Neurotheology

[Finder]

I figured I would post this info as a thread and hopefully a discussion on this field(slang name)of neuroscience.

I am sure most of you have heard about the "god helmet" and Dawkins experience with it. Here is a wired article by a journalist who did the experiment.

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/persinger.html

An excerpt:

Persinger has tickled the temporal lobes of more than 900 people before me and has concluded, among other things, that different subjects label this ghostly perception with the names that their cultures have trained them to use - Elijah, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Mohammed, the Sky Spirit. Some subjects have emerged with Freudian interpretations - describing the presence as one's grandfather, for instance - while others, agnostics with more than a passing faith in UFOs, tell something that sounds more like a standard alien-abduction story.

It may seem sacrilegious and presumptuous to reduce God to a few ornery synapses, but modern neuroscience isn't shy about defining our most sacred notions - love, joy, altruism, pity - as nothing more than static from our impressively large cerebrums. Persinger goes one step further. His work practically constitutes a Grand Unified Theory of the Otherworldly: He believes cerebral fritzing is responsible for almost anything one might describe as paranormal - aliens, heavenly apparitions, past-life sensations, near-death experiences, awareness of the soul, you name it.

[lvx35]

1. I never got the big theological significance of this.

You can stimulate neurons to see light that's not there, but that doesn't negate the existence of light...

[skids]

2. Well I'll give it this much...

...if his correlation between a person's existing belief system and their interpretation of the experience is solidly established, it does give an indication of the self-fulfilling-prophecy aspect is present in some perceived religious experiences -- i.e. those that fall within this category of phenomina.

It might be interesting for them to try and muster up some people who claim frequent out-of-body experiences and use it on them, or see what people who believe they are clairvoyant make of the experience.

[Finder]

3. I believe this is the field Sam Harris is in as well...

A psych profile was done on many of the subjects and Persinger does see a correlation between pre-conceived beliefs and results. Dawkins reports he did not have a religious experience but did have a tingling sensation. It will be interesting to see what current and future tests conclude for sure.

[lvx35]

5. Interesting point.

it does give an indication of the self-fulfilling-prophecy aspect is present in some perceived religious experiences

Yeah, or it shows religions to be symbol systems used by individuals to describe experiences beyond the normal, which is really interesting to me...I LOVE interpreting religious stories or myths as symbolic, its really revealing sometimes!

[greyl]

7. Some people say that religions began by trying to explain mysteries

of reality. Some of the same people think that unwavering faith in dogma can prevent the digestion of newfound knowledge, thus turning a once beneficial religion into a stagnant superstition.
That's where provisional science comes in explaining mysteries of reality.

[lvx35]

11. Yeah, its a powerful renewal source...

That's why I love science. I see true religion as being these sets of abstract ethical principles that shouldn't contradict reason, but work through reason. But I was thinking about where it doesn't, and it seems to me that religion is parasitized a great deal these days by people and ideas destructive to humanity. But it also came to me that science and certain atheistic types can act as bacteriophages that destroy the fundamentalist bacteria without harming the worthwhile abstract wisdom and ethical principles that are worth keeping.

[varkam]

4. Here's an excerpt I found particularly interesting

Delgado's relatively coarse stunts were a long way from Persinger's quest for the God spot, but Persinger is not the first to theorize that the Creator exists only in the complex landscape of the human noggin. In his controversial 1976 book, The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, Julian Jaynes, a Princeton psychologist, argued that the brain activity of ancient people - those living roughly 3,500 years ago, prior to early evidence of consciousness such as logic, reason, and ethics - would have resembled that of modern schizophrenics. Jaynes maintained that, like schizophrenics, the ancients heard voices, summoned up visions, and lacked the sense of metaphor and individual identity that characterizes a more advanced mind. He said that some of these ancestral synaptic leftovers are buried deep in the modern brain, which would explain many of our present-day sensations of God or spirituality.

[Finder]

6. It is sad that we are only now starting to ask the right questions...

regarding epilepsy, schizophrenia and other neuro conditions. The brain is the new undiscovered frontier.

[greyl]

8. "How Art Made the World" on PBS had a related episode

that offered an explanation of why the earliest artwork we know of looks the way it does.
It was either electrodes or flashing light that caused the host to see patterns that were very much like patterns found in the paintings. (It was explained that everyone "sees" the same things)

...
Scientists who study altered states of consciousness suggest the answer lies in the hard-wiring of the brain. People didn't just one day decide to invent making pictures. Rather, prehistoric artists where experiencing sensory deprivation deep within their caves—in a sort of trance state—resulting in powerful hallucinations. These hallucinations were of such powerful emotional importance they felt compelled to paint them on the walls. According to this theory, these artists were simply nailing down their visions.
http://www.pbs.org/howartmadetheworld/episodes/pictures/

I think altered states of consciousness probably have a lot more to do with the advent of religion than modern religions want to admit. I think there was a fourth wise man, and he brought the gift of shrooms. ;)

[TallahasseeGrannie]

9. Guess we could fix the problem

with a bit of surgery or medication, then?

Oh boy!

[patrice]

10. Whether there is what people call God or not doesn't make creation

one whit less wonderous nor less terribly beautiful.

I've thought about the chemical connections we have with reality through our nervous systems for a long time, at least ever since Francis Crick's Astonishing Hypothesis.

Words such as "God" and "Love" are just words. Experience is more than words, why discount experience when it doesn't fit our words for it.

Somehow the functional facts of neurophysiology make whatever is going on in this experience we call Life more rather than less.