Or does the technology worship us; making it honky dory even by dogma?
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Muse Among MenSuburban Bunny Princess?Its time for a new shtick Registered Userregular
edited October 2007
God-Helmet?
The monks and nuns carry the belief that for a brief moment, something wonderful happened to them. They emerge from their trances with the lingering bliss of their experience, and feeling good about having been fortunate to have had it. The god-helmet recreates the experience, but without the devoutness the nuns and monks put forth, and perhaps for any who try it - the belief. It sounds like a very empty experience in truth, a bit like a mind-trip brought about by LSD or shrooms or something.
The monks and nuns carry the belief that for a brief moment, something wonderful happened to them. They emerge from their trances with the lingering bliss of their experience, and feeling good about having been fortunate to have had it. The god-helmet recreates the experience, but without the devoutness the nuns and monks put forth, and perhaps for any who try it - the belief. It sounds like a very empty experience in truth, a bit like a mind-trip brought about by LSD or shrooms or something.
Hmmm... not really.
I'd imagine it might make one want to learn how to re-create the experience without an artificial stimulus.
It's perfectly possible, even for those living 'normal' lives. (ie: No nuns, priests, monks, etc.)
The monks and nuns carry the belief that for a brief moment, something wonderful happened to them. They emerge from their trances with the lingering bliss of their experience, and feeling good about having been fortunate to have had it. The god-helmet recreates the experience, but without the devoutness the nuns and monks put forth, and perhaps for any who try it - the belief. It sounds like a very empty experience in truth, a bit like a mind-trip brought about by LSD or shrooms or something.
Hmmm... not really.
I'd imagine it might make one want to learn how to re-create the experience without an artificial stimulus.
It's perfectly possible, even for those living 'normal' lives. (ie: No nuns, priests, monks, etc.)
You brought up a good point there. I just feel a bit sorry for the monks/nuns/priests/etc:
The monks and nuns carry the belief that for a brief moment, something wonderful happened to them. They emerge from their trances with the lingering bliss of their experience, and feeling good about having been fortunate to have had it. The god-helmet recreates the experience, but without the devoutness the nuns and monks put forth, and perhaps for any who try it - the belief. It sounds like a very empty experience in truth, a bit like a mind-trip brought about by LSD or shrooms or something.
Hmmm... not really.
I'd imagine it might make one want to learn how to re-create the experience without an artificial stimulus.
It's perfectly possible, even for those living 'normal' lives. (ie: No nuns, priests, monks, etc.)
You brought up a good point there. I just feel a bit sorry for the monks/nuns/priests/etc:
"You mean I could have just bought a helmet?"
Well, someone would have to 'keep the faith alive' until the helmet could be invented...
A machine that makes you feel like you're being visited by god
Am I alone in that this makes me more comfortable with the idea of some weird supernatural power?
What... like a computer?
The fact that it is a sensation that can be reliably reproduced suggests to me that people aren't just crazy. And if it takes a a crazy-ass science hat for people to produce the sensation ...
Why would this make you more comfortable with the idea of some weird, supernatural power? You can have some way-crazy experiences on shrooms, experiences that you couldn't possibly have without them, but I don't see how that really suggests anything one way or the other about gods.
I think, contra El Jeffe, Feral and to a lesser extent Low Key, that the impact for the religious is non-negligible. Idon't think it especially profound, but it's not as empty as you guys are playing it... lots of stuff
I keep trying to write a response to this post and every time I keep drawing into the same arguments that we see in every other religion thread to come through this place. I just can't respond without bringing up issues like subjectivity versus objectivity; burden of proof; absence of evidence versus evidence of absence; whether Occam's Razor shaves against the grain of faith or with it; etc.
As far as I can tell, one's reaction to this study is a litmus test for one's pre-existing attitude towards religion. If your attitude is that religion is an unfortunate by-product of flaws in human reasoning, then naturally your reaction is going to be that this is evidence of a neurological artifact that predisposes us towards those flaws. If your attitude is that religion is man grasping to understand a facet of reality that is no less real despite being ineffable, then this is evidence that the human brain is responding in its own primitive fashion to this facet.
