More about religion; the intersection of spirituality and science

For Christmas, I received a book about the Kabbalah and its applications to modern life (an odd Christmas present, I know, but such is the life of a Unitarian). I haven't yet gotten into it, reading some lighter fare. So before anything deeper sticks, I thought I'd do a bit of dot connecting.

First, there's the story at the Agonist about a study conducted at the University of Wisconsin with Tibetan monks that shows a measurable change in brain activity as a result of meditation. This comes at the same time as Atrios, in his Bobo's World feature, links to the story of a famous study conducted a few years ago that showed a correlation between prayer and fertility—praying for women increased their fertility, and has now come under serious investigation and attack as a fraud.

Now, obviously, the University of Wisconsin scientists' findings about brain activity are not quite as dramatic as a supposed increase in fertility, but they're profound nonetheless. The fact that science can now describe a measurable effect of meditation helps link the scientific with the spiritual in a powerful way. If the results of the study stand up, it will perhaps begin to carve a real place for spiritualism in the lives of, let's say, "aggressively" rational people. That, I think, will be a great thing. Maybe we'll one day look at meditation and spiritual exercise as we now look at running, weight-lifting, and aerobics. I'm looking forward to the emergence of a Jane Fonda of meditation.

Meanwhile, a cornerstone in the same process of linking science and spirituality, this infamous fertility study, is collapsing. This is not to say that deep, concentrated prayer might not have similar benefits to meditation. But it remains a matter of faith that prayer can have any measurable effect on another person.

Anyway, it's too easy to read a political and ideological story line into these two stories: "Eastern religion has always been the baby of crazy liberal academics, so it's no wonder that meditation gets raised up on scientific evidence while prayer gets torn down." And I'm sure there's some conservative commentator somewhere who would happily howl that to her grave. I'm not sure that's really the most realistic or interesting connection between the two stories. I'll think more about this and maybe more will come out of it. But for now, I'll stop at connecting the dots.