption that those who do not believe the same as the experient are somehow less human and hence expendable. Although these egocentric propensities may have had adaptive significance, their utility for the species' future may be questionable. "

This says it all, and also carries the keynote of skepticism, which one would do well to apply to Newberg. For glaringly missing (as it was in the earlier 'prayer' research that purported to show those who were sick in hospital fared better if prayed for) is the use of proper double-blind tests and discriminatory qualification and quantification.

What do I mean by this? I mean that in Newberg's book 'How God Changes the Brain', he fails to go on to discriminate the extent and degrees of how DIFFERENT God beliefs affect brains- quality of life, etc.. For example, is the Hindu God, Brahman, able to engender more healthy changes than the Christian exhibits with his God? And if in the Christian case, which version of Christian deity operates and bestows the most brain (and longevity) benefits? Does the Trinity trump all? Or is is Jehovah, or Jesus himself and exclusively? What about the Christian 'Science of Mind' claim of "Universal Mind"? Does that work even better for its adherents? What about Muslims and Allah? Does Allah vouchsafe greater longevity and brain-health benefits than any version of Christian deity?

Newberg deals with none of these aspects, which is logical, given he isn't interested in whether a real existent confers the benefits. If all he obsesses over is subjects' responses, and the validity of the external agent(s) is never substantiated or formalized, then it really doesn't matter what they are. Any artifact will suffice, including belief in elves, Santa, Easter Bunnies and leprechauns.

We don't need any "neuro-theology" any more than we need any other form of novel pseudo-science. If researchers in whatever field find that all their research "holes" have already been drilled and there is nothing new on offer, then I suggest the optimum response is to do, or write or propose nothing! For nothing is certainly preferable to most of the silly codswallop currently making the rounds, and passed off as "science". (On the other hand, as I have pointed out before, if the assorted authors wish to refer to their speculations or conjectures- that is acceptable.)

How startling is that?