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Scientists Deliver 'God' Via A Helmet
prostoalex writes "Scientific American is reporting on scientific work done to map the euphoric religious feelings within the brain. As a result, it's now quite possible to experience 'proximity to God' via a special helmet: 'In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence — a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is — or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language — terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe.""
First post.
The effect described sounds like the euphoric feeling you sometimes get while on acid. Minus the hallucinations.
I, for one, welcome our new brain-controlling divine overlords.
Angry religious leaders @ 9.
Sensing something that is not there.... surely that classifes as hallucination
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Imagine using this as part of an interrogation of a religious extremist terrorist. The interrogators could have God on their side.
Maybe the "born agains" will shut up now we can re-create these experiences.
Make SELinux enforcing again!
This is proof that Science is a Tool of the Devil!
Oh, Jebus, curse these rotten, immoral Satanic Scientists to the ever-lasting hell they deserve!
Ok, so it isn't the quite the same... but it sounds similar to the "Penfield Mood Organ" from "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"
If it doesn't harm the brain, sign me up for one. As a born-again atheist (raised in a religious household,) I'd like to have some of those euphoric "divine" feelings that I've never experienced - even if I know its just electrically induced.
(And yes, I've tried recreational chemistry.)
Geeze... slashdot has degraded and debased itself constantly with Zonk at the wheel... Religion - when you constantly bash it, you show (1) How afraid of it you are and (2) Give it more validation than discredit because of item (1). Get off you anti-religion kick and stick to new that matters....
That was just CowboyNeal thinking out loud.
I hate to be the one to say it, but this has already been done in the past.. http://thedailyleaf.com/brain_god.txt Though I assume this one is done non-invasively..
- Aetheral Research -
...maybe the fields actually force "God" to show up in the room while it's switched on.
(Hey, no less crazy than any other hypothesis out there)
This is old news - didn't Newsweek have this guy on the front cover like 8 years ago? I think Wired did a write up as well back in the day.
I grok helmet.
It's like the force. I mean, make it seem like something is there that isn't. But unfortunately this is profoundly less useful as it stands, or it can be used to induce a different religion in folks.
For those who seek perfection there can be no rest on this side of the grave.
Hmm, now we know what is inside the Pope's Egyptian style helmet. So those Pharaos really did have advanced technology...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
Sounds like a hop skip and a jump from Niven's wireheads.
Ice Cream has no bones.
Bugs Bunny: [singing] Oh, mighty warrior of great fighting stock! Might I inquire to ask-Eh, [eats a carrot] what's up, Doc?
Elmer Fudd: [singing] I am going to kill the Wabbit!
Bugs Bunny: [singing] Oh, mighty hunter, twil be quite a task. How will you do it? Might I inquire to ask?
Elmer Fudd: [singing] I will do it with my spear and magic helmet!
Bugs Bunny: [singing] Your spear and magic helmet?
Elmer Fudd: [singing] Spear and magic helmet!
Bugs Bunny: [singing] Magic helmet?
Elmer Fudd: [singing] Magic helmet!
Bugs Bunny: Magic helmet.
Along with several of the rest of his stories: http://www.rifters.com/real/shorts.htm
It's because of Persinger's work that I regard fervent religious behaviour as "Right Amydaloidal Masturbation" (RAMming for short).
In a similar way that Ren & Stimpy's Happy Helmet directly stimulates the pleasure centres of the brain or Ford Prefect's bit of wire pulls a robot's Happy pin high, RAMming directly stimulates a person's sense of God or 'truth' or whatever.
Blancmange
...after seeing the volunteer scream "Oh, GOD! Oh, GOD!" while being stimulated.
I think they discovered a G-something, but not exactly God.
Mayhaps you can go to this spiritual realm and search for some common sense?
Control is an illusion, order our comforting lie. From chaos, through chaos, into chaos we fly
funny, i dont feel the need to talk about my non-belief until someone tries to 'educate' me on their belief system. its not exactly a catch-22 when large, well-funded groups have dedicated their resources in an attempt to un-secularize my country.
turn up the jukebox and tell me a lie
Just because you can replicate the sensory experience of something by "poking" at the brain doesn't mean that a real outside stimulus is false. For instance, I think you could probably make the brain experience the sensory perception of color by "poking" at the visual cortex. That doesn't change the fact that there are real world stimuli that evoke this experience as well. In short, showing that the brain is capable of experiencing something because of a different, artificial stimulus does not predict or rule out the primary "natural" source of that experience. Although it does present an interesting question for evolutionary theory - why does this perception ability exist?
What if a unit was developed that didn't have to be worn and could affect large groups of people... I think we'd see a mysterious increase in church attendance
The interrogators could have God on their side.
They already believe that they do. That's the whole problem.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
No, my name is not Stinky Wizzleteats.
Blancmange
...to advertisers. If they can just modify the god helmet to accommodate subjects at a distance of several feet away, then prospective customers will be overwhelmed with feelings of profound euphoria while being introduced to the latest revisions in product design. I'll bet it's significantly more affective than sexually suggestive imagery. And I can't wait!
First of all, this is an old experiment, I remember reading about it a long time ago. But while it's interesting from a neuroscience point of view to discover the location of these experiences within the brain, it doesn't give us any philosophical insight into the existence or non-existence of God. On the one hand, it could be that the religious experiences that people have had throughout history were caused by random events stimulating this bit of the brain. But from the theistic perspective, it seems obvious that if God exists He would build the brain with some capacity to detect His presence under certain circumstances -- just as we can't say that the fact the experience of seeing colour is caused by certain brain regions being stimulated means that colour doesn't exist except in our heads, we can't say that this experiment proves that God is just in our heads either. So: philosophically uninteresting.
This sounds very similar to the God device described by Norman Spinrad in his political fantasy "Other Americas".
but perhaps, and I am just saying perhaps, this is a communication region in the brain, and stimulating it analogous to stimulating the nerve of the ear, or stimulating the region of the brain interpreting signals from the eye. It would seem if you wanted a religious explanation, this could be the "communication center" for an other state of being than the one we're currently in. Like I said, this will be an unpopular opinion.
We're Catholics here. For us, God is more like the feeling of working for a really, really great supervisor rather than the euphoric high with the helmet thing. For that, I need about 48 oz of cold beer.
To be sure of hitting the target, shoot first, and call whatever you hit the target.
They're pretty much saying:
"The God Consciousness is X, and these guys here have found it!"
Well, how do you know?
"Well, because we found it! They, like, 'feel' it. God is X! Kewl, eh? Ipso Facto, we are teh shit!"
The word "feeling" or similar appears about 15 times in that article. Not exactly 'scientific'.
Wake me when someone with a clue has something to say about spirituality, mmmkay?
Mod down people who tell people how to mod in their sigs
Google has more on neurotheology
This seems like more proof of what I personally believe, that there is nothing mysterious or supernatural in our universe. Everything in human history about religion and spirituality is just our minds and imaginations running around playing tricks. Religion is a Ouija board; and we're all moving our own hands and pretending there's something great and magical out there that's doing it. Our minds are so primitive and easily tricked that we can even induce this feeling artificially. People have been doing it for a long time, long before this device. LSD users report the same kind of experiences as well as hallucinations. I'm not trying to say that having these experiences is a bad thing, but take it for what it's worth. It's an interesting or novel change in your perception, but it's transient, and only "real" insofar that it really happened to you, outside of your own mind everything is chugging along normally and the world is no different, no more mysterious or wondrous than it was before.
There's plenty of wonder in the world to be experienced without using a Ouija board.
If you build it, nerds will come. Soylentnews.org
This proves nothing. If I can make a drug that causes you to think that a dog is in the room when there isn't one, it does not prove the non-existence of dogs.
I for one think spirituality is not beyond the realms of psycology or neuroscience. I have long held the idea that its always been a product of the imagination. The human brain is very good at that.
The theists seem to always be the ones (in my own experiences) been the ones that do the insisting and the forcing and the "hell threats" and I for one dont sit down and take that, of course I will retaliate. Then they go on bitching about how I have no respect for their religion. Which is true but not something I should be ashamed of
They honestly expect me to say "I resepct your belifs" when they say "I belive you deserve to burn forever"? Please thats as big as a double standard as you get, and they dont even deny it being a double standard. And people wonder why retaliate.
This "god box" just helpes me maintain my position for the next time some theist tries to threaten me with a never ending BBQ
Make SELinux enforcing again!
Imagine if you could get a machine that could give a whole room full of people the feeling of god at the press of a button. Has amazing potential for abuse. What if it fit in your pocket and worked within a proximity - then everyone around you would feel your presence! hmmm, I wonder if my wife would then show me respect? Probably not :-(
I wonder how it would apply to sales, getting a job, meeting the oppsite sex, a president negotiating with another one. Certainly would add value to face time.
Australian running a company that does C# / C++ / Java / SQL / Python / Mathematica
The fact that religious experiences can be induced is not news and will do nothing but piss people off. The intelligent religious people will rightly say that it proves nothing- perhaps this is the API God uses to create those experiences. The nutty religious people will simultaneusly condemn this research and deny that it exists. The "Science trumps god" group will see this as yet another nail in God's coffin.
The funny thing about it is that everybody but the nutjobs can be right.
I'm an atheist, but if you can show me conclusive proof that God, an omnipotent being, does not exist, I'll buy you a drink.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
Well, I know a lot of people will say this proves that God doesn't exist. However, if the scientists were able to successfully create the sensation and sight of eating a jelly donut, without the actual donut being present, would you then conclude that donuts don't exist?
Or, more generally, the successful creation of an effect neither proves nor disproves the existance of other possible causes for the effect.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
http://images.google.com/images?gbv=2&svnum=50&hl=en&safe=off&q=beer+helmet&btnG=Search+Images
I am somewhat concerned that they may be in charge of Gundam.
And if not, why not?
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
It's all happened before, even in the days before Slashdot.
The results of the experiments are consistent with the mind-numbingly banality of the reports of God, Satan, Heaven, Hell and astral travelling trips.
There's a good reason people can spend an hour describing what they did on a day out at the beach, whereas people who claim to have experienced Heaven can't bear to describe it for more than a few minutes. Heaven's all 'wonderful,' you see, but nothing in the recount of Heaven is anything to write home about. Quite a lot of recounts of Heaven are pretty tasteless, rather Hellish, even.
In contrast, one who is recalling a day out at the beach will have no trouble identifying what it was about the experience that made them happy.
Therefore it's far more plausible that in a Heaven NDE, the 'Wonderful' button was being directly stimulated so that nothing in the experience need be interesting at all.
It's a wirehead thing.
Blancmange
After a few months of trying and reading books I can do this with yoga and produce as much endorphins as I want... but I am very grumpy the rest of the day I find.
when can i get one?
\.
Interesting, but let us use a bit of logic and cut out the emotionally laden bits.
Someone has simulated the feeling that when the helmet is focused on the temporal lobes, it
So in most of the subjects, they created a sensation that was interrupted as someone else was in the room, OR cosmic bliss, OR a divine presence. I have also known people who know internal peace (sometimes incorrectly referred to as God) by way of alcohol, drugs, or sex. If God is only an emotion, then Persinger has recreated Him/Her/It, just more expensively, and much less portably."What luck for the rulers that men do not think." - Adolph Hitler
a new discipline with the warring titles "neurotheology" and "spiritual neuroscience"...might reconcile religion and science
There's nothing to be reconciled, you can't, they're fundamentally based of different principles (mainly re. falsify-ability)
You can, however, just chill the hell out, and realise they do different things. And you can do experiments which (I'm waiting with baited breath for this) will be interpreted in different ways.
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
You mean, like a giant fourteen-storey high electromechanical digital clock with a huge, vibrating magnetic field lobe poking out from one side of the device?
Blancmange
I thought Cpt. Kirk already solved this philosophical dilemma for us?
--- There is a man in a smiling bag.
Don't let the Scientologists get a hold of this. They'll charge an arm and a foot for service.
Table-ized A.I.
