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Thursday, June 30, 2016

God gene


The God gene hypothesis proposes that a specific gene, called vesicular monoamine transporter 2 (VMAT2), predisposes humans towards spiritual or mystic experiences. The idea has been postulated bygeneticist Dean Hamer, the director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the U.S. National Cancer Institute, and author of the 2005 book The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes.
The God gene hypothesis is based on a combination of behavioral genetic, neurobiological and psychological studies. The major arguments of the hypothesis are: (1) spirituality can be quantified by psychometric measurements; (2) the underlying tendency to spirituality is partially heritable; (3) part of this heritability can be attributed to the gene VMAT2;[1] (4) this gene acts by altering monoamine levels; and (5) spiritual individuals are favored by natural selection because they are provided with an innate sense of optimism, the latter producing positive effects at either a physical or psychological level.

Proposal[edit]

According to this hypothesis, the God gene (VMAT2) is a physiological arrangement that produces the sensations associated, by some, with mystic experiences, including the presence of God or others, or more specifically spirituality as a state of mind.
Based on research by psychologist Robert Cloninger, this tendency toward spirituality is quantified by the self-transcendence scale, which is composed of three sub-sets: "self-forgetfulness" (as in the tendency to become totally absorbed in some activity, such as reading); "transpersonal identification" (a feeling of connectedness to a larger universe); and "mysticism" (an openness to believe things that remain unproven, such as ESP)(This is an incorrect definition of mysticism). Cloninger suggests that taken together, these measurements are a reasonable way to quantify (make measurable) how spiritual someone is feeling.
The self-transcendence measure was shown to be heritable by classical twin studies conducted by Lindon Eaves and Nicholas Martin. Interpretors of these studies argue that specific religious beliefs (such as belief in Jesus) have no genetic basis and are instead memes,[citation needed] cultural units transmitted by imitation (non genetic means).
In order to identify some of the specific genes involved in self-transcendence, Hamer analyzed DNA and personality score data from over 1000 individuals and identified one particular locus, VMAT2, with a significant correlation. VMAT2 codes for a vesicular monoamine transporter that plays a key role in regulating the levels of the brain chemicals serotonin, dopamine and norepinephrine. These monoamine transmitters are in turn postulated to play an important role in regulating the brain activities associated with mystic beliefs.
The evolutionary advantage this might convey, or whether it could be a side effect of a separate adaptation, have yet to be fully explored. However, Dr. Hamer has hypothesized that self-transcendence makes people more optimistic, which makes them healthier and likely to have more children.

Scientific criticism[edit]

Although it is always difficult to determine the many interacting functions of a gene, VMAT2 appears to be involved in the transport of monoamine neurotransmitters across the synapses of the brain. PZ Myers argues: "It's a pump. A teeny-tiny pump responsible for packaging a neurotransmitter for export during brain activity. Yes, it's important, and it may even be active and necessary during higher order processing, like religious thought. But one thing it isn't is a 'god gene.'"[2]
Carl Zimmer claimed that VMAT2 can be characterized as a gene that accounts for less than one percent of the variance of self-transcendence scores. These, Zimmer says, can signify anything from belonging to the Green Party to believing in ESP. Zimmer also points out that the God Gene theory is based on only one unpublished, unreplicated study.[3] However Hamer notes that the importance of the VMAT2 finding is not that it explains all spiritual or religious feelings, but rather that it points the way toward one neurobiological pathway that may be important.

