RE: Possible explanation of supernatural religious visitations
May 12, 2014 at 3:27 pm
(This post was last modified: May 12, 2014 at 3:47 pm by Confused Ape.)
I'm very interested in the neuroscience of religious belief. Here's an interesting idea -
Why revelations have occurred on mountains? Linking mystical experiences and cognitive neuroscience.
There's no real evidence that Moses, Jesus or, it seems, even Muhammed existed but that doesn't really matter in this context. People having odd experiences up mountains would have led to the idea that mountains were the place to go in order to have revelations from deities or supernatural messengers. Legends about religions' founders had mountains included for this reason.
Native Americans had, and still have, their own their own traditions for religious visions.
Vision Quest Traditions
Why revelations have occurred on mountains? Linking mystical experiences and cognitive neuroscience.
Quote:The fundamental revelations to the founders of the three monotheistic religions, among many other revelation experiences, had occurred on a mountain. These three revelation experiences share many phenomenological components like feeling and hearing a presence, seeing a figure, seeing lights, and feeling of fear. In addition, similar experiences have been reported by non-mystic contemporary mountaineers. The similarities between these revelations on mountains and their appearance in contemporary mountaineers suggest that exposure to altitude might affect functional and neural mechanisms, thus facilitating the experience of a revelation. Different functions relying on brain areas such as the temporo-parietal junction and the prefrontal cortex have been suggested to be altered in altitude. Moreover, acute and chronic hypoxia significantly affect the temporo-parietal junction and the prefrontal cortex and both areas have also been linked to altered own body perceptions and mystical experiences. Prolonged stay at high altitudes, especially in social deprivation, may also lead to prefrontal lobe dysfunctions such as low resistance to stress and loss of inhibition. Based on these phenomenological, functional, and neural findings we suggest that exposure to altitudes might contribute to the induction of revelation experiences and might further our understanding of the mountain metaphor in religion.
There's no real evidence that Moses, Jesus or, it seems, even Muhammed existed but that doesn't really matter in this context. People having odd experiences up mountains would have led to the idea that mountains were the place to go in order to have revelations from deities or supernatural messengers. Legends about religions' founders had mountains included for this reason.
(May 12, 2014 at 3:21 pm)Chuck Wrote: Native Americans have extremely low rate of genetic predisposition towards schizophrenia compared to Euroasians. Can that be correlated to a significantly lower rate of putative supernatural religious visitations?
Native Americans had, and still have, their own their own traditions for religious visions.
Vision Quest Traditions
Where are the snake and mushroom smilies?