Researchers failed to repeat the "God Helmet" experiment. It is therefore pseudo-science, even though it may agree with your prejudices. It's funny how people only see what they want to see...
Prepare for the new "War on God helmets" (a.k.a. the war on God helmet users).
With movement, there is more associated than the brain (actually far more), all the nerve going from and to the muscle, and all the reflex system (lower brain?). One can demonstrably show that this part of the brain is used for movement. If there was no muscle, or no lower brain for reflex, the Parent would have a point. The same for the OP with his color example. If there was demonstrably no organ to sense color he would have a point, but there is the eye, the optic nerve, and the attachment thereof in the brain. Now if he could give the sensation of color to blind born people that would be something else... And here is the big difference again : there is no "godly" organ which seem to be associated with this stimulation. There does not seem to be any processus which use this sensation or generate it, or use it. Mind you, it could be that we did not find it, but at this point we can certainly say that it seems that feeling the divine is caused by stimulation of those part of the brain. That does NEITHER allow one to conclude that god exists or not. And that is all we can conclude.
Now if you really want to mix up religion with science, then you have to demonstrate that the feeling of god sensation is generated by something else, you ARE the one with the claim. I can demonstrate that stimulating for movement is linked to the muscle, and color sensation is linked to photon hitting the retina, in the absence of direct stimulation by electrode. You OTOH pretend there might be another explanation for the feeling of divine than random brain function, you pretend that a real god come into play. The burden of evidence to demonstrate it is on your side. It certainly is a good hypothese (but again no evidence) that the idea of god existing came AFTER human felt this sensation and thus gods were born. It does not need a special entity with all the additional question necessitating it.
The bottom line is that the original parent mixed religion and science, and got it backward, by stating it does not disprove god. If the original parent want to bring god in the play, then he has to demonstrate that just like the photon example, the stimulus is originated from outside the brain and from god.
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
If for example I had a "taste box" that made everything taste like chocolate...it doesn't prove that nothing exists that tastes of chocolate.
And for all the theists I know, only a small fraction would tell people they are going to burn in hell or go around forcing people (forcing what exactly?). The overwhelming majority don't do that and either silently disagree (by respecting your beliefs) or state their beliefs in a civil, non confrontational way. On what you say about a double standard I think you're reading different semantics to what they mean. You can respect (accept someone has a POV in a civil manor), but disagree with them.
Why aren't the NSA and the CIA all over this?
Forget waterboarding and all those other physically traumatic methods of torture. They ought to be all over this stuff looking for ways to convince their secret prisoners that their god is speaking to them directly, ordering them to give up their secrets to the interrogators.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
But can you prove it's not just all in your mind?
Stop! Dremel time!
Why would god need a special stimulus ? How about visual stimulus ? Aural ? Touch ? Taste ? Pressure ? All of them together ? Not enough ? As for the colour example this is not what I would call a good example. We all get the photon in our retina and it get interpreted by the brain as colour. This interpretation can and certainly differ from individual to individual, and sometimes presented with the SAME wavelength the brain interpret it differently (remember the optical illusion of two checkered board one with light color one with dark color, the central quadrant being in both the same color, but the brain see it as different color due to the dark/light tone around it) so there is way more playroom than you let it on.
Anyway a non disprovable, non falsifiable entity like god is uninteresting for science. Philosophy want to bring god on the plate ? Then philosophy and theist better get logic not backward. One does not suppose the hypotheses that god exists then interpret everything that way saying "god exists and it is so", one does try to prove the existence of god using philosophical or natural arguments. Last time I was in a philosophy class back in 1989 this was done this way. And yes the above article is not uninterresting philosophically because it pause this quite HARD to answer question : Could it be that this sensation alone is enough to give birth of the idea of gods (along with other classical cognitive reinforcement, like the tendency of human to see causality everywhere, and the tendency to ignore engative reinforcement and concentrate on positive reinforcement) ? Or do we really need the existence of gods ?"
C. Sagan : A demon haunted world:
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0345409469/
visit randi.org
So, if, for example, I had a "good book" inside of which it is stated that there is a god, it doesn't prove there is a god?
... that will use this as proof of God in 3... 2... 1...
The article talks about mapping the active brain areas during these expirences but never mentions inducing them.
I'm not aware of any simple helment method the allows pinpoint stimulation, if such a beast existed it would be very interesting.
Correct. There is *nothing* that can prove nor disprove the existance of God...including the "good book". I can not show you something that will undeniably prove it to you. The "good book" does indeed state the existance of God but it talks about it through faith, not proof.
But it hardly disproves the existance of God when there are so many other unanswered questions that aethists don't appear to have answers for....in my opinion that are conclusive.
Name one. Then name one piece of evidence that would even lead someone to think that there were anything remotely like a "god."
Also, you need to learn how to spell "existence."
The Farewell Tour II
This is the most ridiculous argument anyone has ever made. In no other area of human "thinking" (I'll use the term loosely here) would anyone seriously claim that something exists when there is no reason to even suspect that it might.
Believing in "god" makes less sense than believing that there is a 747 jumbo jet at the center of the Sun. At least in the case of the 747 those actually do exist.
The Farewell Tour II
Tact
:-)
1. The sense of touch; feeling.
2. The stroke in beating time.
3. Sensitive mental touch; peculiar skill or faculty; nice perception or discernment; ready power of appreciating and doing what is required by circumstances.
( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tact )
Tack
1. small nail with a flat head
2. loose seam used to temporarily fasten pieces of cloth
3. (nautical) part of a sail (Wikipedia) specifically the lower corner on the leading edge of the sail relative to the direction of the wind.
4. (nautical) direction, hence approach try a different tack. Specifically a course or direction that enables the vessel to head upwind. See also reach, gybe.
5. part of the harnessing for a draft animal or riding animal, e.g. a horse pulling a wagon, or a riding horse. Includes bit, bridle and reins.
( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tack )
Tack No. 4
People miss this one all the time, you adopt a tack, tact is what I lack
Can't we all just get along
I'm not aware of any questions or situations that would require an atheist to provide an answer. Enlighten me.
god is a helmet, helmet.
His example was just as valid as any other could be:
"Another device from the novel is the "Penfield Mood Organ," named for neurologist Wilder Penfield, which induces emotions in its users. The user can dial a setting to obtain a mood. Examples include "awareness of the manifold possibilities of the future," "desire to watch television, no matter what's on it," "pleased acknowledgement of husband's superior wisdom in all matters," and "desire to dial." Many users have a daily schedule of moods. The Mood Organ also has a setting for depression states, which contradict its original purpose to cheer up its user." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep%3F
A device which can make you see god also sounds like the mercerism box in DADOES?
Its not the rarest meme in sci fi but YGBM (you gotta believe me) technology is well explored in a book I picked up called Rainbow's End, Vernor Vinge was the author I think.
Can't we all just get along
I've discovered that I can induce the impression of being in an astronomical observatory using an elongated piece of wood to make accelerated contact with the scalp. This phenomenon is better known in popular culture as "seeing stars".
Table-ized A.I.
Not everybody inside the helmet experienced 'God'.
It depended on their upbringing. Those that believed in God/Ghosts/Oneness tended to experience God/Ghosts/Oneness.
So if there was a Godsense to experience a god, why does the this sense depend on the person's beliefs?
Athiests never experienced a god in this device, only thiests did.
It is not like sensing colour, upon which we can agree.
Perhaps this provides no evidence either way to the thiest (at first order),
but to this athiest this does support his argument by allowing for an understanding of how religious belief
continues to be supported (those that believe due to such personal occurances) and perhaps how some religious belief came to be (justification of this feeling with the supposition of an external, supernatural force).
This does in turn dispute the theist's argument for God based upon the existance of this feeling,
and those that believe due to personal experience.
I've undergone this experience in the past, and can say that it is both incredible and frightening to experience.
What is scary is that the experience is accompanied by a feeling of 'knowing the truth' that can be life-changing,
and I now understand what it must have been like for the seers and prophets of old who did not have the benefit
of a scientific cultural upbringing.
One final frightening note: Persinger's initial publications mentioned a surver he conducted at his University
which discovered that more than 10% of educated, university students would commit murder if they believed it
would be of benefit to their god.
I just want to know where I can buy one? Better be quick, for damn sure the government won't want you to be able to get one of these.
10001001111001110110011000011101110
they need to stimulate other parts of your brain :)
Patents Drive Free Software as Hurricanes Drive Construction Industry
It shows that an experience can be triggered, but going from point A to point B at this point is foolish. The brain is capable of many things and we understand it's complexity very little. Aside from filing under interesting I think it would be ignorant to jump to any other conclusions. We are a long way from that kind of understanding.
Quack, quack.
I'm not giving up my tinfoil hat for what you call 'God'.
$> cd
$> more beer
Maybe you clicked reply on the wrong post?
This is (yet another) good reason for not basing one's actions, beliefs and decisions on emotion, but rather on reason. I myself am religious, but from a pragmatic starting point, i.e. I do not base my beliefs on feeling, but on what I classify as evidence. Before you ask, yes, I have a good grasp of statistics and human behaviour, but believe in a God nevertheless.
True, it just tells us that there is probably nothing "magical" or "divine" about the experience itself. Indeed, if the experience can be triggered in a laboratory, it is reasonable to assume it happens "naturally" outside of the laboratory as well -- it doesn't necessarily follow that the such natural experiences accurately correspond to actual phenomena any more than is the case when people put on this helmet. Feeling as if you're in the presence of a god, demon, ghost or lurking shadow monster is something most of us can say we've experienced, but empirical evidence for gods, demons, ghosts and shadow monsters is decidedly lacking. The most rational explanation for such experiences is they are all "in our heads" so to speak. That doesn't mean it's the correct explanation, but it's the one I'm going with for the time being.
It is an interesting question, but it should be asked with the proper emphasis, in the proper context. Being capable of sensing the presence of empirically unverifiable entities is an ability in the same way that being fooled by an optical illusion is an ability. So instead of asking "why" we have evolved this "ability," I would ask how we have evolved this attribute.
It could be that this attribute itself conferred some useful survival and reproductive benefit, or it could be a neutral or slightly counterproductive "side effect" of attributes that are too advantageous to have been eliminated by natural selection. Humans, like many animals, have an agency detection system of sorts
Combining these two attributes (overactive agency detection + social simulation, projection and empathy) it's not hard to imagine why people might sometimes have experiences such as those described in the article and that they would take the shape of religious icons that have been conditioned from youth to treat as real, true and important. Given the self-propagating and self-reinforcing (what you might call "memetic") quality of these beliefs and their consequential social importance, it may indeed be in one's best interest (from a survival and reproductive point of view) to at least give the appearance of earnestly believing in them, which the occasionally "feeling" of an invisible "presence" would help produce. So it could be a component of a sort of evolutionary feedback loop.
For more on religion from a sociobiological perspective, and its potential implications, I recommend Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett and Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer. The preceding is mostly a crude reformulation or extension of the ideas contained within those volumes.
You're mixing a whole boatload of discontiguous issues together to make your point. "No reason to suspect [God] might exist" - you don't think your existance is a good reason to at least contemplate it? The "good book" doesn't try to prove anything. Its a series of accounts, providing evidence (no I won't cite, feel free to read it yourself), of things that took place 2000+ years ago. And heres the thing - it answers key questions to what humankind seeks to find out. Whether you believe the evidence is there to support it, amongst other things, is a choice you make. But I don't hear answers from any other quarter.
Your 747 quip makes no equivalent sense to me to what we're talking about. I always enjoy these conversations - its very interesting to see how much time and effort atheists put into these debates over something that "doesn't exist".
For some it will be a boon. The scientologists will claim that it is a device which lets you see God, and claim prior art, saying it was invented in a previous incarnation.
Seriously, just as some fringe religious groups promote using acid for divine experience I doubt that it will be long before this is used by some group as a tool of religion.
Where did your ability to think and reason come from? Where did your notion of right and wrong come from? Every action has an equal and opposing reaction - what caused the amount of energy to kick off the big bang, or, what happened 1 second before the big bang? If I can't prove to you I love my 3 daughters does that mean I don't?
