Freethought & Rationalism Archive

lunachick · 08-23-2003, 12:04 PM

This BBC transcript of the science programme, Horizon, shows that religion is more than likely a brain disorder.

Quote:

NARRATOR (BARBARA FLYNN): These people suffer from one of the strangest of all brain disorders. It makes them think they have been touched by god. But their unusual condition is giving scientists a unique insight into faith and the human mind. As a result researchers are now asking one of them most explosive questions of all - could it be that the physical makeup of our brain programmes us to believe in god?

Quote:

NARRATOR: Rudi and Gwen's hallucinations may seem very odd, but there is a growing belief amongst researchers that their condition could help give answers to one of the deepest philosophical questions of all. Where does religious belief come from? Divine revelation is crucial to all the great faiths. Visions for mystics and seers have produced creeds that people have lived and died for. Believers are convinced that such revelations come from god; atheists that they are no more than the product of superstition and social conditioning. What neither side has ever thought is that religion might actually be as fundamentally a part of us as the desire to eat, sleep or have sex. But now that view may be changing, and temporal lobe epilepsy is turning out to be key.

Quote:

PROF VILAYANUR RAMACHANDRAN (University of California, San Diego): It's possible that many great religious leaders had temporal lobe seizures and this predisposes them to having visions, having mystical experiences.

NARRATOR: St Paul is a case in point. He famously encountered god who appeared to him in a blinding flash on the road to Damascus.

RAMACHANDRAN: Many religious mystics, including St Paul, some of the experiences they describe sound quite similar to the sorts of things you hear from patients, so it's quite possible that he had seizures.

NARRATOR: And what about Moses, the bringer of the Ten Commandments, believed he heard the voice of god speak to him from a burning bush.

RAMACHANDRAN: It's possible that even Moses did, and many religious mystics in India may have had seizure activity in the brain that predisposed them to such beliefs and enriched their mental lives enormously as a result.

Quote:

NARRATOR: We may never learn the truth about Moses or St Paul, but Professor Ramachandran of the University of California decided to pursue the link between the temporal lobes of the brain and religious experience. So he set up an experiment to compare the brains of people with and without temporal lobe epilepsy.

RAMACHANDRAN: What we did was first take normal volunteers who did not have epileptic seizures. Put two electrodes on their finger tips to measure the changes of skin resistance. This essentially measure how much they sweat when they look at different words on the screen. In a normal person, if I flashed the word 'table' the person will not sweat. But if I flash the word 'sex' then the person starts sweating and this registers as a change of resistance called the 'galvanic skin response'. Now the question is, what would happen if you do the same experiment with patients with temporal lobe epilepsy?

NARRATOR: The epileptic patients were given three different groups of words: sexually loaded words, neutral words and religious words. Professor Ramachandran found that the neutral words, as expected, produced little emotional effect, but was astonished by the response he got when he started showing patients sexual and religious words.

RAMACHANDRAN: What we found to our amazement was, every time they looked at religious words like 'god' they get a huge big galvanic skin response. Conversely, if you showed them a sexually loaded word, these patients showed a slightly lower response. In other words, their response was higher to words about god and religion and lower to sexual words, whereas in most normal people it's the other way around.

NARRATOR: This was the very first piece of clinical evidence revealing that the body's physical response to religious imagery was definitely linked to activity in the temporal lobes of the brain.

RAMACHANDRAN: So what we suggested was, there are certain circuits within the temporal lobes which have been selectively activated. Their activity is selectively heightened in these patients, and somehow the activity of these specific neural circuits is more conducive to religious belief and mystical belief. It makes them more prone to religious belief.

NARRATOR: Scientists now believe what happens inside the minds of temporal lobe epileptic patients may just be an extreme case of what goes on inside all our brains, for everyone. It now appears that temporal lobes are key in experiencing religious and spiritual belief. This explosive research studying how religious faith affects the brain is the inspiration for a completely new field of science - neurotheology. In a remote region of Northern Canada a scientist put this controversial new science of neurotheology to the test. Dr Michael Persinger claims that by stimulating the temporal lobes he can artificially induce religious experience in almost anyone. Dr Persinger has developed a device which produces an electromagnetic field across the temporal lobes. He says he can induce a moment that feels just like a genuine religious revelation with a machine unlike any other.

Quote:

NARRATOR: What is almost certainly true is that religious experience is far more complex than can be explained simply by activity in one area of the brain. Dr Persinger's work is only the beginning. Many scientists now suspect there must be far more to the relationship between the brain and belief.

And in summary:

Quote:

NARRATOR: The implications of Dr Newberg's research, along with that of Dr Persinger, are huge. They suggest that how or what we believe is deeply controlled by the basic physical makeup of our minds. It begs the question: why have we developed this ability? Perhaps there is a simple evolutionary explanation. Studies have shown that believers live longer, are healthier, even that they may have lower levels of cancer and heart disease. Could it be we somehow evolved religious belief as a survival mechanism?

DAWKINS: If you ask the question 'what's the survival value of religious belief?' it could be that you're asking the wrong question. What you should be doing is asking what's the survival value of the kind of brain which manifests itself as religious belief under the right circumstances.

NARRATOR: But if religious faith is somehow a by-product of evolution, does that mean belief in a god can be dismissed as a quirk of nature? The fact is, it is much too early to think of neurotheology as a means of explaining away people's faith. Although there is evidence to show that our brains are hardwired for religions, this doesn't mean that god can be dismissed as just a trick of brain chemistry.