Religious response[edit]

John Polkinghorne, an Anglican priest, member of the Royal Society and Canon Theologian at Liverpool Cathedral, was asked for a comment on Hamer's theory by the British national daily newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. He replied: "The idea of a God gene goes against all my personal theological convictions. You can't cut faith down to the lowest common denominator of genetic survival. It shows the poverty of reductionist thinking." [4][5]
Walter Houston, the chaplain of Mansfield College, Oxford, and a fellow in theology, told the Telegraph: "Religious belief is not just related to a person's constitution; it's related to society, tradition, character—everything's involved. Having a gene that could do all that seems pretty unlikely to me."
Hamer responded that the existence of such a gene would not be incompatible with the existence of a personal God: "Religious believers can point to the existence of God genes as one more sign of the creator's ingenuity—a clever way to help humans acknowledge and embrace a divine presence."[5]
Hamer repeatedly notes in his book that, "This book is about whether God genes exist, not about whether there is a God."[6]
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Wednesday, June 29, 2016

Morality= RELIGION

Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are distinguished as proper and those that are improper.[1]Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion, or culture, or it can derive from a standard that a person believes should be universal.[2]Morality may also be specifically synonymous with "goodness" or "rightness."
Moral philosophy includes moral ontology, or the origin of morals, as well as moral epistemology, or knowledge about morals. Different systems of expressing morality have been proposed, including deontological ethical systems which adhere to a set of established rules, and normative ethical systems which consider the merits of actions themselves. An example of normative ethical philosophy is the Golden Rule, which states that: "One should treat others as one would like others to treat oneself."[3]
Immorality is the active opposition to morality (i.e. opposition to that which is good or right), while amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any set of moral standards or principles.[4][5][6]

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Tuesday, June 28, 2016

The Supernatural

The supernatural (Medieval Latin: supernātūrālis: supra "above" + naturalis "natural", first used: 1520–1530 AD)[1][2] is defined as being incapable to be explained by science or the laws of nature, characteristic or relating to ghosts, gods or other supernatural beings or to appear beyond nature.[3]

Contents

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Views[edit]

See also: Anthropology of religion
The metaphysical considerations of the existence of the supernatural can be difficult to approach as an exercise in philosophy or theology because any dependencies on its antithesis, the natural, will ultimately have to be inverted or rejected.
One complicating factor is that there is disagreement about the definition of "natural" and the limits of naturalism. Concepts in the supernatural domain are closely related to concepts in religious spirituality andoccultism or spiritualism.
For sometimes we use the word nature for that Author of nature whom the schoolmen, harshly enough, call natura naturans, as when it is said that nature hath made man partly corporeal andpartly immaterial. Sometimes we mean by the nature of a thing the essence, or that which the schoolmen scruple not to call the quiddity of a thing, namely, the attribute or attributes on whose score it is what it is, whether the thing be corporeal or not, as when we attempt to define the nature of an angle, or of a triangle, or of a fluid body, as such. Sometimes we take nature for an internal principle of motion, as when we say that a stone let fall in the air is by nature carried towards the centre of the earth, and, on the contrary, that fire or flame does naturally move upwards toward heaven. Sometimes we understand by nature the established course of things, as when we say that nature makes the night succeed the day, nature hath made respiration necessary to thelife of men. Sometimes we take nature for an aggregate of powers belonging to a body, especially a living one, as when physicians say that nature is strong or weak or spent, or that in such or such diseases nature left to herself will do the cure. Sometimes we take nature for the universe, or system of the corporeal works of God, as when it is said of a phoenix, or a chimera, that there is no such thing in nature, i.e. in the world. And sometimes too, and that most commonly, we would express by nature a semi-deity or other strange kind of being, such as this discourse examines the notion of.