Tell that to the Cathars http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathars#Albigensian_Crusadeor the Catholics in Tudor times.
"...or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth." That reveals a "universal truth"? Maybe it reveals some truth about human neurology, but you can't really extrapolate that to mean it's revealing a universal theological truth. It could be that all human brains fire up the same way when they're thinking about the comforting notion of a higher power--it doesn't mean this is evidence of the existence of a higher power.
Big deal. The sybian has been around for years, and gives you the same effect.
I object to that article, and to the next reply.
It's not entirely a new phenomenon, and your mentioning acid reminds me of the rampant ergotism, a.k.a. St Anthony's fire they had at times in the middle ages.
Short version: it's produced by the toxin a parasitic fungus that grows on certain kinds of grain and grass. Eating contaminated grains produces LSD-like hallucinations, but also extreme vasoconstriction that often (but not always, if the dose is low enough) results in gangrene. Which in turn often resulted in death.
Apparently, the problem was big enough at times that (A) they had a monk order (the Order of St. Anthony) specialized in trying to save people affected by the result, and (B) outbreaks of whole freakin' cities dancing euphorically in the streets and having mystical/religious visions and revelations.
Kinda makes me wonder how many of the prophecies and martyrdoms that the the various religions were based on, well, were just the result of hallucinations. I mean, obviously some people lied their arse off to gain an advantage or revenge in the name of religion, but I'm willing to admit that some were genuinely honest and relating miracles and stuff they actually witnessed. Or, rather, and this is the important part: thought they witnessed, while on an ergot trip. Or while they were delirious with fever, or having a bad heat stroke (having visions and revelations in the desert sure was common), or any other kind of hallucination and delirium.
For example, at the risk of offending the French, I wonder about Joan d'Arc. Went and fought for the good ol' Salic law that women can't inherit anything at all, and got burned at the stake... all supposedly because of a divine vision commanding her to. Could it be that the poor girl had just eaten a bit of bad rye?
How many other saints and prophets had?
Or given a tightly knit group that travelled and ate together (e.g., monks in the same monastery, or let's say... 1 guy and his 12 apostles?) it only takes one contaminated meal for _all_ of them to have an acid trip together.
Or here's another thought: almost 1% of the population are schizophrenic, and at least _some_ forms of it are characterized by hallucinations. And in the ancient times and middle ages, it could only be worse, since they didn't have psychiatrists and neuroleptics: once started on the road to madness, the only way was towards worse. Stuff like hearing voices, seeing ghosts, etc. Given thousands of years and populations of millions of people, odds are good some will eventually have delusions of divine miracles and messages.
Briefly: Is it still a miracle if it only happened in someone's drug-addled brain?
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
a feeling of someone being in the room that isn't there?
It's called electromagnetic forces. It plays with your head. not in a good way.
They're using their grammar skills there.
The sciences have some fairly comprehensive theories on your questions, no need for an atheist to step up. The last one is rather loaded though, the only person with the right answer is you.
Prior art for compressing twenty years' of meditiation into seconds using electronic cranial stimulation, to guarantee oneness with the divine and entry in to heaven...
Given that there is apparently an organ in the brain for sensing God, I would say that the burden of proof is on those who say it is for something other than sensing God.
1. Evolution. Animals that can think eat the ones that can't.
2. Evolution. Populations of moral animals survive better than populations of immoral ones.
3. You can't model the Big Bang with Newton's Third Law, so don't try. And since "time" and "cause and effect" are aspects of this universe, it doesn't make sense to ask what happened "before" the Universe or what "caused" it.
4. Hopefully, the fact that you love your family manifests itself in observable facts about the real world, something that religious statements usually lack.
You're welcome.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
"If for example I had a "taste box" that made everything taste like chocolate...it doesn't prove that nothing exists that tastes of chocolate." Yes, but when you have had chocolate, you have experienced other dimensions to the sensation other than the taste. Very often [citation needed], religious folk refer to an overwhelming sensation of gods presence, almost as proof of its validity. Talk to any morman, any you'll soon see what I mean. In any case, states of meditation and other mind altering states are associated with the "sensing" of god. I agree with you in that, the vast majority of theists are decent (one might say, god fearing) people, and we gain nothing by reducing something dear and near to their hearts to an errant neural signalling pattern but, for me, a confirmed atheist, this comes as no surprise.
prepare the survey weasels.
Actually, scarry thought here...but if you paired this up with some drugs you could probably get people into a state where they'd tell you whatever you want to know, and with none of the trauma/inaccuracy that's built into current interrogation techniques. Yikes, now I'll be up all night wondering whether that would be better or worse than plain old torture (though, I'll admit, I'm leaning towards the side of better)...
There is no trace of evidence that chocolate actually exists, but many people talk incessantly about the wonderful substance of chocolate, and how they can often taste it, which is proof to them of chocolates existence.
The chocolate helmet shows that there are perfectly scientific explanations to the taste of chocolate that need not involve invisible Magical Hershey Bars or the great Girardelli factory in the sky.
Give me liberty or give me kill -s 9
In "the origin of consciousness in the breakdown of the bicameral mind", Julian Jaynes just describes that kind of stuff, and goes more into how religion may have begun.
If for example I had a "taste box" that made everything taste like chocolate...it doesn't prove that nothing exists that tastes of chocolate.
No, but chocolate isn't supernatural. What this proved is that something "supernatural" like God isn't a required explanation. A simple chemical imbalance or "helmet" can explain feelings that otherwise would have been attributed to the paranormal.
If this proves to be true, either now or in the future, this would however prove that any "god" is not absolute.
Any god claiming to be, is a liar.
Chocolate, or taste are not examples of transcendent things. God however, would be, by definition.
If you can emulate an aspect of a god (divine presence, the experience of proximity), that god is not perfect, or beyond man (at least in that aspect). The god in question lacks superiority in this context.
Yahweh/Allah would either be excluded from existence, or proved a liar. Although, Yahweh can be shown to be a liar and less than perfect using theology too.
Our ability to think and reason, and our sense of right and wrong, can be adequately explained by evolutionary psychology.
Science can't explain how or why the initial conditions of the universe came about. But religion can't either. All it does is replace those unknowns with totally unsubstantiated story, and in doing so creates even more unknowns. For example, religion can't explain how or why an omniscient personal God came about.
I presume there's evidence that you love your three daughters, so you can "prove" it to me. Otherwise, no, I wouldn't believe it. If I claim the plate of spaghetti I am about to eat loves you, but I can't prove it, should you believe it? I certainly hope not, because there's no evidence that my spaghetti even exists, let alone that it has exhibited love for your daughters.
Just so I understand: in your mind, the inability to explain something can only be explained by something inexplicable, and this somehow is an argument in favor of supreme beings?
Slashdot - where whining about luck is the new way to make the world you want.
A helmet full of God. You just pop it on your head and pray all day. I want it all, folks. I want it all and I want it now and I'm gonna get it with or without your help. I think you know what I'm talking about. I think you hear me knocking and I think I'm coming in and you know what? I'm already wearing the God helmet. '' In other news, how long till the Fundementalists nickname this thing 'The Hellmet'?
I don't recall the source (might have been in Dawkin's 'Selfish Gene'), but I do remember an interesting article that suggested the entire white light, meeting your god of choice, life-flashes-before-you bit and all the various similar sensations during and long prior to the process of death, including the development of the notion of afterlife, could be explained in an evolutionary sense as being useful companions to the fact that we can predict our own demise and that such functions allow us to not become completely neurotic from the moment we start appreciating our mortality to when we know our doom is imminent and might be better off not spending those last few hours, months or years in a complete nervous breakdown. For instance, sensing some benevolent presence that assures you of peace, whether "god" or a long-deceased parent etc., may help you proceed with effectively executing strategies like "women and children first," rather than becoming a raving hysterical loon who ends up taking his descendants with him in death, rather than ensuring their survival, or rather, the survival of his genetic contribution.
Yet again, we have more evidence that the brain can be affected by EM.
If you are a government and you want to make sure everybody is dulled down, what better way than to flood society with technologies masked as ubiquitous, ever-so-useful tools which people voluntarily hold up to their heads several times a day, every day of the year?
Cell phones don't cause cancer. Well, they do, but that's not the primary intention. The primary intention is to make you dumb and susceptible to further programming and easy management.
-FL
Here's a link to a brief report I wrote about this 9 years ago, and most of my research was from old issues of the "Fortean Times" even then.
;-D That page works fine, though.)
http://www.paranormal.org.uk/why/LINK0002.HTML
(Sorry the site's not fully functional at the moment; I wasn't expecting guests.
This person has a WHOLE team that after several decades made a tinfoil hat that picks up on when someone has some electricity flying around and calls it god? Don't we have better things to spend money on, like cancer research? What a horrible, pointless waste of money and time. This shouldn't be listed under science, it should be listed under "hokey rubbish".
Just stop a moment and consider why this region exists at all. Evolution doesn't make such regions for no reason. There is survival value in them. Now we don't know what that is, but perhaps it triggers a unified world view. And that doesn't mean just God. It also means the higher aspirations of science to integrate knowledge into unified theories. I should add a disclaimer that since I was a child I have had this experience, sometimes very intensely. Do I think it is God? Not quite. But it is a feeling of the profundity of the universe the worth of one's own place as a 'witness' to it. I am sure many of us here have had the same experience. It is what motivated my interest in the sciences.
One other thing. Belief doesn't have much credibility here at times. But we should remember that at each stage of a mathematical proof we exercise belief that the logical connections are correct. Science rests on belief as well as experiment. Human beings really can't get away from it. That doesn't mean it has to be our master though.
Bitter and proud of it.
LMRAO (Laughing My Religious Ass Off). Reality Check: You sound just like a Young-Earth Creationist, attempting to spin and explain in great detail why radiocarbon dating is invalid.
Perhaps the brain areas affected are those parts responsible for sensing these kinds of presensences, like an organ.
And in today's society which has little spirituality, such an area may be atrophied.
It would be very useful to compare the brain readings to say, those of a buddist monk in meditation, or a deeply spiritual Muslim in midday prayer, or a devout Christian praying in church.
1 Manufacture Bliss Helmets in some Oriental sweat shop.
...er, there appears to be some flaw in this model, an event which has never happened before. I offer my sincerest apologies to the meme police.
2 Sell helmets on Internet
3 Profit!
Posts, MyBio or Sig, may contain satire, sarcasm, bolded nouns be sardonic or even witty & be Church of SD
Schizophrenics have delusions, that, except for social acceptability, are indistinguishable in perceived reality and extreme attachment from those of the religious. Their perceptions of sound, taste, touch, ... are very real to them. If the brain is capable of the those experiences, although there is no observable external stimulus, why isn't the perception of "other", in a similar absence of stimulus, considered simply another error in brain function?
It emerged and was stimulated by social interaction and solving tasks presented to me in school. Some people say it is result of evplution, because it gives an competitive edge. On a side note your question is biased, as it presumes we are on some sort of "stage" where objects "come" and "go" from and to some other, hidden space. You LIKE secrets and that is a preference.
From my upbringing, my parents taught me, my peers reacted differently to my actions until I learned that there are things that will keep everybody happy, while there are other things that will cause me loneliness.
I don't know, I'd like to know, you seem to think you know, but I am sure neither one of us really knows. There are several possibilities, some of them may be quite astonishing. However, imagine you where right and there was God behind it? Now that would be very awkward because you would have to explain God, how he became to be, where he was before he came into existence
Based on comparison with many millions of parents, there is pretty large probability that you do, so why should I doubt? However that is unfortunate choice for this argument, because I think your God is your inside feeling, just like your love is. I wonder why you pull it out and drag it around, pushing it onto others? Do you wish to get emotionally hurt? There are many studies of emotions and love and "gene selfishness" that dissect parental love but I don't feel like protesting them on the grounds of "I don't like it", just like I don't feel like giving up my love because "it is fabricated plot by ruthless organic compounds that turn us into biological robots". When your reason and your feelings are at odds it is a sign you are not managing one or both of them very well. There is subjective truth and there is objective truth, they don't necessarily match.
