Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.

[Neo-Scholastic]

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.

Being a prayerful state was just my example for demonstrating that continuity of the experiences' history is a factor outside the experience itself that needs to be considered. An uninduced visionary experience has a history of prior brain-states and behaviors that are relevant to our understanding of the phenomena. For example, lets' say you are reading a book and as you are doing so you find yourself inside a completely different story. After the initial confusion had passed you would soon realize that the publisher had somehow accidently bound in the middle a chapter from a different story. You know this because there was a sudden break in meaning. So while two experiences may be first-person identical in the immediate present, those experiences have different contexts and history, and as such, the significance of the two experience is different.

My point hinges on the idea that at least some brain-states have semiotic content.

[Angrboda]

If I'm understanding Neo's position correctly, if they weren't having the experience while in a 'prayerful state', it's not authentic.

Being a prayerful state was just my example for demonstrating that continuity of the experiences' history is a factor outside the experience itself that needs to be considered. An uninduced visionary experience has a history of prior brain-states and behaviors that are relevant to our understanding of the phenomena. For example, lets' say you are reading a book and as you are doing so you find yourself inside a completely different story. After the initial confusion had passed you would soon realize that the publisher had somehow accidently bound in the middle a chapter from a different story. You know this because there was a sudden break in meaning.  So while two experiences may be first-person identical in the immediate present, those experiences have different contexts and history, and as such, the significance of the two experience is different.

My point hinges on the idea that at least some brain-states have semiotic content.

How things can having meaning (semiotic content) seems to be a central bugbear.

[Neo-Scholastic]

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...

Two roads can indeed lead to the same destination, so I see your point. Every brain state is proceeded in time by some physical causal chain. My contention is that the ultimate significance of a brain state also lies outside ourselves. A true theory of mind cannot dispense with the very things such a theory is called upon to explain, such as intentionality.

[Mister Agenda]

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?

I don't rule it out, if it comes up I note it's wildly improbable and that suffices. I have no need to claim certainty on the matter, but that's a personal preference on my part, I don't object to someone else rounding 0.a trillion zeroes then 1 down to zero as long as I grok that's what they're doing.

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If I'm understanding Neo's position correctly, if they weren't having the experience while in a 'prayerful state', it's not authentic.

Being a prayerful state was just my example for demonstrating that continuity of the experiences' history is a factor outside the experience itself that needs to be considered. An uninduced visionary experience has a history of prior brain-states and behaviors that are relevant to our understanding of the phenomena. For example, lets' say you are reading a book and as you are doing so you find yourself inside a completely different story. After the initial confusion had passed you would soon realize that the publisher had somehow accidently bound in the middle a chapter from a different story. You know this because there was a sudden break in meaning.  So while two experiences may be first-person identical in the immediate present, those experiences have different contexts and history, and as such, the significance of the two experience is different.

My point hinges on the idea that at least some brain-states have semiotic content.

I don't think I quite follow, how does Saul's revelation on the Road to Damascus fit in? What was the semiotic content that makes you think his revelation authentic (assuming you believe it was authentic given your reasoning thus far)?

[Neo-Scholastic]

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?

I don't rule it out, if it comes up I note it's wildly improbable and that suffices. I have no need to claim certainty on the matter, but that's a personal preference on my part, I don't object to someone else rounding 0.a trillion zeroes then 1 down to zero as long as I grok that's what they're doing.

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Being a prayerful state was just my example for demonstrating that continuity of the experiences' history is a factor outside the experience itself that needs to be considered. An uninduced visionary experience has a history of prior brain-states and behaviors that are relevant to our understanding of the phenomena. For example, lets' say you are reading a book and as you are doing so you find yourself inside a completely different story. After the initial confusion had passed you would soon realize that the publisher had somehow accidently bound in the middle a chapter from a different story. You know this because there was a sudden break in meaning.  So while two experiences may be first-person identical in the immediate present, those experiences have different contexts and history, and as such, the significance of the two experience is different.

My point hinges on the idea that at least some brain-states have semiotic content.

I don't think I quite follow, how does Saul's revelation on the Road to Damascus fit in? What was the semiotic content that makes you think his revelation authentic (assuming you believe it was authentic given your reasoning thus far)?

It's a different kind of authenticity problem because my example was based on comparative prior brain-states at the cellular and microscopic level....as opposed to people in ancient history. The focus was on narrative continuity between two brain-states and the presence of outside defeaters. But I can see the connection you are making.

The road to Damascus story is a good story. I take it as told, with a grain of salt, since apparently the 1st century contemporaries are also reported to have considered Saul then Paul authentic. Perhaps it truly was an epilespy fit that induced a religious vision that gained special significance to Saul because of his personal circumstances and advances the larger Gospel narrative. And?...what exactly. Because epilepsy was the providential means by which God did it? I am supposed to give up a perfectly good story because Colonel Musturd used the pipe and not the rope?

[The Grand Nudger]

God induced it, and, if paul is to be believed, he certainly hadn't lived any life of prayer beforehand, as a nun. You apparently believe as much as well, and that's why your objections to inducement and to authenticity both fall flat.

You think theres something different, that thing being the presence of a god, and...if you were being very thorough..your god. Nothing to do with there being an inducing agent or the experience being induced by damage or pathology, and nothing to do with the authenticity of the experience.

Spirit fingers. In one explanation...this experience is something that a human brain can produce...in the other, twiddling around in our brains to cause an experience the brain can produce.

[Jehanne]

You think theres something different, that thing being the presence of a god, and...if you were being very thorough..your god. Nothing to do with there being an inducing agent or the experience being induced by damage or pathology, and nothing to do with the authenticity of the experience.

How about aliens who were playing a prank?

[The Grand Nudger]

They do it in the butt, not the brain.

[R00tKiT]

William of Ockham taught that we ought "not multiply entities beyond necessity" in trying to explain the World around us.  While the Invisible Sock Monster may be real to explain the loss of one and one sock from countless dryers across our planet, much more prosaic and plausible explanations exist.  For the varieties of religious experience, we need look no farther than the following:

Temporal lobe epilepsy is kind of a catch-all hypothesis. You can do this to almost any historical figure, all you need is a few accounts of someone falling to the ground and a lot of imagination, when, in reality, epilepsy can only be diagnosed with electroencephalography(EEG).  Since we have no access to the brain activity of any major religious figure, it's all speculation. 

And we have good reasons to reject this diagnosis altogether, in the case of Muhammad PBUH, we know that he made the utterances of the Qur'an after he had the episodes of revelation. A typical epileptic cannot form coherent thoughts in the postictal phase of the seizure, let alone come up with the Qur'an.

One more thing, even if one attributes the fits of revelation or any other religious experience to an altered mental state, this doesn't explain away God's intervention along the causal chain, nor does it undermine the moral message of the prophets.

[Belacqua]

Your right. I meant that human nature at its pure, without religion isn't always sane.

At best your observation is that religion is useful, which, of course, does not make it true.

Many Internet atheists give the appearance of having mild autism, or Asperger's. 

A need for complete literalism, for example. An inability to empathetically understand the feelings of people who believe differently from themselves, so they attribute it to a purely chemical cause. 

This doesn't mean that atheism is the incorrect position, only that in some people it may originate in atypical cognitive differences.