And besides these more absolute acceptions, if I may so call them, of the word nature, it has divers others (more relative), as nature is wont to be set or in opposition or contradistinction to other things, as when we say of a stone when it falls downwards that it does it by a natural motion, but that if it be thrown upwards its motion that way is violent. So chemists distinguish vitriol into naturaland fictitious, or made by art, i.e. by the intervention of human power or skill; so it is said that water, kept suspended in a sucking pump, is not in its natural place, as that is which is stagnant in the well. We say also that wicked men are still in the state of nature, but the regenerate in a state of grace; that cures wrought by medicines are natural operations; but the miraculous ones wrought byChrist and his apostles were supernatural.[4]
— Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature
The term "supernatural" is often used interchangeably with paranormal or preternatural — the latter typically limited to an adjective for describing abilities which appear to exceed the bounds of possibility.[5]Epistemologically, the relationship between the supernatural and the natural is indistinct in terms of natural phenomena that, ex hypothesi, violate the laws of nature, in so far as such laws are realistically accountable.
Parapsychologists use the term psi to refer to an assumed unitary force underlying the phenomena they study. Psi is defined in the Journal of Parapsychology as “a general term used to identify personal factors or processes in nature which transcend accepted laws” (1948: 311) and “which are non-physical in nature” (1962:310), and it is used to cover both extrasensory perception (ESP), an “awareness of or response to an external event or influence not apprehended by sensory means” (1962:309) or inferred from sensory knowledge, and psychokinesis (PK), “the direct influence exerted on a physical system by a subject without any known intermediate energy or instrumentation” (1945:305).[6]
— Michael Winkelman, Current Anthropology
Many supporters of supernatural explanations believe that past, present, and future complexities and mysteries of the universe cannot be explained solely by naturalistic means and argue that it is reasonable to assume that a non-natural entity or entities resolve the unexplained.
Views on the "supernatural" vary, for example it may be seen as:
  • indistinct from nature. From this perspective, some events occur according to the laws of nature, and others occur according to a separate set of principles external to known nature. For example, in Scholasticism, it was believed that God was capable of performing any miracle so long as it didn't lead to a logical contradiction. Some religions posit immanent deities, however, and do not have a tradition analogous to the supernatural; some believe that everything anyone experiences occurs by the will (occasionalism), in the mind (neoplatonism), or as a part (nondualism) of a more fundamental divine reality (platonism).
  • incorrectly attributed to nature. Others believe that all events have natural and only natural causes. They believe that human beings ascribe supernatural attributes to purely natural events, such as lightning, rainbows, floods, and the origin of life.[7][8]

Philosophy[edit]

See also: Naturalism (philosophy)
The supernatural is a feature of the philosophical traditions of Neoplatonism[9] and Scholasticism.[10] In contrast, the philosophy of Metaphysical naturalism argues for the conclusion that there are no supernatural entities, objects, or powers.

Religion[edit]

Main article: Magic and religion
Most religions include elements of belief in the supernatural (e.g. miraculous works by recognized Saints, the Assumption of Mary, etc.) while also often featuring prominently in the study of the paranormal and occultism.

Christian theology[edit]


The patron saint of air travelers, aviators, astronauts, people with a mental handicap, test takers, and poor students is Saint Joseph of Cupertino, who is said to have been gifted withsupernatural flight.[11]
Main article: Supernatural order
In Catholic theology, the supernatural order is, according to New Advent, defined as "the ensemble of effects exceeding the powers of the created universe and gratuitously produced by God for the purpose of raising the rational creature above its native sphere to a God-like life and destiny."[12] The Modern Catholic Dictionary defines it as "[t]he sum total of heavenly destiny and all the divinely established means of reaching that destiny, which surpass the mere powers and capacities of human nature."[13]

Process theology[edit]

Main article: Process theology
Process theology is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and further developed by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000).
It is not possible, in process metaphysics, to conceive divine activity as a “supernatural” intervention into the “natural” order of events. Process theists usually regard the distinction between the supernatural and the natural as a by-product of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In process thought, there is no such thing as a realm of the natural in contrast to that which is supernatural. On the other hand, if “the natural” is defined more neutrally as “what is in the nature of things,” then process metaphysics characterizes the natural as the creative activity of actual entities. In Whitehead's words, “It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity” (Whitehead 1978, 21). It is tempting to emphasize process theism's denial of the supernatural and thereby highlight what the process God cannot do in comparison to what the traditional God can do (that is, to bring something from nothing). In fairness, however, equal stress should be placed on process theism's denial of the natural (as traditionally conceived) so that one may highlight what the creatures cannot do, in traditional theism, in comparison to what they can do in process metaphysics (that is, to be part creators of the world with God).[14]
— Donald Viney, "Process Theism" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

