Re: Witches, chicks, and your brain on juju
Personally, I don't think explaining away witchcraft and intuitive abilities as 'just neuroscience' disproves anything at all. Just because we have a scientific explanation doesn't mean that it's completely debunked. I personally see the study of things like neuroscience a valuable tool in our ability to understand how 'supernatural' things affect us. Because at the end of the day, it's all about how our brains interpret and translate the information given to us. That doesn't make it less profound... it just means that we understand what's going on. And understanding is never a bad thing.
But then, I am a primarily left brained person who likes to understand; and who sees the magic in science and the mundane. Taking the 'mystery' out of something doesn't make it less magical to me... in some ways it makes it more magical. So it means that the term 'supernatural' doesn't apply anymore because we can hypothesise with some reliability that it's actually based in very natural neurological processes... why is that bad for witchcraft?
Figuring out how magnetism works didn't diminish the magic of the thing... it just diminished the mystery of the thing. I don't equate magic with mystery (which I realise goes against traditional definition of the term 'magic'), so I embrace whatever scientific evidence arrives to explain the things that we consider magical or supernatural.
Personally, I don't think explaining away witchcraft and intuitive abilities as 'just neuroscience' disproves anything at all. Just because we have a scientific explanation doesn't mean that it's completely debunked. I personally see the study of things like neuroscience a valuable tool in our ability to understand how 'supernatural' things affect us. Because at the end of the day, it's all about how our brains interpret and translate the information given to us. That doesn't make it less profound... it just means that we understand what's going on. And understanding is never a bad thing.
But then, I am a primarily left brained person who likes to understand; and who sees the magic in science and the mundane. Taking the 'mystery' out of something doesn't make it less magical to me... in some ways it makes it more magical. So it means that the term 'supernatural' doesn't apply anymore because we can hypothesise with some reliability that it's actually based in very natural neurological processes... why is that bad for witchcraft?
Figuring out how magnetism works didn't diminish the magic of the thing... it just diminished the mystery of the thing. I don't equate magic with mystery (which I realise goes against traditional definition of the term 'magic'), so I embrace whatever scientific evidence arrives to explain the things that we consider magical or supernatural.
Comment