| ▲ | dukeofdoom 4 days ago |
| I don't mean to be too critical, but why is breathwork/meditation so popular in Atheist circles? When I would presume rationality is the goal, and this seems like it would alter it in a negative way. (depriving your brain of oxygen, presumably decreases its ability to think rationally, or at least run at full capacity) I get that someone like Sam Harris, makes bank promoting his meditation app. But his atheist audience is very receptive. |
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| ▲ | sp3000 4 days ago | parent | next [-] |
| If you presume rationality is the goal, then the rational mind should point to decades of research and anecdotal evidence that shows the positive effeccts of meditation and breathwork on mental well-being. Why are you assuming depriving your brain of oxygen for a short period of time is decreases the ability to think rationally? That could be a short term effect, but a long term adaptive effect could be the brain thinks more clearly. Same with fasting from food, etc. |
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| ▲ | dukeofdoom 4 days ago | parent [-] | | Well, if one's thoughts can be altered depending on the amount of oxygen the brain receives. How can you possibly be sure about your own rationality. Couldn't you rationally start to question anything you've come to a conclusion about before, as just a byproduct of your brain's oxygen levels at that time. | | |
| ▲ | collingreen 4 days ago | parent | next [-] | | The best part about true things is they are still true whether you believe and understand them or not. Seeking truth isn't limited by your ability to understand everything. | | |
| ▲ | dukeofdoom 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I'm not sure about that. If there's no conscious mind to interpret something, can anything possibly be True? Or is it just information. | | |
| ▲ | rixed 4 days ago | parent [-] | | I believe by "true things" what is meant is "as good as a real world experience as one can get", rather than "logically sound". It is certainly reasonable to argue about whether logic stands on its own without an observer, but not to doubt that there is a true world out there to be experienced. |
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| ▲ | HK-NC 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | Oddly enough becoming a serious athlete, changing my diet and training as my job, completely changed who I am and remembering my thought processes and overall mental state of the previous lifestyle is bizarre as though that person is truly alien to my current self. | | |
| ▲ | dukeofdoom 4 days ago | parent [-] | | So increasing your VO2 max, has improved how your brain functions. A few years ago, I read an article where they improved kids Math scores by having them exercise on a treadmill before class. |
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| ▲ | jfengel 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| I used Harris's app, and was a bit surprised to hear him use language that he'd savage anyone else for. I get the problem there; you're trying to teach what something feels like, and there just aren't words. It's not surprising that you can alter the brain by various exercises, or that those exercises are counterintuitive. The brain is complicated and our tools for manipulating it are baroque. Still, it was a little weird to hear Harris give in without apparently reconsidering other forms of mental exercise from that standpoint. |
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| ▲ | aiiizzz 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Depriving? The goal is to oversaturate. |
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| ▲ | FrustratedMonky 3 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| You are mixing up religion and meditation. Think of meditation more as a physical exercise for the brain, like yoga. Is yoga a religion, even if it strengthens your core? Many people do it without any religious ideas. Same with breathing, 'low CO2' sounds bad, but we do have the next breath, the goals isn't continued low CO2, it can lead to increased oxygen later. As to rationality. Meditation helps declutter thoughts, so that helps with rationality doesn't it? Why would being strung out and stressed be more rational? |
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| ▲ | collingreen 4 days ago | parent | prev | next [-] |
| Atheism isn't specifically "a goal of rationality" it's just not believing in a deity (usually because of a rejection of "trust me bro, now pay your tithing" style pitches). I expect for most people the choice to believe or not believe stories with no evidence is orthogonal to the choice of an altered mind. |
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| ▲ | cgio 4 days ago | parent [-] | | It looks like you put atheism and agnosticism in the same boat. There’s a certain belief, trust and conviction to lack of a deity in atheism. Not in agnosticism. That state of mind is orthogonal to belief is mostly true. On the other hand , there is also a motivation to explain away religious experience as physiological process, which explains the overlap in group membership. | | |
| ▲ | alpaca128 3 days ago | parent | next [-] | | > There’s a certain belief, trust and conviction to lack of a deity in atheism Atheism means a lack of belief in a god. Just because many atheists go a step further or the word agnostic exists, that doesn't change the meaning. I have yet to see an "official" source that says it's definitely belief of absence and not absence of belief. Agnosticism works just as well if you view it as subcategory of atheism. | |
| ▲ | collingreen 3 days ago | parent | prev [-] | | My understanding is atheism is not believing in a deity (a - without, theism - belief in deity) and agnosticism is about not knowing (sometimes not knowing if it's possible to know). It gets messy because plenty of folks play games with the words like "clearly I don't believe the major, self-contradicting religions but maybe there is some deity out there somehow that had an influence beyond 'natural processes'" or that Einstein quote about calling the beauty of physics and the universe "god". Similar to what you said about me, I think you're perhaps putting faith/religious dogma and spirituality/holding things sacred in the same boat. I think having awe or wonder or a feeling of being part of something bigger is again orthogonal to belief in a particular god. I don't even think religion is the dividing line here - religion and ritual exists all over without an overarching deity. I liked the underlying idea to what you said about motivation to explain away religious experience as physiological process; I think there is something interesting there. I expect this is a result of what people already believe, not a cause, but I like the concept of how people take in new information and default to directing it to "knowable, let's figure it out" or some version of "unknowable". tl;dr - not believing in a god seems separate from spirituality and religious experience. Theist and atheist are extremely high level (and one dimensional) labels and there is a LOT of diverse (and overlapping) belief and experience under each. |
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| ▲ | dayvigo 4 days ago | parent | prev [-] |
| I study cognitive neuroscience. Meditation is extremely evidence-based. It is literally one of the most evidence-based things there is in terms of actions you can take to improve mood, executive function, focus, general cognition, etc., it's almost as backed as physical exercise. Of course, there is also a lot of woo-woo spiritual stuff around it, but you can just ignore that side and use it effectively. Not sure about breathwork, I'm moderately skeptical of many the claims made about it, but I haven't looked super far into it comparatively. |