I'd mod parent up. Seriously.
She describes a symptom called "hypergraphia", which is commonly found in temporal lobe epilepsy as well as bipolar mania. It is an uncontrollable urge to write.
Hypergraphic people, in fact creative people of all sorts report being visited by "The Muse", and often have the subjective experience that their creations are not of their own doing, rather, they are channelling for The Muse.
I was hypergraphic for several years. Not continously, but episodically: when I'd get the urge to write a new essay or article, I would drop everything, quite without regard to common sense, for example I would abandon paying work for clients until I had published whatever I was inspired to write on my website, or at community sites like Kuro5hin.
This all stopped when I was hospitalized for mania about a year ago, and put on the antipsychotic Zyprexa. While I'm a lot better off than I used to be, in that I don't experience symptoms of mental illness anymore, I seem to find it impossible to write at much length about anything.
Request your free CD of my piano music.
There is no need for that hypothesis. -
Laplace, in response to Napoleon's objection that Laplace had omitted God from Celestial Mechanics (Boyer 1968, p. 538)
Trust me, I work for the government.
Truly sir, I am intrigued, and humbled, and I wish to subscribe to your newsletter...
Wow nice troll.
btw,
--There is *nothing* that can prove nor disprove the existance of God--
Bullshit it's called death.
"But I don't hear answers from any other quarter."
You must be living in a special world, never heard of various other relogions offering similar ancient stories which to me are not distinguishable (since i shed of my childhood Christian indoctrination) ?
"you don't think your existance is a good reason to at least contemplate it?"
Um, I've looked at myself, contemplated the existence of the Hebrew God, and read a bit here and there about the background of biblical stories. When I add all up my conclusion for now is that there is abundant evidence that the bible is a collection of subjective and heavily edited material. Resulting in a strange mix of violence and orders to kill quite a few people I rather not kill, such as name-calling children, teenagers in puberty, and people spreading other beliefs.
Looking at it from a philosophical pov i think the alternatives given by modern biology are a lot more coherent. This magnetic machine does not disprove God, something which is impossible by definition, but it is another indication that there is a God-shaped hole in the brain waiting to be filled with whatever religion available.
can this device be modified to awaken the part of my brain that can give me psychic abilities?
Balderdash!
What none of the posters here seem to realize - especially those that ask why evolution developed an ability like this one - is that it is really not something being turned on by the helmet, but rather off! The helmet interrupts the area of your brain that controls self awareness (and keeps track of where your body ends) so that you feel at one with the universe, one with whatever god you have been thought is the real deal. Studies of buddhist monks and catholic nuns deep in meditation or prayer have showed a concentrated effort can effectively shut down the brain activity in these areas resulting in the same type of experience.
"There's someone in my head but it's not me." - Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
Already on sale, http://www.shaktitechnology.com/
Just kidding (kid-ding get it?)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In his book, Phantoms in the Brain, neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran mentions this device in his discussion of psychological disorders. IIRC, he compares the sensation to those symptoms that are exhibited by individuals with a messiah complex.
I don't think the problem is that those people with these religious sensations, it is with the people that don't. Clearly, non-religious people are depressing the world, describing something as beautiful and intense as a walk in the park and reducing it to something mundane. Thanks to the "god helmet", we can finally hunt down these mutants that are wrecking society and adjust their thinking.
This is my sig.
If people with severed limbs can feel the sensation of those appendages still being attached whilst looking at the stump leads me to believe that it is entirely possible to be mistake various stimuli to be genuine experiences of any sort. At best you can distinguish between sensations of a verified origin or sensations from unknown/hidden sources.
I also think that this research is no meant for you to say "yes that was exactly like my previous experiences" or "Nope nothing like it". With enough testing the research will say "We have duplicated the exact patterns of activity with our artificial stimuli". Which in itself does not proof anything. but it does push the god of the gaps even further into the domain of high improbability.
This story is decades old! Persinger's work has recently been surpased by the work of Dr.Jason Braithewaite, a neuroscientists at Birmingham (UK) University. He's also linked possible paranormal experiences to magnetic field stimulation of the brain, and has some field evidence to back this up from his work at Muncaster Castle. I've written about this on my website
My web domain.
I good series of books, homo sapiens, hybrids.. etc
http://books.google.com/books?id=bXXxvdWie0wC&pg=PT57&vq=american+draft+dodger&sig=hj7bJk-Yrto3n37rhn4AMGft2-M
I thought it was just a product of his imagination.. and a poor one at that.. but it was FREAKING REALITY! that's why it was so bad as ficiton in this book..
(Mr. Sawyer, if you ever see this, please don't take this as a slur- I loved the series- I was just freaked when I read the topic)
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
None of the three experiences mentioned in this study are at the base of my belief in God.
I am familiar with these experiences. I have known for some twenty-plus years that indigestion can induce similar experiences. I have been aware that drugs have also "enhanced" or induced these experiences for many people.
For what it's worth, so can adrenaline rush, not to mention the stress of battle, or the excitement of being engaged in a sport (including the spectator experience, think of that the next time you are watching your avatar's lovely or pimply back side).
Simply achieving a goal after a long struggle is another, as is the exhileration of getting through a good workout without any serious tripups.
I could mention even more homely examples, some which would generally be considered in perfect opposition to the divine.
Not surprisingly, reading sacred writings can induce/enhance those three experiences. So can science fiction, good poetry, etc., etc., etc.
Some people mistake those sensations for "the religious experience". Some don't really mistake them, but do use them as analogs of religious experience, so much that the semantics have conflated a bit.
But, as I said, these are not the basis of my belief in God.
One sort of incomplete way to describe the reasons I believe in God would be an analogy with mathematical "truths".
Once you can sort-of wrap your mind around the concept of the "ideal unit", addition and sequence become axiomatic. 1 + 1 = 2. Yeah. You don't doubt that. Even when you dig into advanced math and discover that there are whole universes of discourse, whole fields of science where the unit is never ideal or where wholes are almost always greater or less than the sums of their parts, you find that sequence and conservation are a good touch-stone. The case you tend to run into first in our current patterns of curriculum, normal vectors, doesn't prove the principles wrong at all. It gives a new framework withing which the principles operate, and when you can manage the framework you can still make useful calculations.
It's basically the same about the love of God, or about the principle of repentance. In the real world, you find lots of things that don't make sense for a long time. But if you are willing to keep returning to the basics, and see how the principles map into the context, eventually it makes sense.
If must say I'm deluding myself about God, then I must also say that I'm deluding myself about math, that rings and fields and topologies are just a bunch of rationalization.
joudanzuki
And do you think that because a country has officially declared it's self atheist that everyone who was previously religious just gave up overnight and also became atheists before they began the mass slaughter of their country men ?
I don't really think so, do you ?
In the case of Russia it seems much more likely that centuries of faith led exterminations of their countrymen made them more comfortable with the idea of continuing the same sort of thing even if they were, officially, doing it for non religious reasons.
Or how about that old classic, the greatest good for the greatest number, or whatever it was.
what explains
the religious experiences I sometimes have
while dancing?
There's two ways of looking at it.
1) There is an organ in the brain specifically designed to sense an omnipotent super being whos existence we have no evidence for whatsoever and in which even it's believers cannot agree on more or less any single point related to its existence including what it is, how it came to be, how it actually created anything, what it does, what it looks like, where it lives, what you should do to worship it, what is its point, why it makes no difference if people are religious or not etc etc etc
2) There is an organ in the brain which produces a specific state of mind in people which causes them to believe they having a 'religious' experience.
The idiots who believe the 1st explanation are really beyond hope at this point and there's nothing I or anyone else can say which is going to get through to them.
there are those religions in which the body is considered a sacred gift from deity.
but we used to call it "motivational speaking".
Definitely abused.
Definitely abuse.
The comments toward the end sound a little bit too much like "Brave New World" to me. "How does one fix the brain," "Could improve peoples lives" sounds altruistic but in actuality is just brain control. I, for one, think science should work more toward actually improving peoples lives rather than making people happy with their lives. As a computer engineer giving people the next IPOD killer will really make lives better. Seriously though...how long before such technology is used to make people euphoric whenever they see the dictator, I mean president? Don't forget to take your religious experience pills this morning!
I thought the "God Helmet" was another Apple product.
I already have a helmet that if operated correctly can make people scream out 'oh god'.
What if Tetris was invented by Nazis?
I don't think the church can be called "new".
Deleted
The attribution to "God" of these feelings is scientifically dubious. There is no God and so any effect that is experienced by these people is just the results of biochemical processes. To anyone who might attempt to question this, I ask: what is your proof that a god exists? And before you attempt to turn that around--the burden of proof does exist with persons who assert that god exists. I, as an atheist, do not need to prove anything. It is the believers in a god that need to do the proving.
You mean like discovering that hamsters recover from jetlag more quickly when given Viagra or that rats can't tell the difference between russion spoken backwards and Japanese spoken backwards.
As long as there are scientists (and fools to cough up the grants) there will be research that makes the rest of us react as you have.
Surely this comes down to interpretation. The atheists may well have experienced the same sensation as the theists but - because of their beliefs - did not interpret it in the same way.
This research does not prove if God exists or not nor if there is a "God sense". It simply shows how the brain is affected by EM doesn't it? The fact that some of the guinea pigs (who were predisposed to do so) interpreted the experience as God does not really make a difference.
IIRC, something like this was attempted once before with disastrous results! The Bayblonians tried to build a giant tower to be closer to God and he made all the workers start talking different languages so the construction project couldn't proceed. God will probably make this device scramble their brains as punishment for their prideful indiscretions.
This is not true. Time, space, and mass are relative. They depend upon the frame of reference of the observer.
The only constant is the speed of light in vacuum. All other parameters are relative to the frame of reference of the observer, and adjust to preserve this one constant.
Sounds less like a religious experience and more like a Woody Allen movie (Sleeper) with the intoxication orb.
i saw a tv show called strange but true that reported on this something like 4-5 years ago.
it is an area of the brain that PROVIDES the ability to take in and process mystical, and even paranormal/psychic interference ?
Read radical news here
Now give me a helmet that induces these feelings in *everybody else* when I'm around. Come on girls, you know you want to adore me! Fall in love! I'm GOD!
Just because I have no proof that I can give to you that you must, or even can, accept as conclusive does not mean that I have not had experiences that can only be explained by either the existence of God or my own mental stability. Since I seem to be sane, the only conclusion I can come to is that God exists. To deny it would to make an insane choice, deny God and accept that the impossible is possible.
Otherwise potential alien overlords could beam electromagnetic energy into our crania to convince us that they are here to help us. Only the tinhats would be free.
Imagine George Bush using the "God beam" on U.S. citizens: the cognitive dissonance would generate mass hysterical laughter, then everyone's brains would explode.
Also known as Plato's Allegory of the cave.
"Sufficiently advanced satire is indistinguishable from reality." - [Tips: 1DrYakQDKCQ6y52z6QbnkxHXAocMZJE61o ]
Spoken like someone with false assumptions and a false sense of superiority. 'Here's the thing' - if by 'key answers' you mean like the little Walls of Jericho story and you know, walking around it three times, the walls come down and the soldiers go in with the orders to kill every man, woman, child and animal in the place, I guess your 'key answer' there would be genocide is the way. You can get better and more rational 'key answers' to life from an episode of the Sopranos. So get off your high horse there. And as you find it amusing that some atheists spend time and effort trying to use logic and reasoning to help people who display irrational believes in an invisible man in the sky, it's that human idea of hope for others. Many atheists, many of them right next to you in Church, know you can't reason with insanity and don't bother. We realize that no matter how many mysteries of the mind are answered by science it can't overcome the basic irrationality of religion. The article looks at yet another bit of the 'mystery' and provides an explanation. Science marches on.
