The Glade 4.0

If a mentally disabled person is unable to believe in God, does that make God non-existent? If everyone is mentally disabled like that, does that make God non-existent?

Lex if you're not going to bother to educate yourself on the topic, then stop trolling... thank you.

I think it's a good question.

mental disability comes in many different areas of the brain.. which one do you mean?

disbelief in god is both a pre-disposition and a taught practice... please clarify.

too many variables in your question to answer.

Nevermind... you won't get any clarification.

and i quote

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The Dude abides.

We know that some people are spiritual and some are not, and that it shows up to varying degrees.

We know that any and all feelings exist as physical states/events in the brain.

Given that...

Science can now to some degree mess around with this feeling. The ability to do so is new, but the concept that it's possible is not. Science also provides an explanation for some being more or less spiritual than others -- in genetics. This isn't shocking either. I'm pretty sure you can say the same about any feeling, actually. There are pills in most any pharmacy nowadays that change the chemical makeup of the brain that do, indeed, change feelings.

We already knew that some were more spiritual than others -- this study just maps out a contributing factor.

What me and I think most others in the thread are wondering is where this leads to proof of the nonexistance of some sort of divinity. I'll even try and avoid the "an omnipotent divinity could have done it that way on purpose" argument. I can see it as a sort of proof if you believe that ecstatic religious experiences are necessary for some divinity to exist, though it never truly reaches the level of proof even then. It comes close, though. The counterargument would be the one I said I'll try to avoid. This sounds pointless for me to bring up, but consider this -- any genuine religious vision or whatever would be due to some physical events in the brain. This is just how the brain works, as per my last post and start of this one.

I'm not big on the whole religious visions thing personally, though. I'm not even religious by any sense of the word. Even if some actual proof could be shown (impossible as per above, but eh) that these visions are based in simple seizures affecting a certain part of the brain, it would have absolutely zero bearing on whether or not some sort of divinity exists. It's akin to finding an error/lie/somethingsimilar in some religious text and saying "welp, this is wrong, so all aspects of all religion/spirituality are clearly wrong too". To put it in less absurd terms, I have a friend who doesn't believe in God because of how cruel the world is. I see that more as a "proof" that an all-knowing, all-powerful benevolent God does not exist. That has no bearing on whether some divine creator set the universe in motion or whatever.

I try to avoid getting technical in religious arguments/debate for that very reason. It doesn't help to address the big picture. Unfortunately, science isn't much help there.

People are experiencing seizures when they have religious experiences. Right.



In other words, you're massively jumping the gun with your conclusions.



No one is concluding the science is not sound. We're concluding you cannot jump from "There is a portion of the brain involved with spiritual experience" to "that proves it's all in your head and invalidates organized religion."

Why don't you try using some actual logic?



No you won't. You can very well believe they are getting it from your own allowing them to feel that way.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

We can, through direct brain stimulation produce the same neurological effects that you get from an orgasm. That doesn't prove that orgasms don't exist.

At most, this might prove that the process of mystical experiences is a physical, neurological one. But so what, really? It's no different than anything else we experience. Love is ultimately just a neurological effect, in those terms. So is hate, humor, boredom, and nostalgia. This doesn't detract from what they are.



The crux of the matter is this: "mind over matter" is a nonsense statement. There is no discrete "mind" and "matter" -- no pure vein under the chaos of chemistry. Mind is matter. To say that any human experience, whether mystical or not, is "just" an effect in the brain is, at best, an obvious statement. But there's something about that statement that angers. What rankles, at least for me, is that little, seemingly innocuous word: "just":



"Just" in this case is being used in a subtle, but vicious way. Religious experiences, it is said, are "just" in the brain. But reason, science, etc. -- those are something greater: something noble, separate, eternal, and not "just" in the brain. Which is, of course, complete nonsense.

This is where we come down to it: if we think in those terms, then we must also accept that logic, knowledge, and science are all "just" neurological, too. Everything is "just" in our brain precisely as the universe itself is "just" matter and energy. But to think like this is, it seems to me, a failure to see the forest for the trees.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Arguably everything is an extension of your consciousness and that your mind extends past the barrier of your skull.

I think what Lydiaa is getting at, is that the ability to trigger religious euphoria through purely physical means shows that (i) biological processes alone are a sufficient condition for producing such experiences, and therefore, (ii) the existence of God is not a necessary condition for producing them. In short, this experiment doesn't disprove the existence of God, but it does cast additional doubt on one of the most common arguments for His existence (that is, the universality of euphoric religious experiences).

Except for the fact that it's not a common argument.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

*shrug* YMMV, I guess. I've encountered that argument on many, many occasions, both in conversation and in books/articles.

Exactly. And yes DE it's a very common argument.

You mean that all cultures "feel" God right? Not that everyone feels it at exactly the same time in some kind of weird harmonic event?

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Since our brain is the filter through which we process all information we receive, does it not make sense that religious experiences would also be processed that way? What makes anyone think they would be exceptional from all other human experiences? Furthermore, if we are divinely engineered what makes anyone think that our maker would act outside of that engineering, especially given evidence that part of our engineering is for that specific purpose?

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Ezekiel 23:19-20 

I've never had any sort of religious euphoria. I'm actually pretty glad about that. If my faith were based on feelings, I'd probably kill myself.

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The Dude abides.

