From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Tue Jun 19 2001 - 09:40:43 MDT
Here's an interesting article on current research into the neurochemical
causes of various religious experiences....
attached mail follows:
Hi Folks!
Bert Pool sent this, I remember a brief note about it a year or so ago
but here is an updated article;
> MAGNETIC GOD HELMET PRODUCES RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE on DEMAND
> -----------------------------------------------------------
>
> The article which follows my introduction appeared on the
> front page of the Washington Post.
>
> Scientists have created a helmet which uses magnetic fields
> to create religious experiences in those who wear it that
> are indistiguishable from religious experiences when not
> wearing the helmet. Just imagine the possibilities of this
> technology in the hands of the State expecially when the
> field can be focused and transmitted over a distance.
> Religion has always been a tool of the State. Hello ?
>
>
> Tracing the synapses of spirituality
> ------------------------------------
>
> Researchers parse relationship between brain and religion
>
> By Shankar Vedantam
> THE WASHINGTON POST
>
> June 17, 2001 -- In Philadelphia, a researcher discovers
> areas of the brain that are activated during meditation. At
> two other universities in San Diego and North Carolina,
> doctors study how epilepsy and certain hallucinogenic drugs
> can produce religious epiphanies. And in Canada, a
> neuroscientist fits people with magnetized helmets that
> produce "spiritual" experiences for the
>
>
> 'Unless there is a fundamental change in the brain,
> religion and spirituality will be here for a very long
> time.'
>
> -- ANDREW NEWBERG author of 'Why God Won't Go Away'
>
>
> THE WORK is part of a broad effort by scientists around the
> world to better understand religious experiences, measure
> them, and even reproduce them. Using powerful brain imaging
> technology, researchers are exploring what mystics call
> nirvana, and what Christians describe as a state of grace.
> Scientists are asking whether spirituality can be explained
> in terms of neural networks, neurotransmitters and brain
> chemistry.
>
> What creates that transcendental feeling of being one with
> the universe? It could be the decreased activity in the
> brain's parietal lobe, which helps regulate the sense of
> self and physical orientation, research suggests. How does
> religion prompt divine feelings of love and compassion?
> Possibly because of changes in the frontal lobe, caused by
> heightened concentration during meditation. Why do many
> people have a profound sense that religion has changed
> their lives? Perhaps because spiritual practices activate
> the temporal lobe, which weights experiences with personal
> significance.
>
> "The brain is set up in such a way as to have spiritual
> experiences and religious experiences," said Andrew
> Newberg, a Philadelphia scientist who wrote the book "Why
> God Won't Go Away." "Unless there is a fundamental change
> in the brain, religion and spirituality will be here for a
> very long time. The brain is predisposed to having those
> experiences and that is why so many people believe in God."
>
> The research may represent the bravest frontier of brain
> research. But depending on your religious beliefs, it may
> also be the last straw. For while Newberg and other
> scientists say they are trying to bridge the gap between
> science and religion, many believers are offended by the
> notion that God is a creation of the human brain, rather
> than the other way around.
>
> "It reinforces atheistic assumptions and makes religion
> appear useless," said Nancey Murphy, a professor of
> Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in
> Pasadena, Calif. "If you can explain religious experience
> purely as a brain phenomenon, you don't need the assumption
> of the existence of God."
>
>
> SCANS OF MEDITATION
>
> Some scientists readily say the research proves there is no
> such thing as God. But many others argue that they are
> religious themselves, and that they are simply trying to
> understand how our minds produce a sense of spirituality.
>
> Newberg, who was catapulted to center stage of the
> neuroscience-religion debate by his book and some recent
> experiments he conducted at the University of Pennsylvania
> with co-researcher Eugene D'Aquili, says he has a sense of
> his own spirituality, though he declined to say whether he
> believes in God, because any answer would prompt people to
> question his agenda. "I'm really not trying to use science
> to prove that God exists or disprove God exists," he said.
>
> Newberg's experiment consisted of taking brain scans of
> Tibetan Buddhist meditators as they sat immersed in
> contemplation. After giving them time to sink into a deep
> meditative trance, he injected them with a radioactive dye.
> Patterns of the dye's residues in the brain were later
> converted into images.
>
> Newberg found that certain areas of the brain were altered
> during deep meditation. Predictably, these included areas
> in the front of the brain that are involved in
> concentration. But Newberg also found decreased activity in
> the parietal lobe, one of the parts of the brain that helps
> orient a person in three-dimensional space.
>
> "When people have spiritual experiences they feel they
> become one with the universe and lose their sense of self,"
> he said. "We think that may be because of what is happening
> in that area -- if you block that area you lose that
> boundary between the self and the rest of the world. In
> doing so you ultimately wind up in a universal state."
>
> Across the country, at the University of California in San
> Diego, other neuroscientists are studying why religious
> experiences seem to accompany epileptic seizures in some
> patients. At Duke University, psychiatrist Roy Mathew is
> studying hallucinogenic drugs that can produce mystical
> experiences and have long been used in certain religious
> traditions.
>
> Could the flash of wisdom that came over Siddhartha Gautama
> -- the Buddha -- have been nothing more than his parietal
> lobe quieting down? Could the voices that Moses and
> Mohammed heard on remote mountaintops have been just a
> bunch of firing neurons -- an illusion? Could Jesus's
> conversations with God have been a mental delusion?
