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Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
#41
RE: Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
When we wake from dreams, it's common to consider the dream our everyday, woken experience for a bit before realizing it isn't.  Consciousness comes online to live neurons.  We try to make sense of it.  Sometimes, our minds pull from far out memory to do that.  I think it's cool as hell.  It's not only fun, it gives us practice dealing with our glitchy ass heads.

That's why it's important to think of ourselves as purely physical, meaning no soul or god portals in our minds.  Then, we can enjoy life, dreams, and head glitches without trying to give meaning to random firings.  For those who see god, I hope you're right, but see a doctor.
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#42
RE: Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
I've long known religious people aren't quite right in the head.
"Never trust a fox. Looks like a dog, behaves like a cat."
~ Erin Hunter
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#43
RE: Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
You can be not right in the head and still know the voice you hear isn't god and religion is bullshit.
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#44
RE: Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
(September 1, 2021 at 6:22 pm)brewer Wrote:
(September 1, 2021 at 5:30 pm)arewethereyet Wrote: I have a question...were any of the people who supposedly experienced some religious thing during an epileptic event non-believers beforehand?  Are there people out there who suddenly "saw the light" upon experiencing such an event?

I may have missed the answer to this as I wasn't really processing some of the things I read on this thread so pardon me if I am asking something that's already been addressed.

I think I've heard of some professed unbelievers experiencing god during NDE's, but they had been exposed to the concept of god, which is all that it would take.

Where do you find someone that has not been exposed? The dark heart of the amazon? Even they have gods.

Well..there was this guy named Paul™..... Wink

In seriousness, the researchers are talking about dissociative episodes (among other things).  Experiencing an OBE or NDE is, all by itself, the thing in question.  I went through a few de's after I got my head bounced around, never believing in gods before or after. No need to trudge through the amazon to find people who have these experiences and attribute them to gods, or to find people who have them..and don't. You could easily find christians who aren't so bankrupt as to insist or imagine that god is talking to people when they have a seizure or suffer from trauma or a neurological disorder. That much is easily worked out even amongst the set who says as much in pious prattle when you ask them whether a god is sending some other cultist or a test subject their visions.

Inauthenticity and all that.....

"Feeling god", in this sense, is alot like feeling hot or cold. We don't actually have a thermometer in there, nor do we have a godometer. Feeling something, and that something may correlate to an external whatsit, but it would be foolish to believe that a human being knew what was making it feel a certain way - we don't have that kind of data on how we work - it's not available to us. So we got alot of shit dead wrong over the years. We say, for example, that janes mean comment makes us "feel sad" - but..ofc, jane's commenting isn't actually how our feelings are produced.

Statements such as "I felt the spirit of god come all over me" are analogs to comments about jane as the cause of sad feelings - and the kinds of experiences these researchers can induce are either analogs to or the same thing as those experiences which feature so prominently in so many religious narratives.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#45
RE: Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
(September 1, 2021 at 10:37 am)Angrboda Wrote:
(September 1, 2021 at 9:58 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Which doesn't automatically make them ungenuine, if God were real and touching people's brains, it seems plausible that it would cause an altered brain state.

Except that Occam's razor rules out superfluous causes.  If God isn't needed in non-religious epileptic fits, he isn't needed in religious ones.

There's a difference between not needed and ruled out. I'm fully familiar with Occam's Razor and made no claims subject to that guideline.

(September 1, 2021 at 10:36 am)Jehanne Wrote:
(September 1, 2021 at 9:58 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: Which doesn't automatically make them ungenuine, if God were real and touching people's brains, it seems plausible that it would cause an altered brain state.

Your multiplying explanations beyond that which is necessary.  I could just as well appeal to the ISM, and to his/her/its grace when my lost bootee is found.

It's not an explanation, it's an observation that we are not omniscient.

(September 1, 2021 at 12:03 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:
(September 1, 2021 at 11:54 am)Angrboda Wrote: Authenticity has nothing to do with it.  Either they are induced or they are not.  I think you're using authenticity as a substitute for unobservables despite the claim of observables.

Exactly, either they are induced or they are not. It sets up a simple heuristic:

Induced experiences are clearly inauthentic because they do not follow from prior brain-states.
Experiences that follow from prior brain-states may be authentic (We still don't know. Prior relation [psychosemantically?] is a necessary condition but not sufficient.)

And, yes, authenticity has everything to do with it. Lots of things are like that. In pool, who hits the ball into a pocket is observable fact and affects the significance the sinking a ball into a pocket has. My belief that Nun Anne's experience would be authentic would be based on the observable character of her life. Lots of the historic saints, mystics, and heretic visionaries have, experiences that IMO deserve to be reckoned with on their own terms and not casually dismissed just because one's metaphysics doesn't have a place for them. Those of Thomas Aquinas, Terresa of Avila and Swedenborg come to mind as curious. And I am not opposed to giving spiritual significance to uncanny events of a more mundane sort such as bizarre coincidences and fortuitous outcomes...you just have to be cautious and not take things too seriously.

So in the absence of a deafeter, I have no reason, given my own predisposition to believe such things, to suppose that Nun Anne's visionary experience was not what she claimed it was. In the case of Matrix Jane, there is an observable defeater, i.e. the head-set induction.

So Saul's experience on the Road to Damascus would be inauthentic because he wasn't looking for it?
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
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#46
RE: Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
(September 2, 2021 at 8:51 am)Mister Agenda Wrote: It's not an explanation, it's an observation that we are not omniscient.