So if the article's interpretation is based largely on our own pre-existing attitudes towards religion, then the article itself is a red herring, at least as far as the veracity of religious experience is concerned. Analogies aside, they managed to replicate a specific experience in a lab - an experience that we already know about, as people have been having it since the beginning of recorded history. It's interesting from a biological standpoint (we now know a little bit more about where and how it happens in the brain), but not from a philosophical one.
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every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
Well that's the point. A person who experiences this transcendent feeling naturally might say, that is such a specific feeling, so unlike anything else I have ever felt, it couldn't have been a natural brain process. It must have been an act of God.
This experiment just says, well, not really, it also could have been a seizure.
Now you could make a case that this is something which has been evident since said form of epilepsy was described in the seventies, but that doesn't make it less valid.
A machine that makes you feel like you're being visited by god
Am I alone in that this makes me more comfortable with the idea of some weird supernatural power?
What... like a computer?
The fact that it is a sensation that can be reliably reproduced suggests to me that people aren't just crazy. And if it takes a a crazy-ass science hat for people to produce the sensation ...
Why would this make you more comfortable with the idea of some weird, supernatural power? You can have some way-crazy experiences on shrooms, experiences that you couldn't possibly have without them, but I don't see how that really suggests anything one way or the other about gods.
I think that is kind of what differentiates it for me. Perfectly normal people have these experiences that the God Hat produces, right?
Plus, I kind of want to see what all the hype is about, and if a hat can do that for me... !
Why would this make you more comfortable with the idea of some weird, supernatural power? You can have some way-crazy experiences on shrooms, experiences that you couldn't possibly have without them, but I don't see how that really suggests anything one way or the other about gods.
I think that is kind of what differentiates it for me. Perfectly normal people have these experiences that the God Hat produces, right?
Yeah, he's wrong, and that's important. Stay up twenty-four hours past your bedtime and then tell me you've never had a hallucination naturally.
Why would this make you more comfortable with the idea of some weird, supernatural power? You can have some way-crazy experiences on shrooms, experiences that you couldn't possibly have without them, but I don't see how that really suggests anything one way or the other about gods.
I think that is kind of what differentiates it for me. Perfectly normal people have these experiences that the God Hat produces, right?
Supposing they do. Why does that lead you to believe a higher power is involved? A unique experience is produced when a certain section of the brain is stimulated. Where does the supernatural factor in as a necessary component of the explanation? And if it doesn't, why assume the existence of the supernatural? How is anything beyond biochemistry required to explain this phenomenon?
Why would this make you more comfortable with the idea of some weird, supernatural power? You can have some way-crazy experiences on shrooms, experiences that you couldn't possibly have without them, but I don't see how that really suggests anything one way or the other about gods.
I think that is kind of what differentiates it for me. Perfectly normal people have these experiences that the God Hat produces, right?
Yeah, he's wrong, and that's important. Stay up twenty-four hours past your bedtime and then tell me you've never had a hallucination naturally.
I don't see why it matters if the hat is necessary for the sensations to be experienced, Salt still makes no sense.
1. People experience weird sensation.
2. People atribute sensation to the supernatural.
3. Biological origin of sensation is discovered.
4. Someone concludes this is reason to believe in the supernatural?
This doesn't make sense to me. If you want to believe in the supernatural, whatever, but I cannot fathom how someone discovering a secular explanation for a previously claimed supernatural phenomenon is in any way support for the divine.
Also: I've never experienced hallucinations despite how much sleep I deprive myself of. To be honest, it's kind of dissapointing.
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
Why would this make you more comfortable with the idea of some weird, supernatural power? You can have some way-crazy experiences on shrooms, experiences that you couldn't possibly have without them, but I don't see how that really suggests anything one way or the other about gods.
I think that is kind of what differentiates it for me. Perfectly normal people have these experiences that the God Hat produces, right?
Supposing they do. Why does that lead you to believe a higher power is involved? A unique experience is produced when a certain section of the brain is stimulated. Where does the supernatural factor in as a necessary component of the explanation? And if it doesn't, why assume the existence of the supernatural? How is anything beyond biochemistry required to explain this phenomenon?
It's not, and I'm pretty sure I never said it did. I just said that being able to duplicate the experience (as in, we can prove that it was an honest experience that actually happens and we can prove it) makes it more understandable for me. (Well, I didn't say that explicitly, but it's what I mean.) It means that people who claim to have these experiences aren't just talking out of their asses and it also means that it doesn't entirely come down to upbringing or environment if our science says that anyone can experience these things given the proper brain juice.
