This seems like a really interesting topic, so I just had a quick look in the peer-reviewed literature. There's quite a lot of interesting stuff, and it's strange that quite a few articles talk, in a throwaway manner, about St. Paul being a known epileptic, and that his visions had all the symptoms of an epileptic siezure, as if it was already an indisputable closed case. I couldn't find any that were just about St. Paul (although I found the abstract of one that suggests Joan of Arc was). It just seems to me that considering how much of the bible was written by Paul, it seems to throw huge doubt on this huge section of Christian belief if his great visions from god were actually just epileptic siezures.
This was particularly interesting, and it's a reprint from 1970! (on ScienceDirect):
Dewhurst K and Beard A W (2003), Sudden religious conversions in temporal lobe epilepsy, Epilepsy & Behavior, 4, 78-87
Its a bunch of case studies of epileptic seizures followed by religious experiences, heres some interesting bits:
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In their study of the schizophrenia-like psychoses of epilepsy, Slater and Beard [49] found that mystical delusional experiences were `remarkably common'. Patients were convinced of the reality and validity of their religious experiences. Beard [3] found that 26 patients out of the 69 showed symptoms of religiosity, associated with such organic traits as egocentricity, unctuous utterances, stubbornness, stickiness, perseverativeness, impaired memory, lack of spontaneity, retardation and vagueness. Only eight patients had religious interests before the onset of their illness. Out of the 26 cases with religiosity 6 had conversion experiences which are now described.
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There was little diminution in his preoccupation with religion. He soon brought any conversation round to a religious topic and frequently said that we must all believe in the Lord Jesus Christ. He had walked in the streets carrying a banner with the legend `Be prepared to meet thy God', and he showed no ability to modify his conversation according to his company. He continued to believe that a religious meaning underlay ordinary events.
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Conversion experience. After his first certain seizure the patient woke up feeling `better than ever before. I felt completely relaxed. I felt that I had now found my situation in life and that this had been specially selected by God. I was fanatical, terrified that I would not be able to carry out my belief that the greatest power is the love of God. Somehow I had to find a way to prove it because the Russians had found another. I had to find some way to prove that the Bible was true'.
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Conversion experience. In 1954 he stopped taking his anti-convulsants; within six weeks he was having fits every few hours; he had become confused and forgetful. At this point he suddenly realized that he was the Son of God; he possessed special powers of healing and could abolish cancer from the world; he had visions, and believed that he could understand other people's thoughts.
At a subsequent interview he mentioned a `holy smell' and gave the following account of his conversion. `It was a beautiful morning and God was with me and I was thanking God, I was talking to God; I was entering Aldwych, entering the Strand, between Kingsway and the Strand, going down some steps ... I was not thanking God, I was with God. God isn't something hard looking down on us, God is trees and flowers and beauty and love. God was telling me to carry on and help the doctors here, and I was telling Him back, not aloud, I wasn't talking to myself, they would call you crackers if they heard that; God was telling me, at last you have found someone who can help you, and He was talking about you, doctor, He was talking about you ....'
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08-23-2003, 07:10 PM