Enjoy your Karma, after all you earned it. Feel your Karma Joe, feel it burn.
"There is *nothing* that can prove nor disprove the existance of God"
No, I didn't.
The Farewell Tour II
You are clearly less "sane" than you believe yourself to be. Don't worry, it's not like you're alone in that.
The Farewell Tour II
I have to admit, I've never really understood what religious people are going on about when they ask me to prove the existence of love. I would suggest that they look at animals that don't rear their own young and aren't social, and then compare them to those that do and are. To compare the behavior of animals when they are in a tightly knit social bond and after it has dissolved. Then of course I would suggest that they look at the corresponding neurological behavior between the different conditions with scans.
Proving the existence of 'love' is pretty easy, to me. To them it seems like it's something granted from the sky for no reason at all, undetectable with any observation, and they're the only things capable of it. I wonder if they think that their family dog loves them. It would be funny if they didn't.
The article referenced a number of studies investigating a variety of "spiritual experiences", and the increase/decrease in activation of several locations in the brain. The emphasis on spiritual and/or religious "experiences" was an interesting approach, but the authors point out a difficulty:
Other research problems abound. None of the techniques, for example, can precisely delineate specific brain regions. And it is virtually impossible to find a perfect so-called reference task for the nuns to perform against which to compare the religious experience they are trying to capture. After all, what human experience is just one detail different from the awe and love felt in the presence of God?I suggest it would be interesting to investigate something for which there IS a control, and for which there is a greater ability to find matching experiences of it: Flow. See, especially: religion and spirituality
Disclaimers: IANAN (I am not a neurologist). I DO experience "flow" regularly when writing computer programs. I have had a couple "spiritual experiences" in my life, but do not subscribe to any particular religion, nor do I believe there is some "great power" that reaches down and intervenes in my life, or of anybody else.
Background: When writing computer programs, I regularly experience periods where I lose all sense of what is around me except the task at hand. These periods _feel_ brief, but when I look at the time, invariably an hour or two has passed. If I do get interrupted while in the "flow", there's a feeling of a sudden inrush of external awareness, AND a sense of "dropping" the balls (concepts and interrelationships between them) I was juggling. It's like I can only focus on so many things at once; but, being in the flow, I free my mind of awareness of the "outside" so that I can be aware of more aspects of the program I am working on.
Others have told me they felt this feeling when they were involved in sports -- they could ignore the crowd, all the other inputs and distractions, and become one with the play at hand. Still others have shared with me about having this feeling when they were listening to music. At the same time, they could selectively listen to individual instruments or the whole piece and the interactions between those instruments, all within the flow of the whole composition. Yet others still have told me about playing MMORPGs and how it felt when they became immersed in the game. And, yes, I've heard others use similar terms to describe how it felt for them when they had a "spiritual experience". (My own experience supports that, too.)
Question 1: Could it be that a "spiritual experience", a sensing of God, a feeling of oneness with the universe, etc. ... could these be akin to a "flow experience" with respect to something commonly described in religious terms?
Question 2: Are there any researchers here who would like an able and willing volunteer to investigate this? I'd volunteer in a heartbeat to be hooked up to an fMRI, or SPECT, or whatever to see what was going on when I was working on writing a program!!! Given the /. population, I suspect I'm not alone and there would be a large number who would also volunteer for such a study.
Summary: Inquiring minds want to flow! ;^)
Great news! The sooner we understand the "god illusion" mechanism, the sooner we can get started on designing a treatment sepcific for it! A new era of truth and reason! No more people making crazed decisions because "god" told them to to do irrational things!
There is no God, and Dirac is his prophet.
The point you're missing, is that for god-folk, "God" is the only thing capable of arousing those feelings of spirtuality. It's their litmus test for the existance of God: "this feeling I have can only be created by God, ergo, God exists".
What science has show is that this is not a valid conclusion, because the hypothesis of "this feeling can only be created by God" has been proven false.
This is why the Dark Night of the Soul that Mother Theresa experienced is the mark of a great saint. Its easy to do things when it feels good. But doing the right thing, with only the knowledge that regardless of the sacrifice it is the right thing to do, is the mark of a Saint.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
...of slashdot posters was god, budda, etc... that clearly expresses "everything" and with a rating system for the better probabilities and possibilities to the insane unrelated babel...
hmm.... maybe it is....
Someday in the future I can see con artists (politicians, cult leaders, salesmen, etc) using a variety of tools to fleece their very willing flock.
It sounds frightening to me to imagine people going to political rallies and having a spiritual awaking...coming to associate some political parties as more religious simply because that is where they get their fix...
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
it's now quite possible to experience 'proximity to God' via a special helmet
Yeah, baby. You can experience 'proximity to God' via my special helmet all night long.
Parent makes a very good point. Take all the recent news about Mother Teresa... her emotions...desolation and lack of feeling certainly were not what caused to her to "feel" God. Anyone who basses a religion, moral ground, philosophy or theology on feelings is going to be on quite the roller coaster ride of beliefs.
They should market this as the "Logitech Personal Jesus".
Hey, wait... if I wear this helmet, will I be flushed with visions of indulgence, wisdom and vengeance ? I mean, it works for any religion, right ?
What if you're a true atheist, does the helmet make you feel empty and bored ?
Why don't they just end the world as we know it and release the orgasm helmet once and for all ?
-Billco, Fnarg.com
This is a very interesting development, I must admit.
However, it is frustrating because I know that it will advance the field of ethics/religion exactly nil.
Obviously this device doesn't prove or disprove the existence of god. That doesn't take religious devotion to think- it's just common sense. See the other posts for more.
However, it IS one step towards understanding ourselves and our universe in the context of a possible god, and yet I can't see real progress being made. It's still early, let me put this in the form of a list:
-We have proven that messianic feelings can be produced with a helmet.
-But that doesn't prove anything about god.
-We can change matter from one element to another at will
-That proves nothing about the origins of the universe or god.
-We have mastered (literally) earth-shattering new technologies that previously would have been considered magic or divine, yet no one thinks we're divine yet.
-That's because only god is divine.
-I have proven that I can create universes in my garage through pure force of will.
-So can god, who does exist.
We've all had frustrating circular arguments with fundamentalist of any kind. This will continue into the scientist otter days.
sorry, it's still early for me.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
Ok, we have a sense organ called the eye which allows us to see a female and decide to pursue her in order to "perpetuate the species". This sense organ can be faked out by showing a picture of an attractive girl, something p0rn-sellers know well.
So we have another sense organ that perceives the transcendent. And it can be faked out too by a some epilepsy or artificial EM stimulation. This doesnt negate the transcendent exists, or that the transcendent is important. Perhaps there is a reason the humans and perhaps other animals have a sense organ to perceive the transcendent.
I've always wondered about this depiction of Mary being a virgin and Jesus being half human half super-human (like Heracles ;). If he was half God, yet a functioning human being, where did his Y-Chromosome come from (the Chromosome that can only be through the male line, as all females have XX instead of XY), or half of his genome for that matter. Was it an angel, and if so how did he propagate his(?!) genes, since angels aren't supposed to be spreading their seeds. Was is some kind of in-vitro fertilization?
;) that he didn't go around eating people's brains out after he returned. Interesting thought none the less. He could have been a vampire though.. - Aren't vampire's those that drink blood and live forever because of that? Think about it..
In general I have never quite understood those clerics who so strongly defend Mary's virginity - it makes no freakin difference for the lessons and ethics of Jesus. And "holyness" or even god-likeness is in the eye of the beholder - it can't be proven, much less so by putting up the postulation that his mom was a virgin when he was born..
The zombie theory hasn't crossed my mind yet, but that might be for the fact (other than that I haven't seen a real zombie as of yet
Prov 9:8 Do not rebuke mockers or they will hate you; rebuke the wise and they will love you.
I get into this hyperfocus state quite easily when working, and lose all sense of time and space. And not just programming, I've gotten into the zone when driving and suddenly come to myself *after* I've had to react (like, I've avoided someone pulling into my lane unexpectedly), aware that I hadn't been really conscious of anything up to then. This is fine when programming, but it's a bit worrying when one's driving a couple of tons of metal. On the other hand, I'm not necessarily any better at accident avoidance maneuvers when I *am* concentrating on driving, so...
For those who don't know it/want to watch it again: http://youtube.com/watch?v=OyxPxpSvXQ8
So, could it be that Jesus is really a brain injury?
You have expressed my thoughts on agency and the end-state of science wonderfully.
/.
Excellent examples as well. A pleasure to read and one of the very best posts on
Thank you sir!
There is a scene in Michael Swawick's science fiction book Vacuum Flowers (also at Wikipedia) where the heroine notes that one of her captors, a nun, had an implanted device that artificially heightened her religious/spiritual brain functions. So the heroine says a bunch of stuff designed to drive her captor into a religious ecstatic frenzy, and uses that to make her escape.
What would be cool/dangerous -- if someone could develop this into a ray gun or some kind of emitter. Make it in the form of the Ark of the Covenant, and carry it before our armies!
Watch out! Windows 7 will come with a hardware dongle to replace the hated WGA and DRM and it's motto will be "WHave faith in us, as we have faith in you!"
Christians in America are for the most part not 'Christ like'. They can be materialistic and self-centered, are in general overweight and under-educated, especially about their own religion, and largely ignorant of their own sins.
Atheists is America are generally just anti-Christian. However, they are still materialistic and self-centered, in general overweight, but over educated in the history of Christianity, especially everything bad, and largely ignorant of their own narrow bias.
If a story on slashdot is posted about evolution or religion in general, it will always turn, at some point, into an attack on Christianity. The people carrying out the attack will always claim to be athiests. However, if a story about Islam is posted, these same athiests will inject their anti-Christian attacks and avoid saying anything bad about Islam.
I think I'd just like to see the next slashdot story on Islam tagged with 'flyingspaghettimonster'.
Or, more generally, the successful creation of an effect neither proves nor disproves the existance of other possible causes for the effect.
No, but it does prove that the effect can happen in absence of the most commonly believe cause.
Thus, it provides people who believe in the religious axiom that God does not exist to explain away one of the remaining pieces of personal evidence in one's belief in God and provides another avenue of attack for undermining the beliefs of people who claim to have experienced God. You'll see a lot of people in this discussion openly admitting that it's more proof of what they "already knew" because that's what it represents to them.
Most religious people instead will just shrug and say that now we know how God reaches us. Each side is perfectly capable of spinning the finding to fit their assumptions, and only a few people will be swayed either way by it. Matters of faith always turn out this way.
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
... the "iGod". Personal, portable religous experiences.
No, if you were truly wanting to abuse this for evil, you'd look for the opposite sensation -- the feeling that God has abandoned you -- and you'd artificially stimulate THAT. Use the technology to *prevent* any feelings of connection with God. That would make a deeply religious man crack much more effectively since you don't have to bother with getting them to think that what you want is the same as what God wants.
(Geez, I feel like the lowest form of human scum for even *thinking* of this.)
If it's for-profit but free, you're not the customer -- you're the product (e.g., the Slashdot Beta's "audience").
...if I'm wearing my tinfoil hat underneath it?
If I could produce the feeling that your arm is on fire, using this helmet, does that mean it is? Does that mean your arm can't really be on fire? Does it change anything about the way the world is? There is no absolute proof any which way, so why does science try to discount something you can't prove or disprove?
jesus christ freaking /. editors... spread the misinformation a little more please
logically speaking, this can only be said to at least duplicate the experiences on the "user's" end of a religious experience. this does *not* disprove the existence of God. it doesn't prove it either. i just dislike people misusing various observations and coming up with ill-formed arguments.