Not crazy rambling = more understandable, is all, I guess. It doesn't prove anything, it just makes it easier for me to believe folks who says so might be on to something (or at least have a reason for what they're saying.)
I wonder how I get them to put that hat onto my head.
Why would this make you more comfortable with the idea of some weird, supernatural power? You can have some way-crazy experiences on shrooms, experiences that you couldn't possibly have without them, but I don't see how that really suggests anything one way or the other about gods.
I think that is kind of what differentiates it for me. Perfectly normal people have these experiences that the God Hat produces, right?
Supposing they do. Why does that lead you to believe a higher power is involved? A unique experience is produced when a certain section of the brain is stimulated. Where does the supernatural factor in as a necessary component of the explanation? And if it doesn't, why assume the existence of the supernatural? How is anything beyond biochemistry required to explain this phenomenon?
This is where religion neatly steps in and says "Those who are of true faith don't need unassailable proof that he exists, only that he operates in mysterious ways".
Why would this make you more comfortable with the idea of some weird, supernatural power? You can have some way-crazy experiences on shrooms, experiences that you couldn't possibly have without them, but I don't see how that really suggests anything one way or the other about gods.
I think that is kind of what differentiates it for me. Perfectly normal people have these experiences that the God Hat produces, right?
Supposing they do. Why does that lead you to believe a higher power is involved? A unique experience is produced when a certain section of the brain is stimulated. Where does the supernatural factor in as a necessary component of the explanation? And if it doesn't, why assume the existence of the supernatural? How is anything beyond biochemistry required to explain this phenomenon?
This is where religion neatly steps in and says "Those who are of true faith don't need unassailable proof that he exists, only that he operates in mysterious ways".
At which point this phenomenon is no less convincing than pretty flowers.
I think, contra El Jeffe, Feral and to a lesser extent Low Key, that the impact for the religious is non-negligible. Idon't think it especially profound, but it's not as empty as you guys are playing it.
A better parallel, if you ask me, is that of so-called Near Death Experiences. When the arguments for the NDE fail, as they inevitably do, and the exponentially more powerful counter arguments are presented, the last, great, bastion of defense is the conviction that one has that during the experience that this experience is profound, meaningful and communication with the divine (and incidently, that you are dead). The Ketamine explanation of such phenomena demostrates that such feelings, experiences and sense of benevolence (as well as the included "out of body experiences") can be stimulated through far more mundane means, and also provides an explanation in the form of a similar chemical pathway by which the experiences can occur. This demonstrates that the sensation of profoundness and depth of conviction is independent of a profound circumstance.
I avoiding comparisons to such a specific and relatively well understood quasi religious phenomenon because it places to much focus on the role of this neurological mechanism as the creation of a relationship with god.
Note: The God Helmet doe not make people see God. It does not make people feel connected to God.
This is a device that can stimulate a perceptual semantics misfiring to give the sense that an unseen or unheard precense is, in fact, present. Although Pesinger, in his knobjockeying way, promotes the term God helmet and talk continuously in religious terms these days, this is not a specifically religious phenomenon. Seen unseens have been associated with the paranomal, magic and weird alien butt spelunking nonsense for years. I'd be very interested in seeing the language used by Persinger's participants in describing the experience, because previous descriptions I've seen have not been particularly religious in their language at all, unless you count relgious under the general umbrella of "stuff that gives me the heebie jeebies".
I've seen little to no information of this other epiphanic experience described in the article. The other information seems to suggest that it has never been replicated. (which isn't particularly surprising; Persinger's idea of methodology is "Well some of it was double blind... no I can't remember which"). Even if there is something distinctively spiritual about the sensation created by the God Helmet, the experience of a deep sense of calm and understanding is so different from the tendency towards religious beliefs that the Near Death Experience comparison doesn't really work.
I'm not entirely disagreeing with you, but I'm gonna take a left turn on this whole temporal lobe thing and say that in the context of the neurological religious experience as a whole, the relevance of the God Helmet is extremely dubious.
I think, Low Key, that you're failing to take into account that the participants know that their brain is being manipulated into feeling these things. That's certainly going to have an affect on removing the profoundness of the experience. Somebody feeling this stuff without the helmet won't have anything to attribute it to, so they will walk away from it feeling as if there was much more significance there than there ever really was.