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Monday, June 27, 2016

PRE-FRONTAL CORTEX ACTIVATION







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Sunday, June 26, 2016

Neocortex helped humans beliefs in religion- HOW TO IMPROVE NEOCORTEX


The neocortex (Latin for "new bark" or "new rind"), also called theneopallium ("new mantle") and isocortex ("equal rind"), is a part of the mammalian brain. Of all the mammals studied to date (including humans), dolphins (Long-finned pilot whale) have been found to have the most neocortical neurons.[1] In the human brain, the neocortex is the largest part of the cerebral cortex which covers the two cerebral hemispheres, with the allocortex making up the rest. The neocortex is made up of six layers, labelled from the outermost inwards, I to VI. In humans, the neocortex is involved in higher functions such as sensory perception, generation of motor commands, spatial reasoning and language.[2] There are two types of cortex in the neocortex – the true isocortex and the proisocortex.


The following are 10 “exercise” choices for a prefrontal cortex workout.
  1. Put on your rose coloured glasses. Create a positive future story; optimism is associated with rising levels of dopamine which engages the brain.
  2. Follow a sleep routine. At the end of the day, choose a pleasant activity that brings your day to a peaceful end. Getting adequate sleep is connected with memory function.
  1. Deny the drama and avoid getting caught up in gossip, what-if's and theatrical reactions (other people’s too). Drama fires up the amygdala that gets the prefrontal cortex off its game.
  2. Move your body with sports, dance, martial arts, yoga or other active pursuits.
  1. Find ways to express your gratitude. Gratitude activities increase positive emotionswhich then activates the prefrontal cortex.
  1. Offer and receive physical contact.  Give and take hugs to literally soothe the brain with calming inhibitory peptides.
  1. Create silly sentences, acronyms and cartoons to help remember things. These skills call on the prefrontal cortex and Executive Functions to access working memory. By integrating jokes, riddles and puns you can also learn to think flexibly by shifting between different meanings and associations of words.
  2. Play! Make-belief play, in particular strengthens Executive Functions.
  1. Be of service and volunteer. The social and mental activity required sends blood rushing to the prefrontal cortex.
  1. Learn to juggle. Learning any new and engaging activity fires off neurons in a positive way. Other activities that require focus and practice such as dancing, circus arts, music, theatre and sports are predicted to significantly strengthen Executive Function.

Pump Up Your Neocortex: Exercise for your Brain


  • Make your fitness goals measurable:
    • Use metrics as surrogates for achieving your subjective goal, such as being happy with your physique. For instance, with resistance training, forecast some measurable goals that you want to reach at the beginning of a thirty-day training period, such as increasing the amount of weight you use or the number of repetitions you perform with a few of your regular exercises. For example, increasing the number of repetitions from 10 to 12 or the amount of weight by x number of pounds on your bench press, military press and biceps curls. These three exercises will serve as an adequate sampling of all the exercises in your repertoire to get a general measure of your training effect, or improvement in your fitness level. Applying metrics will increase your chances of success in reaching your fitness goal simply by giving you a tangible means of recognizing it when you reach it.
  • Incorporate some Eastern (mind-body) exercises into your total fitness regimen
    • What distinguishes us Human Beings from the rest of the animal kingdom is our brain, specifically our neo-cortex. The human neo-cortex is the seat of abstract thinking. Examples of abstract thinking ranges from something as simple as knowing that an object, such as our mothers, still exist even when they are out of our visual field to the most incredible abstract thought in all human history to date; Einstein’s epiphany that energy and mass are really two different versions of a single entity related by his famous equation E= mc². Eastern Exercises such as Yoga and Tai Chi actually “pump up” the neo-cortex. If you think of the incredible things that we achieve when we flex our muscles, you can imagine the possibilities of what we can do when we flex our neo-cortices.
  • Nutrition: follow the fiber Here is a link to my overview on fitness and nutrition: F²C³-A Nutrition and Fitness Formula for Optimal Performance
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