RAMACHANDRAN: Just because there are circuits in your brain that predispose you to religious belief does not in any way negate the value of a religious belief. Now it may be god's way of putting an antenna in your brain to make you more receptive to god. Nothing our scientists are saying about the brain or about neural circuitry for religion in any way negates the existence of god, nor negates the value of religious experience for the person experiencing it.

BISHOP SYKES: It would be very surprising if we didn't discover more about the physics and chemistry of those parts of our bodies which are a process, the various bits of enjoyment we receive from religious belief. I think Christians and maybe other religious believers have absolutely nothing to fear from further investigation, indeed should be keen on it and canny when it comes to the interpretation of it.

NARRATOR: What is beyond doubt is that the origins of religion are even more complex than had been thought. The science of neurotheology has revealed that it is too simplistic to see religion as either spiritually inspired or the result of social conditioning. What it shows is that for some reason our brains have developed specific structures that help us believe in god. Remarkably it seems whether god exists or not, the way our brains have developed, we will go on believing.

DAWKINS: The human religious impulse does seem very difficult to wipe out, which causes me a certain amount of grief. Clearly religion has extreme tenacity.

NEWBERG: Because the brain seems to be designed the way it is, and because religion and spirituality seem to be built so well into that kind of function, the concepts of god and religion are going to be around for a very, very long time.

So, while the summary is non-commital and non-threatening (as it needs to be at this early stage in the new science of neurotheology) it is remarkably consistent with my own unscientific ponderings as to the nature of religion and religious experience.

Heathen Dawn · 08-23-2003, 12:08 PM

Well done, lunachick! Chalk up another one to the Materialist Mind Theory!

lunachick · 08-23-2003, 03:00 PM

Thanks.

We're having quite an interesting discussion about it in the Apologetics forum over at CF, HD. Come and join in if you feel like it.

Howard · 08-23-2003, 03:17 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by lunachick
So, while the summary is non-commital and non-threatening (as it needs to be at this early stage in the new science of neurotheology) it is remarkably consistent with my own unscientific ponderings as to the nature of religion and religious experience.

And it is in full agreement with the well-developed science of rectotheology.

Marduk · 08-23-2003, 03:37 PM

Nah! This just proves that God made our brains like that so we could communicate!

reprise · 08-23-2003, 03:43 PM

I don't know that I'd call any of this "new".

Wired for spirituality

We've known for a very long time that direct stimulation of the brain can produce NDEs and other "mystical" experiences.

lunachick · 08-23-2003, 03:44 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Howard
And it is in full agreement with the well-developed science of rectotheology.

Is that the science of God as Smart Ass?

Or is it just another more general branch in opposition to Biblical Verso?

Howard · 08-23-2003, 03:54 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by lunachick
Is that the science of God as Smart Ass?

Or is it just another more general branch in opposition to Biblical Verso?

It is based on the premise that religious thoughts and experiences do not originate in the brain but in another part of the anatomy.

Heathen Dawn · 08-23-2003, 03:58 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Howard
It is based on the premise that religious thoughts and experiences do not originate in the brain but in another part of the anatomy.

I get it.

Yes, some people do have their most profound religious experiences in the loo... though the greatest religious experience, the one in which even hardened unbelievers shout out the name of the Lord, is reserved for the bedroom.

Godless Wonder · 08-23-2003, 05:31 PM

There's a book called "Rational Mysticism" by John Horgan (former senior writer for Scientific American) ISBN 0-618-06027-8 that has a chapter called "The God Machine" about Persinger's machine. Much as I'd like to think they were pretty far along in figuring all this out, I don't think they are, and in particular, I'd take Persinger's claims with a grain of salt. The author of the book visited Persinger in Sudbury, Canada, and strapped himself into "the god machine", and tried to get some kind of religious experience, but failed.

A quote from the book:

Quote:

"Actually, Persinger's work merits skepticism, for several reasons. Media coverage of Persinger often implies that his subjects have profound religious visions -- of 'Elijah, Jesus, the Virgin Mary, Mohammed, the Sky Spirit,' as Wired put it. But his papers describe much less dramatic results. [...] most subjects who sense a presense usually just have a vague feeling of being watched, with little emotional effect -- and of course they are being watched, by the researchers. Cook [who worked with Persinger and supervised hundreds of sessions with the god machine] could not recall anyone attributing divine or demonic qualities to the sensed presense."

And he's also looking into ESP, specifically, trying to mentally project images into subjects minds while they are in the "god machine." After reading the book, I'd have to say that the methods don't sound very scientific.

[edited to correct "Amsterdam" to "Sudbury Canada." Don't know where I got Amsterdam from.]

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08-23-2003, 12:08 PM	#2
Heathen Dawn Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2002 Location: United Kingdom Posts: 4,656	Well done, lunachick! Chalk up another one to the Materialist Mind Theory!

08-23-2003, 03:00 PM	#3
lunachick Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2002 Location: NZ Posts: 7,895	Thanks. We're having quite an interesting discussion about it in the Apologetics forum over at CF, HD. Come and join in if you feel like it.

08-23-2003, 03:37 PM	#5
Marduk Veteran Member Join Date: Aug 2000 Location: the 10th planet Posts: 5,065	Nah! This just proves that God made our brains like that so we could communicate!

08-23-2003, 03:43 PM	#6
reprise Veteran Member Join Date: Jul 2003 Location: Sydney Posts: 3,997	I don't know that I'd call any of this "new". Wired for spirituality We've known for a very long time that direct stimulation of the brain can produce NDEs and other "mystical" experiences.

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