Scientific American is reporting on scientific work done to map the euphoric religious feelings within the brain. As a result, it's now quite possible to experience 'proximity to God' via a special helmet:
Don't know about you guys, but I already have a special helmet that creates euphoric religous feelings.
Scientific American is reporting on scientific work done to map the euphoric religious feelings within the brain. As a result, it's now quite possible to experience 'proximity to God' via a special helmet:
Don't know about you guys, but I already have a special helmet that creates euphoric religous feelings.
I don't have a special helmet so much as I have access to many varying means of other sorts. Many of which are rather too scary for me to ever try.
I'm not so sure that there's much in the way of useful implication here, other than we discovered how to metaphorically poke the brain and make it feel something. We can manipulate the brain into feeling happy, but that doesn't mean happiness doesn't exist or isn't important. If we manipulate the brain into experiencing the sensation of eating a burger, that doesn't mean that burgers don't exist. It just means that we figured out how to fuck with our minds in such a way as to replicate certain experiences.
This tells us the how, not the what, or the why. We know the mechanism by which the brain feels a certain closeness to God. We still don't know why people feel this way when they're not having scientists jab them in the head with pointy sticks.
Fuuuck you Jeffe I was JUST about to post somthing to this reguard.
Congradulations we can poke the brain and make it feel stuff.
Moving on.
yeah it's not like being able to stimulate the brain at a fundamental level could possibly have serious fucking implications
OH WAIT
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Yepp, THE Fjafjan (who's THE fjafjan?)
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
I think, Low Key, that you're failing to take into account that the participants know that their brain is being manipulated into feeling these things. That's certainly going to have an affect on removing the profoundness of the experience. Somebody feeling this stuff without the helmet won't have anything to attribute it to, so they will walk away from it feeling as if there was much more significance there than there ever really was.
Granted, but we still don't know anything about how powerful the experience is in the first place. Unless you've seen something that I haven't.
Persinger's main criticisms, that I've seen, of those who have failed to replicate this experience are that they did not give enough time for the God Helmet to work and allowed participants to get distracted. So essentially, being alone, undisturbed, for long periods of time, focusing on your own sensations occasionally leads to an experience that is comparable to the effects of meditation. Who knows what role the God Helmet's even playing in that?
I think, Low Key, that you're failing to take into account that the participants know that their brain is being manipulated into feeling these things. That's certainly going to have an affect on removing the profoundness of the experience. Somebody feeling this stuff without the helmet won't have anything to attribute it to, so they will walk away from it feeling as if there was much more significance there than there ever really was.
Granted, but we still don't know anything about how powerful the experience is in the first place. Unless you've seen something that I haven't.
Persinger's main criticisms, that I've seen, of those who have failed to replicate this experience are that they did not give enough time for the God Helmet to work and allowed participants to get distracted. So essentially, being alone, undisturbed, for long periods of time, focusing on your own sensations occasionally leads to an experience that is comparable to the effects of meditation. Who knows what role the God Helmet's even playing in that?
I agree.
The fact that you can assist in generating this brain state through technological means should not make it any less profound.
Just because you want it to be mundane, doesn't make it so.
I think, Low Key, that you're failing to take into account that the participants know that their brain is being manipulated into feeling these things. That's certainly going to have an affect on removing the profoundness of the experience. Somebody feeling this stuff without the helmet won't have anything to attribute it to, so they will walk away from it feeling as if there was much more significance there than there ever really was.
Granted, but we still don't know anything about how powerful the experience is in the first place. Unless you've seen something that I haven't.
Persinger's main criticisms, that I've seen, of those who have failed to replicate this experience are that they did not give enough time for the God Helmet to work and allowed participants to get distracted. So essentially, being alone, undisturbed, for long periods of time, focusing on your own sensations occasionally leads to an experience that is comparable to the effects of meditation. Who knows what role the God Helmet's even playing in that?
I agree.
The fact that you can assist in generating this brain state through technological means should not make it any less profound.
Just because you want it to be mundane, doesn't make it so.
