Possible explanation of supernatural religious visitations

[The Valkyrie]

- Religious hysteria
- Wishful thinking
- Delusion

[Confused Ape]

I usually have issues with people trying to force innocent explanations for religious frauds when willful and cunning deceit seems more plausible and more consistent with human nature.

There's certainly deceit and fraud involved where organised religions are concerned but this doesn't alter the fact that the human brain produces odd, subjective experiences. I know this from personal experience because my own brain does it. Even though I'm an atheist who doesn't believe in the supernatural I've 'felt' presences and 'seen' ghosts along with a shadowy female form rising out of a moorland pond in Wales.

3. Mountains often have long standing association with spirits and the supernatural, dating to long before the alledged reception of revelations. So mountains lends a pre-fabricated air of mysticism to the fraud.

That article linking mountains with odd effects on the brain could explain why mountains have a long standing association with spirits and the supernatural. This made them ideal locations for fictional prophets to have so-called divine revelations.

It's likely that Shamanism was around long before there was anything like organised religion.

There are many variations of shamanism throughout the world, but several common beliefs are shared by all forms of shamanism. Common beliefs identified by Eliade (1972)[4] are the following:

Spirits exist and they play important roles both in individual lives and in human society.
The shaman can communicate with the spirit world.
Spirits can be benevolent or malevolent.
The shaman can treat sickness caused by malevolent spirits.
The shaman can employ trance inducing techniques to incite visionary ecstasy and go on vision quests.
The shaman's spirit can leave the body to enter the supernatural world to search for answers.
The shaman evokes animal images as spirit guides, omens, and message-bearers.
The shaman can perform other varied forms of divination, scry, throw bones/runes, and sometimes foretell of future events.

There are various techniques for entering a trance state. One of them is using Entheogens

An entheogen ("generating the divine within")[59] is a psychoactive substance used in a religious, shamanic, or spiritual context.[60] Entheogens have been used in a ritualized context for thousands of years; their religious significance is well established in anthropological and modern evidences. Examples of traditional entheogens include: peyote, psilocybin mushrooms, uncured tobacco, cannabis, ayahuasca, Salvia divinorum, Tabernanthe iboga, Ipomoea tricolor, and Amanita muscaria.

Way back in the dim and distant past early humans must have discovered some of these things by accident when gathering stuff to eat. They ended up going "Wow, the colours, man!" and interpreted it as visiting a spirit world.

Hypothesis On Origins

Shamanic practices may originate as early as the Paleolithic, predating all organized religions,[84][85] and certainly as early as the Neolithic period.[85] Early anthropologist studies theorise that shamanism developed as a magic practice to ensure a successful hunt or gathering of food. Evidence in caves and drawings on walls support indications that shamanism started during the Paleolithic era. One such picture featured a half-animal, with the face and legs of a man, with antlers and a tail of a stag.[86]

Archaeological evidence exists for Mesolithic shamanism. The oldest known Shaman grave in the world is located in the Czech Republic at Dolni Vestonice (National Geographic No 174 October 1988). This grave site was evidence of a female shaman.

[Clueless Morgan]

Possible explanation of supernatural religious visitations

Supernatural religious visitations are clearly evidence of time travel.

[BlackMason]

I usually have issues with people trying to force innocent explanations for religious frauds when willful and cunning deceit seems more plausible and more consistent with human nature.

You sound like a bigot.

[paulpablo]

Muhammad's revelations have often been attributed to epilepsy.

during his revelations Muhammad "sometimes growled like a camel, foamed at his mouth, and streamed with perspiration."

There's many historical references to it apparently going back to the 8th century.

I think in every religious leaders case though there is more to it than just sleep paralysis or epilepsy, if you look at modern day cult leaders it takes more than this for their groups to form and flourish.

[Confused Ape]

Muhammad's revelations have often been attributed to epilepsy.

There's many historical references to it apparently going back to the 8th century.

I found more about this on wikipedia which is always a good place to start for anything. Criticism of Muhammed - Psychological and medical condition .

God On The Brain includes temporal lobe epilepsy which can result in religious visions.

RUDI: I thought that I had died and I had gone to hell.

He was an atheist when he had his vision of the Christian Hell and he remained an atheist afterwards.

Finally, there's a fairly new book questioning whether the Muhammad portrayed by Islam actually existed. Did Muhammad Exist? An Inquiry into Islam's Obscure Origins The stories about him foaming at the mouth etc. not appearing until the 8th century indicates that they were later additions to the fabricated biography. They wouldn't have appeared at all, though, if people hadn't believed that epilepsy was the result of religious visions, soothsaying or demonic possession.

I think in every religious leaders case though there is more to it than just sleep paralysis or epilepsy, if you look at modern day cult leaders it takes more than this for their groups to form and flourish.

I find the Heaven's Gate cult particularly interesting in this respect.

Heaven's Gate was an American UFO religious Millenarian group based in San Diego, California, founded in the early 1970s and led by Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985).[1] On March 26, 1997, police discovered the bodies of 39 members of the group who had committed mass suicide[2] in order to reach what they believed was an alien space craft following the Comet Hale–Bopp, which was then at its brightest.[3]

Marshall Applewhite's biography suggests that he was barking mad. Yes, he was a control freak, but it seems that he was only interested in having followers who were equally barking mad.

Applewhite and Nettles arranged their followers' lifestyles as a boot camp that would prepare them for the Next Level. Referring to their house as a "craft", they regimented the lives of their disciples to the minute.[96] Students who were not committed to this lifestyle were encouraged to leave; departing members were given financial assistance.[96] Lifton states that Applewhite wanted "quality over quantity" in his followers, although he occasionally spoke about gaining many converts.[103]

Quantum Mysticism is a New Age belief system but it's not organised into a cult as such. It's possible that it will end up as an organised religion in the future but, at the moment, it seems that the leaders for want of a better word, associate with each other as and when they want to.