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Mog wrote
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/27/AR2007052701056.html?hpid=topnews
This is the kind of thing I was trying to get at to Lily.
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The results were showing that when the volunteers placed the interests of others before their own, the generosity activated a primitive part of the brain that usually lights up in response to food or sex. Altruism, the experiment suggested, was not a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges but rather was basic to the brain, hard-wired and pleasurable.
Their 2006 finding that unselfishness can feel good lends scientific support to the admonitions of spiritual leaders such as Saint Francis of Assisi, who said, "For it is in giving that we receive." But it is also a dramatic example of the way neuroscience has begun to elbow its way into discussions about morality and has opened up a new window on what it means to be good.
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You can see why this is the kind of research that could scare theologians. We have traits that we attribute to free will more attributable to brain chemistry. |
Mog et. al., Lily is dead on.
This is far from anything that is 'scary' in the least. As she's already pointed out, this at most might bother the fundy caricature that too many of you sadly hold as real. For most believers (including theologians) this is akin to saying that water is wet. A favorite blogger of mine said it perfectly...
It turns out that when you do the right thing, it is natural to feel good about it. There's something very odd about Science News trumpeting as a discovery something known by kindergartners and then saying "Such research 'has opened up a new window on what it means to be good,' although many philosophers over recorded history have suggested similar things."
You really do make yourself look like someone who actually knows very little about faith when you make the claim that this will be frightening to believers.
The vast majority of Christians are either Catholic or Orthodox (though in the U.S. that's often easy to forget), and both of those groups hold to the belief that grace builds upon nature. In other words, this is exactly what a person should expect to find…that the brain is wired in a way that sheds light on what we already know by showing us how the mechanics of things work.
Interesting to say the least, but far from anything new (in a theological sense), and very far from anything frightening.