>
>
> MYSTICAL HELMET?
>
> Newberg won't go so far, but other proponents of the new
> brain science do. Michael Persinger, a professor of
> neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario,
> has been conducting experiments that fit a set of magnets
> to a helmet-like device. Persinger runs what amounts to a
> weak electromagnetic signal around the skulls of volunteers.
>
> Four in five people, he said, report a "mystical
> experience, the feeling that there is a sentient being or
> entity standing behind or near" them. Some weep, some feel
> God has touched them, others become frightened and talk of
> demons and evil spirits.
>
> "That's in the laboratory," Persinger said. "They know they
> are in the laboratory. Can you imagine what would happen if
> that happened late at night in a pew or mosque or
> synagogue?"
>
> His research, Persinger said, showed that "religion is a
> property of the brain, only the brain and has little to do
> with what's out there."
>
> Those who believe the new science disproves the existence
> of God say they are holding up a mirror to society about
> the destructive power of religion. They say that religious
> wars, fanaticism and intolerance spring from dogmatic
> beliefs that particular gods and faiths are unique, rather
> than facets of universal brain chemistry.
>
> "It's irrational and dangerous when you see how religiosity
> affects us," said Matthew Alper, author of "The God Part of
> the Brain," a book about the neuroscience of belief.
> "During times of prosperity, we are contented. During times
> of depression, we go to war. When there isn't enough food
> to go around, we break into our spiritual tribes and use
> our gods as justification to kill one another."
>
>
> MIXING SCIENCE AND FAITH
>
> While Persinger and Alper count themselves as atheists,
> many scientists studying the neurology of belief consider
> themselves deeply spiritual.
>
> James Austin, a neurologist, began practicing Zen
> meditation during a visit to Japan. After years of
> practice, he found himself having to reevaluate what his
> professional background had taught him.
>
> "It was decided for me by the experiences I had while
> meditating," said Austin, author of the book "Zen and the
> Brain" and now a philosophy scholar at the University of
> Idaho. "Some of them were quickenings, one was a major
> internal absorption -- an intense hyper-awareness, empty
> endless space that was blacker than black and soundless and
> vacant of any sense of my physical bodily self. I felt deep
> bliss. I realized that nothing in my training or experience
> had prepared me to help me understand what was going on in
> my brain. It was a wake-up call for a neurologist."
>
> Austin's spirituality doesn't involve a belief in God -- it
> is more in line with practices associated with some streams
> of Hinduism and Buddhism. Both emphasize the importance of
> meditation and its power to make an individual loving and
> compassionate -- most Buddhists are uninterested in whether
> God exists.
>
> But theologians say such practices don't describe most
> people's religiousness in either eastern or western
> traditions.
>
> "When these people talk of religious experience, they are
> talking of a meditative experience," said John Haught, a
> professor of theology at Georgetown University. "But
> religion is more than that. It involves commitments and
> suffering and struggle -- it's not all meditative bliss. It
> also involves moments when you feel abandoned by God.
>
> "Religion is visiting widows and orphans," he said. "It is
> symbolism and myth and story and much richer things. They
> have isolated one small aspect of religious experience and
> they are identifying that with the whole of religion."
>
> Belief and faith, believers argue, are larger than the sum
> of their brain parts: "The brain is the hardware through
> which religion is experienced," said Daniel Batson, a
> University of Kansas psychologist who studies the effect of
> religion on people. "To say the brain produces religion is
> like saying a piano produces music."
>
>
> 'NOTHING-BUTISM'
>
> 'During times of prosperity, we are contented. During
> times of depression, we go to war. When there isn't
> enough food to go around, we break into our spiritual
> tribes and use our gods as justification to kill one
> another.'
>
> -- MATTHEW ALPER author, 'The God Part of the Brain'
>
>
> At the Fuller Theological Seminary's school of psychology,
> Warren Brown, a cognitive neuropsychologist, said, "Sitting
> where I'm sitting and dealing with experts in theology and
> Christian religious practice, I just look at what these
> people know about religiousness and think they are not very
> sophisticated. They are sophisticated neuroscientists, but
> they are not scholars in the area of what is involved in
> various forms of religiousness."
>
> At the heart of the critique of the new brain research is
> what one theologian at St. Louis University called the
> "nothing-butism" of some scientists -- the notion that all
> phenomena could be understood by reducing them to basic
> units that could be measured.
>
> "A kiss," said Michael McClymond, "is more than a mutually
> agreed-upon exchange of saliva, breath and germs."
>
> And finally, believers say, if God existed and created the
> universe, wouldn't it make sense that he would install
> machinery in our brains that would make it possible to have
> mystical experiences?
>
> "Neuroscientists are taking the viewpoints of physicists of
> the last century that everything is matter," said Mathew,
> the Duke psychiatrist. "I am open to the possibility that
> there is more to this than what meets the eye. I don't
> believe in the omnipotence of science or that we have a
> foolproof explanation."
>
>
>
> http://www.msnbc.com/news/588566.asp
>
--
Jerry W. Decker - KeelyNet
discussion list archive http://www.escribe.com/science/keelynet
Order Out of Chaos - main site http://www.keelynet.com
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