I literally cannot accept #3, anymore than I can claim to understand infinity. My brain is apparently wired to see the world as a collection of finite things which interactions are governed by causality. I believe in the mathematical concepts (of infinity, i and so forth) because they feel right and make for a simpler, more powerful modeling tool in the same way a non-atheist (whether skeptic, deist, agnostic, spiritual or religious) believes the universe and all that is/was/will be is more than a "non-sentient chemical reaction that happens because that's just the way it is". #1 and #2 though are fine theories. Scary to imagine one's self as nothing but an ant with an overgrown ganglion, convinced to be a good hive worker for the hive with moral and religious memes, with all the things we point at to feel special among species (art, nobility, love, etc.) are nothing but necessary side effects of having those big, dangerous brains of ours that our mother, evolution, loves so much. I don't know if I believe that argument either. The more we know and understand, the more we realize we do not know or understand, every mystery solved reveals three more and we ought to be humble. That's the one thing I am most sure of.
I literally cannot accept #3, anymore than I can claim to understand infinity. My brain is apparently wired to see the world as a collection of finite things which interactions are governed by causality. I believe in the mathematical concepts (of infinity, i and so forth) because they feel right and make for a simpler, more powerful modeling tool in the same way a non-atheist (whether skeptic, deist, agnostic, spiritual or religious) believes the universe and all that is/was/will be is more than a "non-sentient chemical reaction that happens because that's just the way it is".
#1 and #2 though are fine theories. Scary to imagine one's self as nothing but an ant with an overgrown nervous ganglion, convinced to be a good hive worker for the hive with moral and religious memes, while all the things we point at to feel special among species (art, nobility, love, etc.) are nothing but necessary side effects of having those big, dangerous brains of ours that our mother, evolution, loves so much.
I don't know if I believe that argument either. The more we know and understand, the more we realize we do not know or understand, every mystery solved reveals three more and we ought to be humble. That's the one thing I am most sure of.
The religious experience is essentially one of awe, which induces worship.
There are many non-religious phenomena which produce the same feeling. One which immediately comes to mind is art.
But for the most part I'd say this one experience accounts for a large part of what's fucked up in the world. For instance, worshiping Hollywood stars and idolizing musical groups - as if acting and musical talent warranted kissing the ground these people walk on and giving them free blowjobs. Another example, I'd say Americans who re-elected Bush weren't voting rationally but because of some misguided hero-worship complex. In still another example, the command structure of any military is awe inspired - people worship fame and rank - Patton, Rommel, anyone?
Worship is almost never earned. People are human, there are no super-humans, though some humans are better than others at doing things. And what did "God" ever do to earn anyone's respect? From all accounts I'd have to say what a petulant child this "God" is, completely unworthy of my respect.
If I were wearing this helmet I can tell you "close to god" is probably the least likely thing you'd hear me say.
In my reality there is no such thing as god, so what then?
I apologise for being so closed-minded that I actually think that historical truth exists.
I apologise for being so closed-minded that I actually think that historical claims are investigable.
I apologise for thinking that therefore any religious believer whose belief is based on an historical claim has little to fear from research into neurological phenomena.
I apologise for having looked at evidence and having drawn a conclusion.
I apologise for drawing a conclusion which differs from yours.
I apologise for wanting a rational discussion.
I apologise for not having freaky mystical experiences to rely on.
I apologise for maintaining strong religious convictions in spite of that clear deficit.
I apologise for thinking that that does no discredit to my commitment to truth.
In short, I apologise that I'm not another Slashdot clone, and for mistaking this thread for an intelligent discussion as to whether religious believers need to be concerned about this research. In future, I shall endeavour only to post comments which are unchallenging of hidden assumptions and uncritical of philosophical materialism.
I don't see why this is such a "new" concept, or even a big deal. Derren Brown effectively did the same thing (grant people an 'awareness' of God) on his Mind Control series, and didn't need a helmet.
Here's a Clip From the show. There are other references to how this was done on YouTube as well.
I'm not trying to argue either way, but your first two answers don't answer the questions very well, from my perspective.
Both answers describe a probability of survival once the attribute already exists in the organism/population, but neither describes where the attribute came from, which is what the question pretty explicitly asked.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Carl Sagan's excellent "The Demon Haunted World" is a very good read on all of this. He explores our historical tendencies to assign mystical meaning to things we don't (or don't WANT to) understand, and tracks the change from angels/demons to UFOs/aliens, etc. It's a good bit of ammo to have in your pocket when talking about this stuff with religious crazies, or just with soccer moms that swear their cousin is a serial UFO abductee.
.sig you are looking for
An equally valid observation, then, is that Dr. Sagan may be implying that the soccer mom's UFO abductee cousin is psychotic because there are difficult truths he doesn't (or doesn't WANT to) understand. Does it matter if the label is angels/demons, UFOs/aliens, or rational/psychotic? Is the science of psychology any less mystical than religion?
--
This is not the
Stimpy: "It's the happy helmet, Ren. Now you'll always be happy! And this is the remote control. And I use this dial to control how happy you are!"
Ren: "You sick little monkey! Why I oughta-"
FZZOWWWNNTT!
Stimpy: "Hey, it works!"
FZZOWWWNNTT!
Ren: "No! Got to fight it! Can't lose control! Will strong.... body weak....."
FZZOWWWNNTT!
Ren: "HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, ha ha ha ha! Stimpy, I'm so - happy! I must - go - do nice - things! Hee hee he hee hee, ha ha ha hahaaaa!"
Ren: "So - happy - ironing... for STIMPY! Ha ha ha ha ha haaa!"
Ren: "I - must do - wonderful things - for my best - friend - Stimpy!!!"
Ren: "OH - JOY!!! HA HA HA HA HAHAAAAAA!!!" "See how I love to clean - filthy catboxes!"
Hello, boys and girls! This is your old pal Stinky Wizzleteats! This is a song about a whale!
FZZOWWWNNTT!
NO! This is a song about being happy! That's right! It's the happy happy joy joy song!
Happy Happy Joy Joy
repeat...
I don't think you're happy enough! That's right! I'll teach you to be happy! I'll teach your grandmother to suck eggs! Now, boys and girls, let's try it again!
Happy Happy Joy Joy
repeat...
If'n you ain't the granddaddy of all liars! And the little critters of nature, they don't know that they're ugly. That's very funny. A fly marrying a bumblebee... I'd told you I'd shoot, but you didn't believe me, why didn't you believe me???
Happy Happy Joy Joy
repeat...
repeat...
I want one. *_grin_*
I want to add one thought to this discussion. I know that it is possible through the use of drugs or other stimuli to have a short experience of something beyond normal human experience, but having that type of experience is not why I practice my faith. I practice Buddhist Meditation in order to have more patience, more focus, more tolerance and kindness to others, and stronger introspection. It works. The results benefit me every day in more ways than I can count. To my knowledge, no drug or quick fix can achieve what hours of quiet training can do. IMO a "religious experience" is something that just sort of happens as a byproduct of doing real spiritual work. Having the experience without the work is pointless. It proves nothing and rarely leads people to improve themselves.
"This is sheer blasphemy," senior BJP leader Vijay Kumar Malhotra said reacting to an affidavit filed by the Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) rejecting the claim of the existence of the "Ramsetu" or Adam's bridge in the area where the the Sethusamudram project was under construction.
"It's an insult to the Hindu faith. We also wonder why Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Congress chief Sonia Gandhi have been going for the Dussehra festival if their government does not believe in Lord Rama's existence," he said.
The BJP and other constituents of the Sangh Parivar are opposing the Sethusamudram project saying it would damage an undersea bridge believed to be built by Lord Rama.
"Today, the government in its affidavit says there is no evidence to prove the bridge was built by Lord Rama or that Lord Rama ever existed. This is an attack on Hindu sentiments, a ferocious one," Malhotra said.
You can't take the sky from me...
That's an interesting and valid point.
Along those lines, I've never understood why members within a system would seek to explain the existence of that system by taking measurements from within the system. When you need to measure the length of, say, a shelf, do you compare it's length to that of another shelf within the same house? No, you get something outside the system, something that is not relative to the system, a ruler, to measure the shelf. Otherwise, you are just approximating the length of the shelf.
My point is, science will never be accurate enough to explain this universe fully until we can exit this universe/multiverse/dimensional limitation, take measurements, and successfully return to it. Until then, we will only gain infinitely more accurate approximations until there is nothing left to increase our accuracy.
It is this view that makes these debates pointless beyond pure fun or an attempt at opening minds to possibilities that they had not considered, such as the existence of a single benevolent creator or a lack thereof.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
They don't *all* have different authors: Luke & Acts were very probably written by the same person.
5) Virgin births are rampant throughout ancient mythology, and most sun gods underwent a virgin birth on December 25 (it being the traditionally accepted date when the days visibly begin to grow in length). Many also had 3 wise men follow a star in the east to see the birth. It was practically a requirement of godhood in an age when sun gods were generally considered the most important deities. If you didn't have the trappings of a sun god, you would not have been accepted by Roman society. (This also explains why the Christian sabbath is Sunday.)
Astrologically, the story is explained by the belt of Orion (the three wise men) pointing to Sirius (the brightest star in the sky) which was low in the eastern sky where the sun rose on the winter solstice, all of which occured under the sign of Virgo (the virgin).
Incidentally, the sun gods as a rule traveled the world with their 12 disciples, were then killed, placed into a cave for 3 days, and then resurrected, thereby saving humanity. Astrologically, this is just esoteric symbolism for the sun traversing the 12 signs of the Zodiac, finally losing the war against the forces of darkness on the Winter Solstice, remaining in this darkest mode for 3 days where the sun spent more time "under" the earth than over it, before being reborn again, initiating a new year and new crops, which were essential to the survival of humanity.
The most prevalent sun god during the Roman Empire was probably Mithras, who had Persian origins. The story of Mithras had all of these elements, but also borrowed them from earlier traditions. The oldest one we know of, and possibly the original, was the Egyptian god Horus. The sun-disk on Horus' head was adopted directly into Christian iconography, eventually evolving into the modern halo. Horus was called Iu-em-hetep, or Iusa in Egyptian, a name which evolved to Yeshua (Hebrew), then Iesu (Greek, who had to drop the trailing 'a' which would have implied the feminine), then Iesus (Latinate form of Iesu), then finally Jesus around the 1600s when the letter J came into usage.
The current Christian version of the sun god story comes from the Council of Nicaea, which at its heart was an attempt to establish a universal Roman religion to eliminate the religious feuds that were occupying the empire at that time. As a universal religion it had to incorporate the essential elements of all the major competing sects of the day, so sun god symbolism figured heavily in the resulting unified doctrine. Constantine's miraculous "conversion" however, was more likely political expediency - an attempt to centralize and control worship from Rome. And it worked, for over 1000 years. Still doing a half-decent job today, in fact.
To clarify for those who haven't studied the Bible, the earliest known Christian writings consist of Paul's Epistles and the Four Gospels. The Epistles are the surviving letters written by Paul to various groups that discuss matters relating to Christianity. Paul is considered the the "first Christian". The Four Gospels are written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. These are the documents that give an account of the life of Jesus (ie. these books are where you'll find the stories of his birth, the sermon on the mount, the miracles he performed, his death, etc.) Additionally, Matthew and Luke aren't "independent" - they both borrow from writings in Mark's gospel (and possibly a 2nd source, look for the "Q Document" on wikipedia). Mark and John are the only two "independent" gospels. The gospels aren't completely cohesive (they contain contradictions as well as duplications).
Actual "historical" accounts of Jesus are simply not there. Again, look on wikipedia for the "historical Jesus" and you'll find that there are about 2-4 accepted historical (secular, non-religious) accounts of the man Jesus in the first century.
Furthermore, here is the chronology of the writings (c. means circa):
c. 5 CE - Jesus is born
c. 30 CE - Jesus is crucified
c. 49 CE - First new testament writing (One of Paul's Epistles)
c. 65 CE - Hypothesized "Q" source is written
c. 70 CE - The first known gospel (Mark) is written
As you can see, the first surviving document about the life of Jesus was written 30 years after his death.
This is not speculation, it is all fact, or at least is accepted as fact by the majority of scholars in the field.
Subject was Atheists and Christians in America
Your views on American Atheists are based on your ignorance of reality. Like christians and muslims not every atheists fit the same mold.