I agree, that's why Dawkins' belief scale belongs on a Starbucks cup, if it hasn't already found its way there.  Maybe the ISM, FSM and IPUs really do exist; but as with orbiting teapots, there is no know way to prove that such entities do not exist.  Proving scientifically that an immortal soul/spirit exists is falling off a log; it's something that an astute high school kiddo could do.  With at least a dozen or so experiments over the last generation, alas, nothing has been found, because, as with the Big Foot droppings, the soul probably does not exist.
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#47
RE: Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
(September 1, 2021 at 5:30 pm)arewethereyet Wrote: I have a question...were any of the people who supposedly experienced some religious thing during an epileptic event non-believers beforehand?  Are there people out there who suddenly "saw the light" upon experiencing such an event?

I may have missed the answer to this as I wasn't really processing some of the things I read on this thread so pardon me if I am asking something that's already been addressed.

If I'm understanding Neo's position correctly, if they weren't having the experience while in a 'prayerful state', it's not authentic.
I'm not anti-Christian. I'm anti-stupid.
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#48
RE: Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
I was lead to believe that when god speaks people explode.

[Image: dogma-head.gif]

Metatron: Metatron acts as the voice of God. Any doocumented occasion when some yahoo claims that God has spoken to them, they're speaking to me. Or they're talking to themselves.
Bethany: Why doesn't God speak for Himself?
Metatron: Glad you decided to join the conversation. To answer that: human beings have neither the aural nor the psychological capacity to withstand the awesome power of God's true voice. Were you to hear it, your mind would cave in and your heart would explode within your chest. We went through five Adams before we figured that one out.
I don't have an anger problem, I have an idiot problem.
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#49
RE: Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
He used inauthentic as a term to indicate inducing agents other than gods. It was a load of horseshit and there's really no gentle way of putting that.

(September 2, 2021 at 9:07 am)brewer Wrote: I was lead to believe that when god speaks people explode.

-or have seizures and de's, I guess....... Must depend on it's mood.
I am the Infantry. I am my country’s strength in war, her deterrent in peace. I am the heart of the fight… wherever, whenever. I carry America’s faith and honor against her enemies. I am the Queen of Battle. I am what my country expects me to be, the best trained Soldier in the world. In the race for victory, I am swift, determined, and courageous, armed with a fierce will to win. Never will I fail my country’s trust. Always I fight on…through the foe, to the objective, to triumph overall. If necessary, I will fight to my death. By my steadfast courage, I have won more than 200 years of freedom. I yield not to weakness, to hunger, to cowardice, to fatigue, to superior odds, For I am mentally tough, physically strong, and morally straight. I forsake not, my country, my mission, my comrades, my sacred duty. I am relentless. I am always there, now and forever. I AM THE INFANTRY! FOLLOW ME!
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#50
RE: Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.
(September 2, 2021 at 8:51 am)Mister Agenda Wrote:
(September 1, 2021 at 10:37 am)Angrboda Wrote: Except that Occam's razor rules out superfluous causes.  If God isn't needed in non-religious epileptic fits, he isn't needed in religious ones.

There's a difference between not needed and ruled out. I'm fully familiar with Occam's Razor and made no claims subject to that guideline.

Yes and no. In reality you can't rule out Russell's teapot, but for similar practical reasons we do. How is this any different than the explosion of possible things that we can't rule out but actually do rule out in practice? What is the epistemic rule for such possibilities?



(September 1, 2021 at 12:03 pm)Neo-Scholastic Wrote:
(September 1, 2021 at 11:54 am)Angrboda Wrote: Authenticity has nothing to do with it.  Either they are induced or they are not.  I think you're using authenticity as a substitute for unobservables despite the claim of observables.

Exactly, either they are induced or they are not. It sets up a simple heuristic:

Induced experiences are clearly inauthentic because they do not follow from prior brain-states.
Experiences that follow from prior brain-states may be authentic (We still don't know. Prior relation [psychosemantically?] is a necessary condition but not sufficient.)

And, yes, authenticity has everything to do with it. Lots of things are like that. In pool, who hits the ball into a pocket is observable fact and affects the significance the sinking a ball into a pocket has. My belief that Nun Anne's experience would be authentic would be based on the observable character of her life. Lots of the historic saints, mystics, and heretic visionaries have, experiences that IMO deserve to be reckoned with on their own terms and not casually dismissed just because one's metaphysics doesn't have a place for them. Those of Thomas Aquinas, Terresa of Avila and Swedenborg come to mind as curious. And I am not opposed to giving spiritual significance to uncanny events of a more mundane sort such as bizarre coincidences and fortuitous outcomes...you just have to be cautious and not take things too seriously.

So in the absence of a deafeter, I have no reason, given my own predisposition to believe such things, to suppose that Nun Anne's visionary experience was not what she claimed it was. In the case of Matrix Jane, there is an observable defeater, i.e. the head-set induction.

All roads lead to the environment. The ultimate source of any brain state lies outside ourselves. Being charitable, you seem to be saying that an experience is authentic if the cause is a proximal state of the brain. I'm not sure where that leads, but it leads to a sliding scale rather than a binary property. I'm reminded of Dennett's example of missing a putt in golf and thinking that you "could have made the putt." The question becomes which counterfactuals are sufficiently close to the actual putt to count as real possibilities. With brain states, the question is which aspects of a causal chain leading to a brain state count as authentically prior. Imagine two scenarios. The morning Anne has her vision, her husband shook her awake to feed her breakfast. That shaking awake primed certain neurons which lead to her vision. Without that, she wouldn't have had her vision. Was her vision induced? The second scenario, in the dimness of early morning, Anne hears a sound which given her background knowledge of belief in the supernatural leads her to thinking about ghosts, thus priming the neurons. Is that induced? What if Anne for whatever reason just dismisses the noise and so doesn't prime her neurons and has no vision. Is that induced? Taking antidepressants, eating an apple, stubbing one's toe, getting cold or warm -- what environmental factors are separate from this hypothetical brain state(s)?
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