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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.
Sensing something that is not there.... surely that classifes as hallucination
Engineering is the art of compromise.
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!
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.
...after seeing the volunteer scream "Oh, GOD! Oh, GOD!" while being stimulated.
I think they discovered a G-something, but not exactly God.
After a few millenia, the term "new" hardly applies.
It sounds as though you're more afraid of this work than its authors are 'afraid of [religion]'. Slashdot has been known for biased summaries in the past, but this one is [miraculously!] almost straight synopsis, as is the article. Neither makes any moral or philosophical assertations. [In fact, the article asserts that the technology could be used to make non-theists happier!]
:Cheers.:
How is this not news that matters? Isn't this a little more important than articles about the latest nuance in the Linux Task Scheduler? Might it not help us understand that whole religion bit that's been, you know, an integral part of the human experience for all of observable history?
Perhaps a little introspection as to what about this article so upsets you would yield some overall personal benefit.
Perhaps life really is full of possibilities.
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?
Of course not. Judging by past occurrences of when a rational explanation has explained away something previously seen as divine, there will likely be an extended period of denial and attacks, even personal, on the people investigating this. This will be followed by a schism in the religions, where the mainstream will accept it but say it's irrelevant as [religious manuscript] is symbolic and not to be taken literal, and, anyhow, it doesn't disprove anything. The fundies, on the other hand, will continue to struggle in denial for centuries until eaten by the crocodiles.
What's dangerous is if someone manages to come up with a cure for this, or other religious afflictions. Or, even worse, a vaccine or other preventative measures. Then I predict all hell will break lose.
Regards,
--
*Art
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.
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.
Google has more on neurotheology
Hehe, I get the feeling that everyone else who is posting comments like yours is just playing the devil's advocate but you really believe what you just wrote don't you?
The *point* of the demonstration is to show that there is an area of the brain that is trivial to stimulate and which causes "connection to the sacred". What it shows is that religious experience is hardwired into us. It is not learned and it is not a mystical thing. It is a physical part of the brain.
How we know is more important than what we know.
You're confusing the mechanism of perception with the existence of a source.
Brain surgeons have long known that stimulation of the temporal lobe can make people hear voices. That doesn't count as proof that 'voices' don't really exist, though.. unless you're writing the Cliff's Notes summary of The Matrix.
One could just as well ask why such a center exists in the brain if nothing exists to stimulate it.
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.
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
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.
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.
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
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.
"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.
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
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.