What most of us atheists see in American Chritianity is that there are too many ignorant fundamentalists and we view them in the same way as we view muslims fundatmentatlists. They are both vermins.
The big difference is that the muslim fundies will blow themselves up while the christian fundies will not (not yet anyway). Their views on society is just as obnoxious and dangerous.
I see a lot of people arguing that this experiment proves God is not real. So, if scientists create a device that can directly induce my brain into feeling sexual pleasure, when, at that particular moment in time, I am not engaged in any sexual act, does that mean sex does not exist? Or maybe they manipulate my mind so that I feel like I'm touching water, when I'm not touching water... does that mean water does not exist? After all, at the point the experiment was performed, those feelings were only in my head - they weren't actually happening. Guess that means I must have imagined them all along.
Statler: I bet a major hit this Christmas will be tin-foil hats... Isn't it ironic?
Waldorf: No, it's tinny.
You can also stimulate nerve endings to simulate burning pain or itching. Does the ability to stimulate the receptors for various things in our body mean that they do not really exist?
Fred
In the interest of continuing the debate, how is it logical to try to disprove the existence of something that theoretically exists on higher planes of existence (i.e., 4 or more dimensions) using tools of this plane of existence (3 or even 3.5 dimensions) when the laws of mathematics and physics clearly makes that impossible.
When you attempt to measure a 5th dimensional object, assuming one of those dimensions is temporal (i.e., time), with a 3 dimensional measuring device, you would find the object appearing to exist intermittently over time (moving out of the 3 dimensions and moving back in at a different location), or existing in two places at once (curving in such away that the object is connected on the 5th dimension but not on the 3 being measured), or any number of other possibilities. It is literally impossible to measure the limits of such an object unless it is somehow limited to the 3 dimensions being measured, assuming that such an act is even possible for such an object (it could be a 4 or 5 dimensional object).
Please, question this argument. Without an open mind, you've lost your ability to choose, and without choice, you're nothing but an automaton. Automatons are something that neither the God of the Bible, nor any intelligent man, wants.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Well said, friend.
I actually experienced enlightenment, and I'm certain there is a physiological effect behind it, as opposed to a mystical one. Interestingly I've never experienced it again, and from accounts I've read you can't experience enlightenment more than once. At least not by any natural means. Good luck to the scientists trying to get an MRI scan of this experience.
Do you have an impossible question to solve, e.g. finding purpose in life and the universe? When it consumes you, when you've pushed yourself to the point where you realize you may not be able to find the answer and realize the need to be a little more open minded, to think somewhat differently, you are probably close to enlightenment. Then perhaps after spending an entire night awake thinking about it, during the next morning while doing something routine or different than normal you get zapped by a feeling of incredible euphoria.
I'm not religious at all, spiritual perhaps. I even ended up marrying my wife who is not just an atheist but has some strong anti-religion sentiments. My faith is rationality.
The enlightenment itself didn't answer my question explicitly, but the problem felt resolved. The God I've come have faith in is not a thing (i.e. not a noun as defined in the dictionary), but is the force responsible for change and creativity. In other words, if you want something, figure it out yourself - crossing your fingers and hoping it will materialize in front of you is fucking dumb.
You can't take the sky from me...
With this deal in place, government officials and their contractors began approving, and in some cases altering, the scripts of shows before they were aired to conform with the government's anti-drug messages. "Script changes would be discussed between ONDCP and the show -- negotiated," says one participant.
Rick Mater, the WB network's senior vice president for broadcast standards, acknowledges: "The White House did view scripts. They did sign off on them -- they read scripts, yes."
The arrangement, uncovered by a six-month Salon News investigation, is known to only a few insiders in Hollywood, New York and Washington. Almost none of the producers and writers crafting the anti-drug episodes knew of the deal. And top officials from the five networks involved last season -- NBC, ABC, CBS, the WB and Fox -- for the most part refused to discuss it.
You can't take the sky from me...
The evidence put forward is the mountains of historic text describing miracles etc from years gone by. Now I'm an athiest/agnostic (and lets not get into what that means), but just suppose that Jesus rose from the dead today and started performing miracles, and those miracles were scientifically verified etc by all the worlds leading skeptics, and then documented for all eternity, and then we got bored with him, crucified him (again) and we never heard from him again.
Only the Anitchrist would let that happen. If it were the real Christ, the scientific verification would not work. See, he'd have you fooled. That's the End of the World. It said so on TV.
Stick Men
But how did #2 'evolve'?
<sig> </sig>
What color is the sky on the planet Smug?
You leave the FSM out of this, heretic!
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
Sure, why not?
You can't take the sky from me...
I think there's a great deal of evidence in the literature (in the form of various animations from pacific rim countries) regarding the affection displayed by many-tentacled beings for young human females. ;)
You can't take the sky from me...
Given that there is apparently an organ in the brain for sensing God, I would say that the burden of proof is on those who say it is for something other than sensing God.
That's not a given. There's an organ in the brain that when stimulated gives people an experience they relate to religion. That almost certainly means that other religious activities are what stimulated their brain in that way before, otherwise they would not have connected the artificial stimulation with their previous experiences. What should be investigated is how those religious practices stimulate the brain in the first place.
Frankly, a sensor for the presence of a god who is supposed to be omnipresent doesn't sound very useful.
Now if only Scientists could answer prayers...
http://www.beanleafpress.com
To a religious ass, I can see how I might sound like someone who is relentlessly and desperately trying to cast doubt on a well-founded, well subscribed to scientific theories and practices
All I did in the quoted text was phrase the question in somewhat more neutral/scientific language, and provided a possible answer from some of the reading I've done on the subject of evolutionary psychology. It is pertinent and fairly well-researched explanation, and in my opinion, the best one I've heard yet. I'm not saying it is an extremely concrete, thoroughly tested and broadly accepted scientific theory
I do certainly think it's better than saying simplistically saying "god did it" or "this is something we will never understand, so why bother trying to" or "people believe in God because they're afraid of death and this is a product of their delusions" and dismissing these experiences and phenomena out of hand.
If, instead of taking inane potshots at me, you'd like to provide a superior, alternative explanation, or even a thoughtful deconstruction of the one I've provided, I'd be glad to hear it.
Funny how people must be indoctrinated into beliefs that you do not (no longer) share. That leaves the inference that one must become enlightened to throw off the shackles of ignorance.
Every major religious group with which I am familiar either implies or explicitly states that one must become enlightened to throw off the shackles of ignorance.
Most scientists I know believe that education should give you the tools to throw off the shackles of ignorance.
In any case, the shackles of ignorance are not highly regarded.
... just because something seems more powerful than you doesn't mean it must be a / the "god". It just means it's more powerful.
Beware of "gods" that announce themselves or are announced by others. No true "god" should ever have to stoop so low as to put on a magic show or resort to fear tactics to validate their credentials to a lowly human.
8==8 Bones 8==8
Errr, one of the tenets of a three-part Christian God is that one part is always in the room with everyone. Everyone Christian, that is.
And I suppose this research is targeted only at a Christian God, for the Islamic Allah has his hands full these days.
So, before you can say there is no presence in that room, you must prove that there is no Godly presence in the room, and that's proving a negative, which becomes a matter of faith, and that's why the Christians have the secularists over a barrel.
So, this new helmet helps you feel the Holy Spirit, eh? That oughta sell very well in these troubled times!
I am a Christian, consider that I have had what people would call "spiritual experiences", and have no problem with this research or it's conclusion. It is no surprise to me that there are areas of our brain that when stimulated make us feel this way. I believe that when we have these "spiritual experiences" God makes use of our physical and mental facilities.
This mapping of the spiritual to the material is something C.S. Lewis termed "Transposition". Something from a complex dimension (the spiritual) is being transposed into a simpler dimension (the material). Whenever we go from a "higher" to a "lower" medium we end up having to use aspects of the lower medium more than once to represent the higher.
Example: A piano version of an orchestral score. At one point in the score the pianists Ab may represent a violin, and at another point it may represent an oboe. The orchestra is a richer entity than a piano, so in order to represent things double ups are needed.
Another example is our emotions and our bodies. The emotions are arguably a "higher" medium than our physical sensations. This is why we get goose bumps on the back of our neck both when terrified and awe-struck. There are a limited number of ways our physical senses can represent our emotions.
So in regards to the article, these areas of our brain are used day-to-day to represent certain emotions. However they can also be used to represent something of a richer medium - the supernatural.
God manifesting himself in the material is nothing new from a biblical point of view. People think that Christians see the spiritual as a ghostly disconnected dimension, when in fact the Bible is primarily about God's engagement in this reality.
this helmet is God, who wants to start an insane cult?
Good news: The helmet forces "God" to show up in the room when it's switched on.
Bad news: The "God" is Cthulhu.
Fhtagn
A Human Right
Well, that's an interesting theory, no doubt. Still (without being as smart as Sagan) my impression is a bit the opposite.
See, the funny thing is that humans seem to be built to (A) see and filter patterns in the input data, (B) need a simple explanation, and (C) subconsciously try to keep their mental "model" of the world coherent.
Especially the last one seems to screw us up no end: it's the way cognitive dissonance happens. The way the subconscious seems to work there is that if facts X and Y can't simultaneously be true, one of them will have to be discarded or altered. Which is actually almost a scientific frame of mind. Unfortunately it seems to have little qualms about which it discards, as long as the end result is self-consistent. It can keep and rationalize the blatantly bogus X and discard the common-sense Y only because it really wants to believe Z, which in turn depends on X. Or discard Y because it would imply P, which would imply Q, which is something really bad for one's self-esteem or morale.
For example the textbook example of cognitive dissonance goes something like this: you make some students do a boring and repetitive and seemingly pointless job. They'll hate it. Then you tell them they can stop, but offer them 1$ if they can convince someone else to do it for you. Watch them end up convincing themselves that it's a really good and fun job.
The way that seems to work is a conflict between X = "I'm a honest guy", Y = "honest people don't lie", and Z = "omg, I just lied to someone for a lousy 1$". Therefore they'll convince themselves that Z wasn't really a lie.
Or there was this fun experiment in asking some people to write an essay defending a position that's the exact opposite of what they really believe. Just, you know, to play the devil's advocate. Or so someone can study the graphology effects of writing a lie, or some other bogus justification. Not to actually believe that position, just to write an essay on something that they fully think is bogus. The fun part is that after a few weeks their own position will have shifted more or less towards what they wrote there. Essentially they altered their model to make that essay feel like less of a lie.
Or the pattern seeing also can work funny: if you really want to see a certain pattern, you _will_ see it. It's called selective confirmation.
So basically what makes us as a species such dumbasses at times, are the exact same traits that make us so smart and able to do science. We have the right reflexes, they're just not... polished enough. They can operate on bogus data and apply fallacies just as cheerfully, if not even more cheerfully, as doing real logic.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Yeah, and there's a lot of (anti-meth in some states, and) anti-tobacco TV going on now too. Call it propaganda if you want. I think it's good. I don't want my kids using drugs.
Although, I wouldn't say the suggestion that drug use can lead to you being a low-life is "disinformation."
to kill than be killed?
This is supposed to be an evolutionary advance? Killing off the competitors that keep you in check, so that you don't destroy the environment that keeps you alive?
You believe that Microsoft is the epitome of natural progress?
Maximizing entropy is beneficial?
I know I'm pushing the absurd, here, but how does unbiased evolution avoid heat death? And, if you have to assume a bias to evolution, have you really avoided the hand of the supernatural, or have you just pushed it back to the other side of the big bang?
If you're not trained in math, even if you are highly trained in biology or physics, there are a lot of mathematical results that don't appear to derive from their premise.
The fact that the math is both hard and non-obvious doesn't make it wrong.
metaphysical/paranormal sources might not need to transmit thoughts and feelings telephatically, however, in the case there is not an interpreter present, what is received in the recipient would be probably taken as a thought, feeling of the self, therefore not regarded as an outer communication. this would complicate things. therefore the need for an interpreter.
