Just thought I'd share. Might have been posted before. Religious experiences commonly found in those with temporal lobe ceasures. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qIiIsDIkDtg&feature=related
i see how it can influence visual, auditory and things like that, but what about experiences from a outside source. now ive both, heard of experiences from close friends and family, and read of many, of angels. now seeing hearing, i say could be influenced by brain activity, but physical things from a outside source. im not sayin tinglin or physical sensations, im talkin about people actually who have been PICKED UP, or physically moved b y "angels".. now i could say they're lying, and label there experiences bullshit, but ive heard so many of em, that you cant just say oh its bullshit, cause these experiences happen, how could your temporal lobes, influence outside physical forces?
there is a possibility where your brain starts confusing inner stimuli for the outside ones thus making the individual hear, see, and feel things that are not really there. being 'picked up' and seeing angels and what not easily fall under hallucinations. also schizophrenia and hyper-religiousness are related diseases, both affected by excess dopamine in the brain. if 'being picked up' happens to a schizophrenic then he is just said to have another episode. when the same thing happens to a religious individual then he is given the benefit of doubt by most because religion is seen as a personal viewpoint and not the disease/neurological disorder that it is.
it has been proven in laboratory that hyper-religiousness is associated with excess dopamine in the brain (e.g. Fred Previc -- The Dopaminergic Mind in Human Evolution and History). subjects were monitored while they were praying or in the middle of other religious activity, and/or in whom the so-called religious experiences were brought forth -- and the result was elevated dopamine levels comparable to the ones the schizophrenics have during their psychotic breaks. and when you think about it, the schizophrenic episodes are very similar to said religious experiences, UFO abductions, etc. so it seems tenable to me to think of (hyper-)religiousness as a neurological disorder. i am here, of course, relying on people who have written books about it -- i haven't seen these experiments in person -- but on the unlikelihood of these people going through all the trouble just to print out lies i take those books present accurate data on the matter. of course, religiousness is not as debilitating as schizophrenia, thus the lack of need to 'cure' it and/or see it as a disease. i am not the first one to draw a link between religiousness and neurological disorder. plenty have done so before but it goes mostly unconsidered admitting the possibility that religiousness could be a neurological disorder. ppl naturally refrain from it because we have amassed thousands of years of tradition and respect around it.
Yes, but there's a difference between hyper-religiousness and just being a religious person. I would tend to agree that people who have actual physical 'experiences' are probably hallucinating, or suffering from some other form of mental disorder. However, that doesn't seem like a good reason to characterize any form of belief as a mental disorder.
This seems to indicate that any form of religiosity is a mental disorder. Maybe you didn't mean it that way?
no. i mentioned hyper-religiousness in the beginning of that post and didn't feel like repeating the same word over again. i said 'when the same thing (i.e. the schizoid episode) happens to a religious individual' --then it's not seen as a disease which it is, specifying an actual religious episode as a symptom to view religiousness as a disease. it was in conjunction with the topic of the thread. of course, there are a lot of ppl who are affiliated with religion and/or call themselves religious or 'a person of faith' without their religiousness being indicative of any neurological disorder (i view that kind of attitude more as spirituality than actual religiousness, but that's just talking semantics). but i do think that those ppl who seriously believe that god (by god here i mean the god of the bible or any other particular god the religions have trumped up --- not an idea of god as such) exists have something a bit fucked up upstairs. whether that falls under neurological disorder, intellectual deficit, a form of obsessive-compulsive behavior, a result of a traumatic experience, or something else yet is unclear.
I remember learning about this in my A-Level RE class. I have undiagnosed temporal lobe epilepsy myself (as in, my neurologist had started investigating it, and he fully believed that is what I have, but after I fell pregnant it was never properly investigated). A good video to watch is called God on the Brain, commissioned by the BBC.
