Spirituality might work if it wasn't so stupid.

originally posted by: earthling42
a reply to: bb23108

My understanding of materialism is a 'me' full of greed, pleasure in possession, status, desire to obtain, to become, to fight for his own well being and to hell with the rest.

At root, materialism is based in the assumption that everything can be explained or reduced down to physical terms. So science, at least traditionally, has only accepted as fact, what can be quantified in physical terms. And also, science always assumes that every object of study is just that - an object as opposed to the subject that is studying it.

Science tries to minimize the impact that the subject can have on the object outside the framework of the actual study, and so it finds this objectification as a necessary aspect of trying to conduct the experiment and observe its results impartially.

Also, both materialism and conventional (and certainly traditional) science both assume that awareness or consciousness is a product of the material body - so that when the body dies, so does consciousness or awareness.

So I hope you can see that this kind of materialism is useful enough for scientific study. But certainly not as the basis for a world "religion", which it basically has become.

Harvard Unveils MRI Study Proving Meditation Literally Rebuilds The Brain’s Gray Matter In 8 Weeks

www.feelguide.com...

Test subjects taking part in an 8-week program of mindfulness meditation showed results that astonished even the most experienced neuroscientists at Harvard University. The study was led by a Harvard-affiliated team of researchers based at Massachusetts General Hospital, and the team’s MRI scans documented for the very first time in medical history how meditation produced massive changes inside the brain’s gray matter. “Although the practice of meditation is associated with a sense of peacefulness and physical relaxation, practitioners have long claimed that meditation also provides cognitive and psychological benefits that persist throughout the day,” says study senior author Sara Lazar of the MGH Psychiatric Neuroimaging Research Program and a Harvard Medical School instructor in psychology. “This study demonstrates that changes in brain structure may underlie some of these reported improvements and that people are not just feeling better because they are spending time relaxing.”

Sue McGreevey of MGH writes: “Previous studies from Lazar’s group and others found structural differences between the brains of experienced meditation practitioners and individuals with no history of meditation, observing thickening of the cerebral cortex in areas associated with attention and emotional integration. But those investigations could not document that those differences were actually produced by meditation.” Until now, that is. The participants spent an average of 27 minutes per day practicing mindfulness exercises, and this is all it took to stimulate a major increase in gray matter density in the hippocampus, the part of the brain associated with self-awareness, compassion, and introspection. McGreevey adds: “Participant-reported reductions in stress also were correlated with decreased gray-matter density in the amygdala, which is known to play an important role in anxiety and stress. None of these changes were seen in the control group, indicating that they had not resulted merely from the passage of time.”

“It is fascinating to see the brain’s plasticity and that, by practicing meditation, we can play an active role in changing the brain and can increase our well-being and quality of life,”

a reply to: Stormdancer777

Sleep quality linked with brain's grey matter
Sleep found to repair and organize the brain

No different than a good nights rest.

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Selected Peer-Reviewed Publications on Psi Research

The following is a selected list of downloadable peer-reviewed journal articles reporting studies of psychic phenomena, mostly published in the 21st century. There are also some important papers of historical interest and other resources. A comprehensive list would run into thousands of articles. Click on the title of an article to download it.

The international professional organization for scientists and scholars interested in psi phenomena is the Parapsychological Association, an elected affiliate (since 1969) of the AAAS, the largest general scientific organization in the world.

Commonly repeated critiques about psi, such as “these phenomena are impossible,” or “there’s no valid scientific evidence,” or “the results are all due to fraud,” have been soundly rejected for many decades. Such critiques persist due to ignorance of the relevant literature and to entrenched, incorrect beliefs. Legitimate debates today no longer focus on existential questions but on development of adequate theoretical explanations, advancements in methodology, the “source” of psi, and issues about effect size heterogeneity and robustness of replication.

This page is maintained by Dean Radin. Updated April 18, 2014.

Source

Any thoughts?

a reply to: LesMisanthrope

Atheism is Stupid.

This due to Chaos Theory.

Are you actually expecting ATS members to take you seriously???

Any thoughts?