Neurotheology Fumbles

Popularizing science is more concerned with 'dumbing down' for ratings than informing the audience

f colleges taught science at the level of the slowest student there would be little point in the rest of class attending.

God knows science brought me here, and we have been studying it longer than the altitude of your native brain exceeded that of its anus. It's just that I tire of small thoughts where grandeur is demanded.

Journalism coerces the corroborating scientists to do research in anticipation of an interview - standing before the camera wearing white coat, or seated before laden bookshelves.

Eminent predecessors of today's celebrity professors were, it seems, media junkies too. Though I treasure every image of Einstein, film journalism demeaned him mightily. Maybe the relentless pressure of documentary makers looking for a story to create, or just the trusting innocence of mental giants before a camera-wielding cynic - the best material floats to cutting room floor.

There is a marvelous irony that everything from the natural world, recorded for television, was first distorted by a lens. In the same way that the electronics of transmission and physics of display can't fully undo a camera's bias, nor can editors or journalists, even if people of science themselves, ever quite remove the distortions of their viewpoint.

Yet again Television succumbed to 'dumber' as a potentially excellent portrayal of Neurotheology fell before the 'coffee table' syndrome in one typical 'documentary'.

Because an active electroencephalograph creates visions at the tweak of a waveform, or a clock radio electromagnetically induces hallucination in a child's mind, there is a 'religious' region of the brain .. what?

Pain does not exist as a belief or distressing concept - if I can cause it by deliberately sticking a pin in my arm??

The concept of a sadistic torturer does not exist because a lab researcher can unemotionally, in the name of science, produce pain and fear, at will, with electrodes?

Please understand, and I am pleading to my two legged mammalian friends, Dear Father, Beloved Mother (there is no swaying you two intrepid science troopers) I love the sciences and deeply respect the vibrant intellect and benevolent devotion of serious participants laboring within the farcical circus parading as science, education, research and knowledge on this impetuous outpost.

But they lose respect for their calling, and ultimately reputations suffer, by allowing a journalist, director, or media executive, to trivialize their research - especially for the questionable, unquestioned, media rationale of 'dumbing down'.

Implying, as if universal truth revealed, that religious experience resides in temporal regions of the brain, or oneness with the universe is due to parietal shutdown?

Yes, conceded, these regions of the brain are involved in these particular phenomena. But ..err, isn't the brain also perchance involved in all 'phenomena', all our awareness, all our experience?

And? And it's all to do with just regions of the brain? Concepts of reality don't exist, reality doesn't exist - but these regions generate 'sensations' or 'understandings' of them. That is what I heard being explained.

And my feet are involved in walking - so my destination is only internal coordinates because they are directed by brain activity?

Yet again, a highly-skilled team comprising dozens of media professionals, spending weeks with specialists eminent in chosen fields, achieve no more than to drag the most amazing creature from the sea, have it floundering upon the wet sand - and leave us, the sadly underestimated audience, with a vivid, graphic image of this wondrous prostrate creature while the depth of investigation and explanation equates to: "look, isn't it amazing, this strange creature on the sand!"

I think I mean to shoot the messenger.

Though awed at the sheer tenacity and intellectual grandeur of some monuments of investigative reporting, I've found science and teaching by visual journalism invariably shallow, always disappointing.

The efforts are always technically competent, crisp and informative - to give them due. Sadly, I believe the medium is unsuitable for learning, and the presenters incapable.

"Coffee table stuff" indeed.

With Respect and Love
Your Beloved Son