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by xamuel
2390 days ago
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>The Aryans seem unlikely producers of a holy scripture, since their lives were not what we would call devout. I wonder where this idea comes from that only devout people can be inspired. People are shocked when they pick up the Old Testament and read about (e.g.) Abraham pretending his wife is his sister so a rival king will take her into his harem. Jesus said: who would love you more, a man whom you forgave a $5 debt, or a man whom you forgave a $500 debt? Obviously the latter! >Sound had always been sacred to the Aryans—it was far more important to them than the meaning of these hymns—so when they intoned and memorized them, the priests felt possessed by a sacred presence If you went to a physical therapist and he told you to move your tongue/lips/lungs in certain specific motions, which happened to produce noises, you wouldn't judge the exercise by the semantic content of those noises. Maybe scripture should be thought of like that. Exercises to train certain parts in the brain. Some (like the Vedas) train neurons associated with low-level tongue movements. Others (like the Christian gospels) train neurons associated with higher-level abstract concepts. |
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So the brain actually does have a special motor planning area for speech movements that is intermeshed with all the other parts of our language system, including semantics. As an example, when people have Apraxia (loss of coordination) they can have two different kinds, depending on where the lesion is: oral apraxia (loss of ability to move the jaw/tongue/cheeks/lips in NON speech tasks) or verbal apraxia (loss of coordination specifically for articulation movements). You are on to something interesting with your comment about "low-level tongue movements" vs. movements associated with communication.
I wonder what an fMRI would look like on someone reciting these Vedic hymns (in a language they do not fully possess) vs. someone reciting hymns in their native language? And what if you had an English-speaking Christian recite hymns in another language they don't know, like German or Latin or Greek?