Uh, that's not actually what lokes is saying, far as I can tell
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
I think, Low Key, that you're failing to take into account that the participants know that their brain is being manipulated into feeling these things. That's certainly going to have an affect on removing the profoundness of the experience. Somebody feeling this stuff without the helmet won't have anything to attribute it to, so they will walk away from it feeling as if there was much more significance there than there ever really was.
Granted, but we still don't know anything about how powerful the experience is in the first place. Unless you've seen something that I haven't.
Persinger's main criticisms, that I've seen, of those who have failed to replicate this experience are that they did not give enough time for the God Helmet to work and allowed participants to get distracted. So essentially, being alone, undisturbed, for long periods of time, focusing on your own sensations occasionally leads to an experience that is comparable to the effects of meditation. Who knows what role the God Helmet's even playing in that?
I agree.
The fact that you can assist in generating this brain state through technological means should not make it any less profound.
Just because you want it to be mundane, doesn't make it so.
Uh, that's not actually what lokes is saying, far as I can tell
I agree - Lokes is saying that because Persinger is a media-loving, attention grabbing hack (my words, not his, not necessarily my opinon) that the whole discussion has been framed inappropriately (or at least may well have been framed inappropriately) in terms of religion and deities.
Lokes has largely stayed above the fray with regard to the profoundity/mundanity of the experience itself.
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Dhalphirdon't you open that trapdooryou're a fool if you dareRegistered Userregular
I think, Low Key, that you're failing to take into account that the participants know that their brain is being manipulated into feeling these things. That's certainly going to have an affect on removing the profoundness of the experience. Somebody feeling this stuff without the helmet won't have anything to attribute it to, so they will walk away from it feeling as if there was much more significance there than there ever really was.
Granted, but we still don't know anything about how powerful the experience is in the first place. Unless you've seen something that I haven't.
Persinger's main criticisms, that I've seen, of those who have failed to replicate this experience are that they did not give enough time for the God Helmet to work and allowed participants to get distracted. So essentially, being alone, undisturbed, for long periods of time, focusing on your own sensations occasionally leads to an experience that is comparable to the effects of meditation. Who knows what role the God Helmet's even playing in that?
I agree.
The fact that you can assist in generating this brain state through technological means should not make it any less profound.
Just because you want it to be mundane, doesn't make it so.
Uh, that's not actually what lokes is saying, far as I can tell
I agree - Lokes is saying that because Persinger is a media-loving, attention grabbing hack (my words, not his, not necessarily my opinon) that the whole discussion has been framed inappropriately (or at least may well have been framed inappropriately) in terms of religion and deities.
Lokes has largely stayed above the fray with regard to the profoundity/mundanity of the experience itself.
I think that the real danger here is of this experience becoming commercialized, and almost becoming like a "drug".
"Hey, I'm feeling a bit crap today, I think I'll go strap on my God Helmet"
Also, I am off to go find out whether profundity and mundanity are words.
EDIT: Profundity is a word! And it was a typo that I left out the second "o", but it turns out that I spelled it correctly, its proFUNDity not proFOUNDity. Talk about an awesome typo...
EDIT2: Mundanity is also a word. No such humourous typo.
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Apothe0sisHave you ever questioned the nature of your reality?Registered Userregular
edited October 2007
I know how to spell profundity, I edited myself as I typed - profoundness and mundaness, which I decided was crap, so changed it to the -ity forms, but forgot the extra o was there.
Is this really surprising in the slightest? Last I checked, human beings were biological machines, not bags of flesh filled with magic. This shouldn't be surprising to (most) atheists or (most) theists.
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INeedNoSaltwith blood on my teethRegistered Userregular
I think that the real danger here is of this experience becoming commercialized, and almost becoming like a "drug".
That would be awesome.
I don't really think you can compare the two. I think the word you're really looking for is 'addiction'.
Seriously... I doubt its something that could be described unless experienced, and even then it might be difficult to put the experience into words. How do you describe an experience of totality? What words could possibly be used to describe the feeling of 'being in the presence of God'? In essence, you're going back over the difficulties ever founding father of ever faith has faced. (Except maybe Mohammad, who had an angel whispering cliff notes into his ear.)
It's not like there's anything else in life that you could possibly compare it to...
Maybe if people were coming out of the experience and saying things like "Better than sex." or "That feeling I got when my first child was delivered.", then the associated feelings would be easier to relate to and describe.