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Neal Stephenson, in Snow Crash, asserts that the Israelites were monolatrists, not monotheists.
Monolatrism requires believers to worship one true god, but acknowledges the existence of multiple gods.
-kgj
-kgj
. But from the theistic perspective, it seems obvious that if God exists He would build the brain with some capacity to detect His presence under certain circumstances
If got were to sit down at a computer, would He need a keyboard?
I think not... Then again, I don't believe in Him.
I saw my wife.
"In 2000 years time, would any of the documented evidence be believed? What about in 100 years?"
Yes. Look how many people are willing to believe based on the current set of "evidence". Heck, I'm willing to bet that we still have Scientology in 100 years and that in 2000 the sayings of Cruise the Prophet (blessings be upon his name) will be spread throughout the solar system.
What is really interesting to me is to see what religions do with this device. Think about it. Prayer sometimes brings about this feeling but this machine works every time. If it can be made reliable why does that not make it highly valued by religious communities? Why not combine it with prayer? Who knows, maybe the machine works by literally forcing god to be in the room with you. Would this not just enhance the power of prayer?
I've had a legit experience with God. So I know he is real. I've also experienced highs that made all other pleasure weak in comparison. I can tell the two apart. I have no doubts that a machine can stimulate certain parts of the brain and cause someone to "feel" things. That part I wasn't doubting. I just doubt that it'd make me(personally) to feel like it is an experience with God since I already had ones to compare it by. I'm not knocking the tech at all.
God spoke to me.
As you may have noticed, I am not a native speaker.
So maybe indoctrination is not a friendly word to use.
But I do insist that the idea of a specific God existing is only acceptable once you've accepted it. From that moment everything will fit in, even if you have to push the trapezoid pegs trough triangleshaped holes.
However, if you are looking for evidence for God... well all Godproofs I've seen would not hold in court.
So in stead of indoctrinated, which i admit sounds as if some evil intention was present, let's call it triggered, prepared, something like that.
On planet Skeptic the colours keep changing.
The same effect occurs with drugs such as ketamine, DXM, nitrous and PCP.
;)
At increasing dosages, you lose contact with first physical reality, then your body, humanity and identity. If you take enough, the only thing remaining, is pure consciousness.
Since this consciousness belongs to you, you perceive to be (merged with) everything.
IANAN(eurologist), but reading the above, you can take a guess at what I am/do
...otherwise known as DMT, is believed to activate such an "extraterrestrial" communication center.
Under some circumstances, it can be released by your own pineal gland, affecting several brain regions, and it seems to be actively transported across the blood-brain barrier. IIRC, the pineal gland releases DMT when you die, which is _the_ moment for communicating with other (higher) beings. But what you think of this is, of course, subject to your own beliefs.
Alien abduction reports have a lot in common with DMT smoking experiences, suggesting these may be caused by a DMT release by the pineal gland.
Maybe there are more substances producing similar results, but DMT is certainly a special one (sorry, no time for references. Try http://deoxy.org/ ).
"Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence, a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is" How do they know this for a fact? Do they have instruments that can detect God's presence or absence? They claim to be inducing a "God experience." What if God really is omnipresent and they are just artificially stimulating or facilitating a response that is possible under any circumstances? (Psalm 138:7-12) This is very interesting, but it says more about the receiving end of such experiences (where the human brain responds to them) than the source.
The concept of God is good in principle, but tends to get muddled up by the Fanatics. If you steer clear of them (which is hard these days) you'll be okay.
That wouldn't happen be a "Purple Helmet" would it?
Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
Slashdot: the finest source of religeous facts.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
you don't think your existance is a good reason to at least contemplate it?
No, I don't. If you had any capability to think about it you wouldn't either.
The "good book" doesn't try to prove anything. Its a series of accounts, providing evidence (no I won't cite, feel free to read it yourself), of things that took place 2000+ years ago.
Accounts of events for which their is no supporting evidence. You clearly think that such fairy tales "prove" quite a bit. You are wrong.
And heres the thing - it answers key questions to what humankind seeks to find out.
Such as "is it ok to beat your slave if he doesn't die right away?" Spoiler: the answer is yes.
Whether you believe the evidence is there to support it, amongst other things, is a choice you make.
Thinking men have no choice in believing things for which there is no evidence supporting either the existence or implication of such. You either don't believe it or you don't think. You've obviously chosen poorly.
But I don't hear answers from any other quarter.
Humans seek to find out about a lot of things that don't exist. For the rest we have science, which actually does provide answers.
Your 747 quip makes no equivalent sense to me to what we're talking about.
Protip: it's something that does not exist and for which there is no evidence or implication that it does. Just like "god."
I always enjoy these conversations - its very interesting to see how much time and effort atheists put into these debates over something that "doesn't exist".
The debate concerns things that do not exist. The "debate" (spoiler: there is none) is "over" what is true.
The Farewell Tour II
The concept of god is childish, at best, and in any case is completely unrealistic. Whether or not it makes people act "good" (it doesn't) is irrelevant. You talk about "fanatics" as if they are not merely degrees of the same mental illness. We don't need "god" and there's no reason to believe there is such a thing, so lets just move on and worry about things that actually do matter. Claiming that there is any more value in a deluded moron just because they aren't out in the streets killing people is ridiculous.
The Farewell Tour II
On what basis do you determine we don't need "god"? If, as you clearly state, "god" doesn't exist, on what grounds does it matter if someone believes in God or not? Are you going to resort to the "religious wars" argument? I am perfectly willing to accept that people _use_ religion as an excuse for war but when it comes down to it its masking the real impetus - usually that of self interest, pride, jealousy or a plain old power grab.
What I don't understand is this : if God doesn't exist, and we live in some sort of vacuum, why are you so concerned as to what I think?
Because I care about what is and is not true and I don't like morons. I could make the "religious wars" argument, the "accountability" argument, the "national standing in the world" arguemnt, or likely dozens of others if I cared to. But I don't think it needs to go that far. These people are wrong and they are morons. You could argue that they don't really believe such bullshit (which could be true), and you're welcome to call them liars if you want. But I'm willing to give them the benefit of the doubt. I am, however, not willing to let them go around in public spitting trash without being challenged and ridiculed as their "ideas" deserve. If you are that really is your fucking problem. You're welcome to shut the fuck up and be left alone whenever you'd like.
The Farewell Tour II
Random mutation and natural selection both exist, and both influence evolution, but we have no evidence, experiments, or even well-constructed theories concerning what else may drive it. It is currently untestable, and therefore unscientific to assume that those two mechanisms drive everything of evolution. Science has become oblivious to this, which should be an obvious fact, because the religious opposition to evolutionary theory makes its supporters, scientists and non-scientists, dig in their heals and turn "random mutation and natural selection" into dogma. The field of evolutionary psychology is completely dependent on this dogma, and completely devoid of actual evidence. Without actual evidence of what drove the evolution of the human mind and brain, its study cannot be considered a field of science.
I apologize for the "potshot," but your reasoning of how oversensitivity to the presence of animals, plus the ability to empathize, plus the ability to imagine, made it a survival advantage for humans to be able to feel that they were in the presence of God, just seemed to me like the epitome of what happens when people try to force dogma into science. It doesn't fit. I find such explanations, as well as explanations for how random mutation and natural selection performed such feats as inventing new biological systems and organs, utterly implausible. But until someone invents a way to quantify the model, there will be no way to mount evidence for or against. In the meantime, forming conclusions about the nature of the human mind based upon these beliefs is extremely dangerous, and IMO, as it is not based in any kind of evidence, it has virtually no possibility of being correct.
But advancing inherently untestable theories is no better than those things. As both Socrates and Confucius said, the most important part of knowledge is acknowledging the scope of your ignorance. I strongly disagree with ever saying "we can never understand X," but sometimes, to be rational, we must say "it is impossible with our current state of knowledge to understand X, or for that matter, to intelligently speculate." When we come to terms with where the actual threshold between knowledge and ignorance is, THAT is the only time that we are truly capable of advancing our understanding.
You're right -- the concept of God does seem irrelevant in this context - fanatics sound the same on either side of the belief.
This is exactly the attitude that I have: Science is agnostic. And it will likely always be, for the reasons I outlined. I'm glad to see that I'm not alone in this idea.
Even if God, Himself, came down and explained the situation to you(plural) or I (such as with Jesus), one would still lack the ability to provide independent verification in order to meet the requirements of the scientific method.
Resistance is futile. Your technological distinctiveness will be added to our own. You will become one with the morgue
Do you seriously expect us to believe that only .01% of people get addicted to drugs? Really amazing the type of irresponsible nonsense you junkies spew.
Drugs were at one time legal, which lead to the horrible problem of addiction, which is a sound reason to control substances.
I'm not misinformed, you are.
.01% of people get addicted, so drugs should not be controlled and alcohol is more dangerous, so drugs are safe and the only reason they're illegal is because of a government conspiracy and people die on contraceptives too and people with HPPD were just crazy before and correlation is not causation maybe milk made them crazy it must have been laced because these are Wonder Drugs with absolutely no consequence and totally 100% safe blah blah blah don't take my drugs away because I don't have a problem..." I could go on and on.
And can you blame me for being a troll, with comments like "Only
I don't want my children reading this stupid crap from a bunch of dimwitted radical hippies.
Unless it comes with astral authentication I'm not buying it. Too easy for a rogue ghost to impersonate the almighty. Do ghosts even have PGP keys?
Okay, hippy.
Here's a statistic: Your mom. I don't need statistics to tell me common sense things. Especially not when the consequence of drug use is as serious as addiction. You carry the burden of proof here.
The drugs you mention do cause health problems. Even wikipedia and erowid mention that. Of course, within those pages, you'll also find absurd levels of skepticism, much like you're demonstrating here, but you can read the negative experiences in the erowid vault.
People ARE addicted to sex and food. The pleasure centers of the brain compel us to eat and have sex. When you take drugs, you activate the pleasure centers directly, with foreign substances, at unnatural levels, overriding equilibrated desires, which leads to addiction and the neglect of everything else in the pursuit of drugs.
The brain is a sophisticated computer with a delicate balance of neurotransmitters and receptors. When you mess with that delicate balance, you can cause permanent changes that alter the way your brain interprets stimuli, desire, consciousness and even motor coordination. The end result can be an inclination towards Parkinson's, schizophrenia, paranoia, HPPD, depersonalization, gambling, compulsions, anxiety, mania, depression.
All of you hippies that suggest otherwise are just plain wrong and irresponsible.
The real world is fuzzy, too.
I mean, seriously, our brains exist in the real world. Animal brains also tend to not be driven by strict linear logic, either.
Microsoft is a living organism, of sorts. Very much a parasite.
Yeah, evolution can be a self-correcting process, when individuals choose to correct themselves before they get faced with the natural consequences of their actions.
But you know, it makes no difference whether there was an intelligent God creating the universe or whether it was just that a non-supernatural creation of the universe managed to mimic intelligence, in somehow allowing and selecting processes that could avoid going straight downhill every time. If we use our atheism or our theism to excuse ourselves in believing that our own way is better than everyone else's we are making the same mistake.
The discovery that the mechanics of thought and belief are not entirely shrouded in mystery is neutral to the question of the existence of God, as many have pointed out, even if it might reveal the means that some have used to induce fake religious experiences in others. The existence of fakirs does not prove or disprove the existence of a "real" thing, either.
I was promised 72 Wonka bars in the afterlife.
Or something you might want to consider, also, is that you're trying to explain the evolution of an organ that does not actually exist.
Read the article closely, it actually talks about specific areas of the brain that are primarily used for other purposes displaying unusual activity when the reported "religious experiences" are taking place, such as the sense of oneness with the universe being felt when they deactivate their spatial awareness functionality.
In this sense, the only organ involved is the brain, and the only function being exercised is the impairment of another function, which is not in itself an actual altogether seperate function.
The religious seem to be conveniently ignoring this fact and trying to spin the report as "god's phone to your brain". By trying to explain the evolution of the "phone" mechanism, you're kind of playing into their hands.