I like the test put forward by comedienne Lilli Tomlin: "When you talk to God, it's prayer; when God talks to you, its schizophrenia." Seriously, to dismiss all religiosity on this basis is not only bad science (overgeneralizing from the data) but might be indicative of possible emotional problems. Why is it so important to you what others believe? Are you working through problems with your mother, father, sister, brother,funny uncle,pet, etc.? What brain chemicals or temporal lobe defects are at work here? Because as I understand it, all of our thoughts and actions involve brain activity, ergo chemical action, of some sort. This is as true for atheists and agnostics, as it is evangelical Christians, Presbyterians, Buddhists, pagans, scientologists, financial advisers, nuclear physicists, Democrats, Republicans, NASCAR enthusiasts, etc. It's just some kinds of activities that get research funding, while others don't. Psychopathology is consists of activities that, by the consensus of "experts" make a person dangerous to self or others. Beyond that, generalization is risky.
I think it would be nice if everyone could debate things logically, without the need to resort to calling each other mentally ill. This goes both ways.
You're right, it would be nice. Of course I don't really believe that Meridianwest is crazy (could he say the same about me?), but I was trying to illustrate a point about how "science" can be misinterpreted in the advancement of ideology. None of the investigators themselves in these studies interpret their results as "proof" that religious experiences or spirituality are caused by neurological malfunctions or chemical imbalances, but journalists and internet forum participants make the claim a lot. To date, the findings are subject to either of two valid interpretations: (1) religion (or specific kinds of religious experience) is caused by natural phenomena; or (2) God made the brain to help us believe. Science has a definite bias in favor of the first interpretation, but good scientists admit that's all it is. One problem in all the studies is defining what is meant by religious phenomena. Dan Hamer, in the influential study The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes, measured religiousity as "self-transcendence", operationalized by a questionnaire. Two problems: (1) not all religious folks appear to have more self-trancendence than most other people, and (2) the definition would take in idealists from a variety of non-religious activities, from the Green Party to the Young Republicans. That study purported to find a link between the brain chemical monoamine and religiosity, but the findings account for a small percentage of the variance in scores among his subjects. The link provided in this thread is to Dr. Vilayamur Ramachandran, Director of the Brain Perception Laboratory at the University of California, San Diego. As the title to the thread indicates, Dr. Ramachandran has studied the relationship between certain kinds of epileptic seizures and temporal lobe malfuntioning. He recognizes that he is speculating when he asks whether or not changes in the brain's electrical circuitry might be responsible for other religious phenomena. The pioneering work of Canadian neuro-psychologist Dr. Michael Persinger, stimulated religious-like experiences by stimulating the amygdala in the temporal lobe with an electromagnet. Olaf Blanke in Switzerland, triggered "out of body" experiences by stimulating an area near the juncture of the temporal and parietal lobes. The parietal lobe is associated with out sense of self, and researchers like Brick Johnstone of the University of Missouri indicate that decreased activity in the parietal lobe is associated with the sense of selflessness found in highly religious people. That finding was confirmed by a study of Buddhist monks and Franciscan nuns reported in Zygon:The Journal of Religion and Science. Studies by Dr. Andrew Newberg of the Univeristy of Pennsylvania hospital, found that monks and Catholic nuns have larger, more active prefrontal cortexes than ordinary folks. Studies using MRI technology found that a variety of parts of the brain are involved in such activities as prayer and meditation, beginning with the frontal lobe, then the temporal and parietal lobes, and limbic system relating to the emotional centers of the brain. Barbara Hagerty, in Fingerprints of God, presents findings relating various religious phenomena to hyperstimulation of the temporal lobe, dopamine and serotonimn levels, the DRD4 gene, the VMT2 gene, theta waves, and gamma rhythms, but concludes there is no way to be certain whether or not, and to what extent, these might account for ordinary religiosity or spirituality. I might also mention the book by Newberg and Waldron, of the Univesity of Pennsylvania team, entitled How God Changes Your Brain, reporting positive neurological and health effects resulting from religion in making people more socially aware, while reducing anxiety, depression and stress. So there!
