Religion is an illusion in your brain?

[BlueBeauty]

Are mystical feelings illusions created in the brain or is the brain a spiritual antenna for receiving divine input? And what does it mean that some have the brain activity for religious experiences and some do not?

There is speculation that if you have a particular type of brain you will be religious or sensitive to visions and mystical feelings, and if you have another type you might not have mystical feelings or be particularly religious.

Out of politeness, perhaps, or a hope for future Templeton grants, neurotheologists tend to play down the most direct implication of their research—that religious ecstasy is an illusion. Harder to finesse are studies suggesting that the visions of mystics like St. Paul and Sister Teresa are a kind of brain damage—temporal lobe epilepsy, or TLE for short. The disorder found its way into literature as long ago as 1869 when Dostoevsky, in The Idiot, described epileptic feelings of "a wonderful inner light." In his novel Lying Awake, Mark Salzman tells of a cloistered Carmelite nun who must decide whether to let a neurosurgeon go after the cerebral misfirings that caused disabling headaches, while letting her talk with God.

For those not prone to seizures, Michael Persinger of Laurentian University promises to induce similar symptoms by scrambling the brain with magnetic fields. After donning a helmet wired with electromagnets, some subjects reported experiences they described as mystical, or at least misty. When Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, put on the hood, it only made him a little dizzy. Persinger was quick to note that Dawkins had scored way below average on a psychological questionnaire measuring temporal lobe sensitivity—hints of a neurobiological correlate for atheism.

Full Article:
God is in the Dendrites.

[eby187]

A few questions...
Is anything real outside of what our minds conceive?
If you and I were to experience the same event, but I perceived it to be A and you perceived it to be B, is one of us out of touch with reality?
If majority wins, does collective mind/mass consciousness equal reality?
And if so, what is illusion?

[Onyiiboy]

Originally Posted by BlueBeauty

Are mystical feelings illusions created in the brain or is the brain a spiritual antenna for receiving divine input? And what does it mean that some have the brain activity for religious experiences and some do not?

There is speculation that if you have a particular type of brain you will be religious or sensitive to visions and mystical feelings, and if you have another type you might not have mystical feelings or be particularly religious.



Full Article:
God is in the Dendrites.

Actually, it makes more sense that the physical world as we see it is the illusion.

[Onyiiboy]

Originally Posted by eby187

A few questions...
Is anything real outside of what our minds conceive?
If you and I were to experience the same event, but I perceived it to be A and you perceived it to be B, is one of us out of touch with reality?
If majority wins, does collective mind/mass consciousness equal reality?
And if so, what is illusion?

"Perception is reality"

[eby187]

Originally Posted by Onyiiboy

"Perception is reality"

Pretty much that's what it boils down to. In fact, some may argue that the world as we see it is all illusion and that the reality lies behind the veil...which is God, light, Love, perfection,....

[superego]

Originally Posted by eby187

Pretty much that's what it boils down to. In fact, some may argue that the world as we see it is all illusion and that the reality lies behind the veil...which is God, light, Love, perfection,....

I am feeling you guys.

[sturvs]

i feel there's reality we can see and reality we cant see. the physical world isn't more real than the spiritual world we just have to tap into that spiritual part of our minds to perceive spiritual things.

human beings are both physical & spiritual beings. we can perceive from both worlds without even knowing. dreams are the easiest/most common way of perceiving the spiritual.

[eby187]

Originally Posted by sturvs

i feel there's reality we can see and reality we cant see. the physical world isn't more real than the spiritual world we just have to tap into that spiritual part of our minds to perceive spiritual things.

human beings are both physical & spiritual beings. we can perceive from both worlds without even knowing. dreams are the easiest/most common way of perceiving the spiritual.

nice post.

[monblaze]

i feel sturvs