Neurotheology

Discussion in 'Religion Archives' started by Cris, Oct 5, 2003.

  1. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    This thread is somewhat similar to at least two others we have had but this is the first time I realized that the science had a name.

    http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ww2/A933635

    Neurotheologists have found that spiritual experiences of people, from Tibetan monks3, to Franciscan nuns have certain things in common. It would seem that prayer and meditation produce very similar results, both as described by the people experiencing them, and in the brains of volunteers as viewed by neurobiologists. Such experiences are very often described in terms that blur the lines between self and 'not-self'; people describe how they are at one with the world or universe, that they no longer existed as separate entities. They also describe how they feel the presence of God, how they are at one with Him, how they hear His voice. They even feel absorbed into His being, or His being permeating theirs. They experience timelessness, infinity, centring, quieting, nothingness, and out-of-body experiences. Can all of this really be described and witnessed using a glorified X-ray machine which tracks blood around your head? Strangely enough, yes...

    'Religious' or 'spiritual' experiences are ubiquitous amongst all peoples. This phenomenon must have a common underlying cause. The question remains; is neurotheology directly witnessing how people tap into the divine, a common truth that people throughout the ages have discovered time and time again? Or, has neurotheology found common biological structures in the brain that unwittingly generate 'spiritual' experiences, which are interpreted by the individual through the lens of their religion? Whatever the answer, neurotheology has made leaps and bounds in understanding just where and what shape the 'God-shaped hole' is within the heads of human beings and what role certain areas of the brain plays in religious and spiritual belief.

    When faced with requests to prove their claims that there is a god theists usually and eventually give up on attempts at showing physical evidence and instead insist that God reveals himself at a personal level and all that one has to do to acquire this evidence is to genuinely believe and open yourself to God in prayer and he will willingly reveal himself. That such people then experience warm, pleasant, fuzzy feelings that convince them that God is present, seem to be very real. But I achieve the same through meditation except I don’t call it God but stress relief instead.

    If I can use a helmet that generates a field that gives the same effect or if I can take a pill that also does the same, or if I simply meditate, then when we compare the fantastic claims of a God capable of creating the universe that causes these effects with this now revealed very mundane feature of the human brain, then, well…the conclusion seems something of a no-brainer (pun intended for the benefit of believers).

    When we consider that there is no physical evidence for the existence of God and now we know that the brain can produce the alleged ‘personal’ evidence by itself, then can there be any real doubt that God simply is pure fiction? The theists simply have no basis remaining for their claims.

    Perhaps very soon instead of real religions if people want a spiritual experience on demand they can put on a headset and have religion parties with others. Of course many already use recreational drugs and do the same thing. In a real sense believers appear to be no more than pleasure addicts.

    But seriously, what is left of the theist claim of personal evidence when we can see it is simply self induced?
     
    Last edited: Oct 5, 2003
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  3. okinrus Registered Senior Member

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    Can you explain somethings about this article?

    <i><b>When the superior parietal-lobe is blocked, it cannot find the boundary between self and the world, the brain has no choice but to perceive the self as endless, interwoven with everyone and everything. </b></i>
    What exactly is this thing called "self" and why would the brain necessarly percieve everything to be endless?

    <i><b>Famous sufferers of temporal-lobe epilepsy include Lewis Carroll, Joan of Arc, Edgar Allan Poe, Philip K Dick, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Dostoevsky, Muhammad, Van Gogh, Moses, and Saint Paul. </b></i>
    And this was proven by who? Is it possible that Joan of Arc could have been hit on the head as a little girl resulting in pathological lying?

    <i><b>When the epileptic electrical 'crackling' wrongly switches it on, people are fooled into thinking the voice is coming from outside themselves. </b></i>
    So what causes the inner voice to sound different from the other inner voice? What exactly is an inner voice anyways?
     
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  5. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Cris:

    <i>If I can use a helmet that generates a field that gives the same effect or if I can take a pill that also does the same, or if I simply meditate, then when we compare the fantastic claims of a God capable of creating the universe that causes these effects with this now revealed very mundane feature of the human brain, then, well…the conclusion seems something of a no-brainer (pun intended for the benefit of believers).</i>

    Proving that you can generate religious-like experiences with a helmet does not answer the question of what produces those experiences when the helmet is not present.
     
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  7. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    James,

    The article describes types of concentration and focus, e.g. meditation or prayer, that generate these effects, i.e. are self induced. The use of additional aids such as a special helmet or drugs simply show that the brain can be manipulated artificially as well. The point is that once the right conditions are generated, either self induced or otherwise then the “spiritual” effect will likely occur.

    The issue I see is one of credibility: If we know the brain is so easily susceptible to natural stimuli that can generate a “spiritual” sensation then why would we ever consider the quantum leap to an otherwise unsupported supernatural influence?
     
  8. James R Just this guy, you know? Staff Member

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    Cris:

    (Playing Devil's advocate here...)

    <i>The point is that once the right conditions are generated, either self induced or otherwise then the “spiritual” effect will likely occur. </i>

    Perhaps the right conditions include contact with God?

    <i>The issue I see is one of credibility: If we know the brain is so easily susceptible to natural stimuli that can generate a “spiritual” sensation then why would we ever consider the quantum leap to an otherwise unsupported supernatural influence?</i>

    That's a personal choice, I guess. Also, I think religious people would argue that there is quite a lot of other support for supernatural influence.
     