Really? What about, like, warm fuzzies during church or being moved by some particularly eloquent commentary on faith, God, etc.? Do you experience faith as largely (or purely) an intellectual construct?

I dunno... are you able to believe in God?

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Holy shitsnacks!

My faith is experienced as any other relationship, but with obvious physical limitations. There are feelings but nothing I don't already experience in other parts of my life. I feel moved by a sermon the same way a stirring speech from a political figure might move me. I feel like God lays something on my heart and I don't get warm fuzzy feelings, visions, or get surrounded by light. Its almost about the same as if I feel like my wife wants me to do something even though she's given no real visible cues. I pray for things and I see them get answered. I put my trust in the promises in the Bible and I see God deliver.

I really dislike the whole religious experience thing that Pentecostals often get hung up on. Sooner or later, the high has to stop. What are they left with? Hopefully their faith was built on more than just a high. Mine is built on Christ and my relationship with Him. Like any other relationships, there's ups and downs due to various things going on that are usually my fault (kinda like my marriage, heh). But just like I may feel I let my wife down, that doesn't mean my marriage is on the rocks. I have other objective means of evaluating it.

My "conversion experience" in my early teens was probably more of an intellectual understanding and acceptance of something that already felt right and made sense. My re-dedication to the Lord at 25 was probably somewhere between the feeling of guilt for letting a parent down and (what I imagine would be) guilt for cheating on a spouse. I can remember that more. I was laying in bed next to the girlfriend I had at the time. It was the day after my birthday and I'd partied all night. I just realized that everything I'd filled my life with wasn't satisfying. I knew where I belonged (with God) and I felt like I sold it for something cheap. I was in my old church the next day and I felt forgiven. But that wasn't accompanied by any ooky spooky feeling. I just wasn't carrying the guilt of years of sin on my back anymore and I felt lighter.

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The Dude abides.

I accept (ii), but (i) is a bit... misleading.

Every thought/feeling/etc is a biological process. I can't speak for everyone, but (ii) sort of seems obvious to me. That's how things work. If a divinity were to intentionally fill me with a feeling of love, there would be corresponding chemical interactions taking place in my brain. It's how we feel. Without it, there would be no feeling. Thus if we have a feeling, it is physically represented, and it follows that they can thus be manipulated physically. Give me a sophisticated enough interface and you'd be able to make someone feel a sense of love, make them smell roses, or make them see an elephant in their backyard.

As for proving ecstatic religious experiences false, it doesn't even accomplish that as per what Rynar said. If God wanted me to have such an experience, it would have to manifest physically somehow. Everything always comes back to the physical. We're very much like computers, if you want to think of it that way.

Like Stathol said, I don't think this detracts from any feeling or whatever. It doesn't make devotion that two people feel for one another anything less.

I think I learned this 10 years ago in some psych course, and it should be pretty apparent to everyone in this day and age where science already does mess around with feelings and emotions. This 'god helmet' science shouldn't be some fundamentally new concept to anyone here. It's neat (and a little bit scary -- imagine this stuff 250 years from now) to see the details on how we're moving along in understanding how to push the brain's buttons more, but it doesn't revolutionize stuff or stand as a unique idea.

I've already said that I agree with yours and Rynar's argument completely if that god was a constant. My post was never intended to claim there wasn’t a god or a greater being, it was intended to use this experiment as the basis of proof that organised religion is a man made concept rather than a divine inspired concept.

You’re right that human brain is technically a computer, where you can input and acquire an output. What this experiment has essentially done is identify the program that gives you the supernatural experiences. Because the results show that each out put is based on individual computer’s past programs alone, and there are no deviations from that hypothesis, you can either conclude that there are no external inputs, or there is a universal constant input. (Lets explore the second cause the first is self explanatory)

That universal constant input could be a deity, or energy, or luck, or the unicorn in Taly’s closet, this doesn’t matter to me. This is also where DE claimed I took a jump in logic. While I admit I’m extending beyond the boundaries of the experiment, I don’t believe it’s a jump.

From the second conclusion of the experiment we take that there is a universal constant input into our computer. Since we also know that there are claims by different religions of different deities, and much recorded data of different religious experiences all unique to their own religion (proof backing up the experiment’s hypothesis). And we know that the program is a constant. We either have to conclude that there is in fact only one universal input (god), OR all the different deities got together and decided to use one single universal input. (least of which, the design of the program).

It is actually here that I’m taking a leap of faith DE and not before, so feel free to be grouchy about it.

Since the chances of different deities getting together and designing the perfect human, than agreeing to use the same input to play games on men and make them disagree with each other seem unlikely to me. The conclusion I went with, was that the different organised religions is a man made concept and not one that’s divinely inspired by one’s own deity as they often claim. I’m open to any other interpretations based on logic of course.

This would be so much simpler as a flow diagram >.<

Actually no it wouldn't, because none of it makes any sense. It amounts to you wanting to use it to take issue with organized religion and lecture people on how their religion isn't any better than anyone else's. Your entire position is one big false dilemma.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

Actually this is a very interesting philosophical question. I think it can be broken up into other core questions.

Assuming existence of a supernatural being or "god":
Does god rely on the faith/belief of his adherents for his own existence?

If so, what happens to "god" as belief diminishes or increases? Does god's power alter to reflect belief?

If no belief exists, does god cease to exist as well? If so, does that defy his own nature?

Alternatively, if belief dies and god with it, can god be recreated through the return of belief?

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine