Can Someone be Simply "An Agnostic?"

[Confused Ape]

...You do know what a split-brain is, right? Basically, each hemisphere acts independently. It's almost like having two people inside your head, each with access to certain information (senses) that the other may or may not have.

Yes, I do know what a split brain is but humans without split brains still tend to focus on left hemisphere experience and ignore what's going on in the right hemisphere. I found Ramacahndran's split brain patient very interesting in relation to something in God On The Brain.

NARRATOR: Temporal lobe epilepsy has one very unusual side effect. In a minority of patients it can induce religious hallucinations. These visions have led scientists to ask questions that have never been asked before. Rudi has always been a confirmed atheist, but even so, when he was 43 years old he had a powerful religious vision.

RUDI: I was lying on my bed in the wards in Crawley Hospital when suddenly it seemed to me that everything was changing. The room was still the same size but it was becoming something else. I thought that I had to fight against this at first and I tried very hard mentally to bring myself back to normal because I thought that I was going mad. I thought that I had died and I had gone to hell. I was told that I had gone there because I had not been a devout Christian, a believer in god. I was quite shocked to find that the Christian religion was the correct one. I was very depressed and very alarmed, very worried at what had happened, and at the thought that I was going to remain here forever.

NARRATOR: Fortunately for Rudi, his vision ended and he has never had another one. He remains a firm atheist.

Why would an atheist's brain produce this experience? Is it possible that somewhere, deep in his unconscious, there was a belief in God? If so, why?

I found an article about right brain consciousness which refers to a video I've posted several times in this forum - Neruscientist Says Green Consciousness Is in Right Brain

When neuroscientist Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor had a stroke that put her logical, sequential left brain temporarily out of commission, she experienced a temporary state of peaceful, all-connected consciousness that changed her forever.

At first she saw this intuitive and wholistic right brain state as crucial to human mental health but after a visit to Antarctica with Al Gore she began to see how it might also offer clues about how a desperately-needed new eco-consciousness might be as close as the right side of our brains.

But how to experience this right-brain eco-connection without having to go through a potentially deadly stroke?

Once we understand the domains of the right and left brain hemispheres, many options appear. The left brain (which controls the right side of the body) is generally agreed to dominate functions like speech, logic, detail, science, math, planning, order, thinking, writing and a sense of the separate self. The right brain seems to focus more on a holistic sense of connection, images, stories, music, intuitive awareness of patterns, beauty and imagination.

Methods of connecting with the right brain (and thus balancing the brain hemispheres) are as old as humanity.Most indigenous cultures were well aware of them: story-telling, art, connecting with the beauty of nature, ingesting mind-altering plants under controlled conditions, making music, aromatherapy, body therapies, sex, humor, dreaming, stream of consciousness writing, meditation, religious ceremony and prayer are just a few.

I made a topic about what I mean by using New Age perception which I think is related to all this - http://atheistforums.org/thread-17399.html

When I start getting bored because my arthritis is playing up and I have to rest more I'll switch my brain over to a different way of operating. I call it my 'New Age' perception for want of a better label.

Everything now feels alive and it seems that there's meaning and purpose to life and the universe in general. When I'm in the 'ordinary perception' way of operating I know that my arthritis is playing up because I've been overdoing things. In 'New Age' perception, however, I'm getting the idea that my arthritis is playing up because I've been neglecting this way of operating so I'm being forced to switch over to it.

I find this interesting because there's a part of my unconscious mind which has some form of New Age religious belief when I switch over to 'New Age'. Where can this part of my unconscious be coming from? This question is why I find the video I'm posting particularly interesting. A Neuroanatomist had a stroke and her experience showed her that we have two cognitive minds - one from the left hemisphere and one from the right. Right hemisphere consciousness is being at one with everything etc.

I have to admit that my 'New Age' perception feels a lot nicer than 'ordinary perception' so maybe that's why many religious people want to keep their 'religious perception'. The advantage that I have, however, is that I can enjoy it without having to take any religious dogma on board.

Does the thought of my unconscious mind having some form of religious belief bother me? Not at all because it's just a result of the way my brain operates. Am I an atheist? Yes, because the way my brain operates doesn't prove that God or any other deity really exists. If researchers switched my left hemisphere off and asked my right hemisphere if it believed in God, would it indicate "Yes"? Probably. Does that bother me? No. Why should it?