  9. Medicine*Woman Jesus: Mythstory--Not History! Valued Senior Member

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    DMT

    Cris, I just read through a book at the bookstore. It was the results of 5 years of neurobio.... something or other. It's about a chemical called "DMT" that stands for something like di-methyl-melatonin-tryptophan. The tryptophan is really the only accurate chemical name. What the doctor found was that the neurotransmitter serotonin plays a part in religious hallucinations. He went further to discover DMT. It is the elevated tryptophan that causes these experiences. Predominantly, when his patients were given graduated doses of tryptophan, they experienced alien abductions, religious apparitions, etc. I didn't thoroughly read it while I was at the store, but it was a study out of the University of New Mexico from 1990-1995. That brings me to the question if the neurotransmitted halluciations occured throughout history, that would explain some of the religious beliefs. Maybe this chemical can be found in the diet. The name of the book has DMT, so it might be found on the Internet. Interesting theory. Wish I could remember more of it. It does bring us closer to understanding of why human's created religions. As you know tryptophan has been banned from OTC sales in the US.
     
  10. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    James,

    Yes and that was part of the conclusion in the article. But the usual theist argument is that a true spiritual experience only comes from God through belief and faith. I have no such belief or faith yet I can achieve the same experience through meditation, or other means.

    All that the theist is doing is placing their arbitrary label on a universally experienced brain function. I could equally give my own label to the function. The theist claims that such experiences are proof for them that God exists. I have lost count of the number of times in debates with theists that I have been accused of being unable to understand their position because I haven’t genuinely opened up my heart to God and that only that personal ‘evidence’ will convince me that God exists. What we see here is that they do not have anything special since the same experience can be generated by an electrical device. What then remains for the uniqueness of this God experience if it is indistinguishable to the effect from a mundane device?

    Yet in most debates I witness where physical evidence is required the theists never deliver and the argument ends in one of a reliance on faith and hence a debate about epistemology. Ultimately they have nothing but their personal experience which apparently can be very easily self-induced.

    But again I think the issue of credibility is huge. A simple biological feature of the brain being mistaken for the existence of an all-powerful super being.
     
  11. Cris In search of Immortality Valued Senior Member

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    M*W,

    Thanks. Interesting.
     
  12. proteus42 Registered Senior Member

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    Cris,

    According to the article you linked, the brain can be physically or chemically manipulated in such a way as to generate religious experiences in us. Maybe this discovery (I suppose for the sake of argument that it is true) is only a necessary step human kind will have to take to go beyond "religion" as we now know it. But I'd like to comment on a broader issue, that of the physico-chemical manipulation of the brain.

    If life is really "a tale told by an idiot" that signifies nothing, then we drift in the infinite space without any clue or command from an Absolute as to how we should conduct our lives. People we call "religious" don't agree with this and say that the Absolute takes care of our lives and gives its meaning to it. Discoveries, such as the one in the article, point out that even our deepest religious experiences may be caused by chemical changes in the brain, inducable from outside through appropriate devices.

    Let's take this to the extreme and imagine the state of human kind where you can take pills that help you to get rid of your fear of death, anxiety, etc. through manipulating the biochemical structures of your brain tissue. As a consequence, the line between "hard" reality and "virtual" reality would quickly dissolve. But that would be no problem as long as the pill factories work and pills are available to extinguish fears. No, no, my next sentence will not be "and imagine the chaos when the factories stop working for lack of control" because that's a trivial problem. Rather, I'd like to show why it is desirable for human kind to attain such a state: basically, because only in that state could the individual members of human kind choose, absolutely freely, the way they want to live and die. At present, our lives are constrained very much by emotions such as aggression, jealousy, etc. that we have because of our evolutionary history. Whether we like it or not, we now have to live in the emotional space created by the chance biological forces of the past. But if we could disentangle ourselves from these limitations through conscious decisions, we could play the drama of existence as absolutely free actors, not as helpless puppets in the bondage of our own inherited instincts, emotions, and fears.

    I do not think this would cause a hedonistic human kind to come into being. Obviously there would be some (maybe many) who'd choose to live that way. But there would be even more who, having got rid of the inborn emotional bondage, would realize the superbness of existence, which is the goal of true religion.
     
  13. Medicine*Woman Jesus: Mythstory--Not History! Valued Senior Member

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    Creating neurotheological experiences

    Cris, I'm sure you already understand when I have used the term, "Spirit of God," that I am referring to a force of energy, not a religious entity, so I wanted to paste a comment I made recently on another thread that would relate to neurochemical halluciations. This was in response to jcarl:

    "Sorry, I don't believe in a Lake of Fire, Hell, Brimstone, Hades, Shaol, Valhalla, etc. Hell is the absence of the Spirit of God. Hell is a vacuum. It is the polar opposite to heaven which is the Spirit of God indwelling." (NOTE: Maybe we can now call it 'brain function.') "Hell is fear. Hell is what YOU make of it. Your hell may be different from mine and different from the next guy. We create our own hell, and we do it so very well! HELL'S LOCATION IS RIGHT BETWEEN OUR EARS."
     
  14. everneo Re-searcher Registered Senior Member

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    'God spot' comes back again!.
     

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