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.""

Comments

Acid

[56]

The effect described sounds like the euphoric feeling you sometimes get while on acid. Minus the hallucinations.

Re:Interesting but metaphysically inconclusive

[n dot l]

Do you really think belief in fairy big beard or whatever makes people less likely to kill each other? Yes, at least within a group of believers. I mean, look at what happens when law and order break down in a city: random violence breaks out and does a lot of damage which will later have to be repaired. Religeon is just a tool to legitimize those that impose the laws on the rest, and the belief in the magic sky-fairy that sees everything makes people police themselves more than they otherwise would - after all, societies have always been ruled by a minority of the population, and if people didn't keep themselves in line there'd be no way to maintain order.

In terms of early tribalism, the ones that figured it out grew into stable societies and prospered. The ones that didn't either stayed extremely small so that ordinary family bonds took care of most in-fighting, or were simply wiped out. Evolution.

A good example of religeon's utility is what happened in a lot of Eastern European nations after the communists had thoroughly suppressed the churches: they lost the old "love your neighbor, work hard, don't step out of line, and God will reward you in the end" ethic/morality. By the time my parents (who are from a formerly communist country) entered the work force (several generations later) it had become a sport to slack off as much as possible and steal some little thing from work each day - and I'm talking about the vast majority of the population here. After all, if it isn't somehow wrong to steal from the state, and be a burden on society in general then why bother working hard?

It doesn't sound like much but it adds up fast when you consider how many people did this, and that their economies really weren't geared to mass produce cheap, disposable items like ours are (pens are worth a hell of a lot more when they're made of metal rather than cheap plastics). If the communists had simply found a way to get (well, force) a genuine endorsement from the various churches (like all the rulers of the even more brutal and repressive fudal system that preceeded many of their regimes had) rather than fighting them and thus convincing the population that they were evil, they would have lasted a lot longer (higher levels of production, less energy expended policing the population).

I know, I'm simplifying in order to illustrate my point - there's obviously a lot more to it than that, and what you describe isn't invalid by any means (one only has to look at the Islamic world to see it in action). I just don't think it precludes the fact that religeous beliefs do serve to enforce societal norms - whatever those may be.

Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations

[Veetox]

Actually, it did exist in multiple places; they were just "compiled" into one place. (ie. Four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles, all of which were written by different people, some of which were unrelated, save for their knowledge of Jesus)

Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations

[lightsaber777]

Jesus was hardly a preacher of "tolerance", at least not the way you are using it. Jesus taught people to love, but that love very clearly did not mean acceptance of their lifestyle. For instance, the story of the woman caught in adultery is often used to show how "tolerant" Jesus was. But that story also includes a command to "sin no more". That the act was wrong was never in question. Jesus taught that there is right and wrong and that, if you love a person, you would want to help them out of their self-destructive lifestyles. In addition, the word tolerance indicates an acceptance of something that is otherwise hated. That you can tolerate something means that you "to endure without repugnance; put up with". There is a difference between love for a person because they are a person and acceptance of something that you despise.