But for everyone to only describe the experiences as 'peaceful', 'calming' or 'in the presence of the divine', doesn't tell you Jack Shit. Unless you've previously experienced the 'presence of God', that phrase doesn't mean *anything* to you.
I think, Low Key, that you're failing to take into account that the participants know that their brain is being manipulated into feeling these things. That's certainly going to have an affect on removing the profoundness of the experience. Somebody feeling this stuff without the helmet won't have anything to attribute it to, so they will walk away from it feeling as if there was much more significance there than there ever really was.
Granted, but we still don't know anything about how powerful the experience is in the first place. Unless you've seen something that I haven't.
Persinger's main criticisms, that I've seen, of those who have failed to replicate this experience are that they did not give enough time for the God Helmet to work and allowed participants to get distracted. So essentially, being alone, undisturbed, for long periods of time, focusing on your own sensations occasionally leads to an experience that is comparable to the effects of meditation. Who knows what role the God Helmet's even playing in that?
Given that, I suppose the whole thing just needs to be done with a more solid methodology.
Don't let Stanley Milgram within miles of this fucking thing.
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MrMisterJesus dying on the cross in pain? Morally better than us. One has to go "all in".Registered Userregular
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Does this count as worshipping an idol?
Or does the technology worship us; making it honky dory even by dogma?
The monks and nuns carry the belief that for a brief moment, something wonderful happened to them. They emerge from their trances with the lingering bliss of their experience, and feeling good about having been fortunate to have had it. The god-helmet recreates the experience, but without the devoutness the nuns and monks put forth, and perhaps for any who try it - the belief. It sounds like a very empty experience in truth, a bit like a mind-trip brought about by LSD or shrooms or something.
Hmmm... not really.
I'd imagine it might make one want to learn how to re-create the experience without an artificial stimulus.
It's perfectly possible, even for those living 'normal' lives. (ie: No nuns, priests, monks, etc.)
That was a cool story. At first it seemed almost like a metaphor for global warming or something, but then I was like "oh".
You brought up a good point there. I just feel a bit sorry for the monks/nuns/priests/etc:
"You mean I could have just bought a helmet?"
Well, someone would have to 'keep the faith alive' until the helmet could be invented...
Why would this make you more comfortable with the idea of some weird, supernatural power? You can have some way-crazy experiences on shrooms, experiences that you couldn't possibly have without them, but I don't see how that really suggests anything one way or the other about gods.
I keep trying to write a response to this post and every time I keep drawing into the same arguments that we see in every other religion thread to come through this place. I just can't respond without bringing up issues like subjectivity versus objectivity; burden of proof; absence of evidence versus evidence of absence; whether Occam's Razor shaves against the grain of faith or with it; etc.
As far as I can tell, one's reaction to this study is a litmus test for one's pre-existing attitude towards religion. If your attitude is that religion is an unfortunate by-product of flaws in human reasoning, then naturally your reaction is going to be that this is evidence of a neurological artifact that predisposes us towards those flaws. If your attitude is that religion is man grasping to understand a facet of reality that is no less real despite being ineffable, then this is evidence that the human brain is responding in its own primitive fashion to this facet.
So if the article's interpretation is based largely on our own pre-existing attitudes towards religion, then the article itself is a red herring, at least as far as the veracity of religious experience is concerned. Analogies aside, they managed to replicate a specific experience in a lab - an experience that we already know about, as people have been having it since the beginning of recorded history. It's interesting from a biological standpoint (we now know a little bit more about where and how it happens in the brain), but not from a philosophical one.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Now you could make a case that this is something which has been evident since said form of epilepsy was described in the seventies, but that doesn't make it less valid.
This right here.
This makes no sense at all.
I think that is kind of what differentiates it for me. Perfectly normal people have these experiences that the God Hat produces, right?
Plus, I kind of want to see what all the hype is about, and if a hat can do that for me... !
Yeah, he's wrong, and that's important. Stay up twenty-four hours past your bedtime and then tell me you've never had a hallucination naturally.
Hey... about the Pope Hat... I wonder...
Supposing they do. Why does that lead you to believe a higher power is involved? A unique experience is produced when a certain section of the brain is stimulated. Where does the supernatural factor in as a necessary component of the explanation? And if it doesn't, why assume the existence of the supernatural? How is anything beyond biochemistry required to explain this phenomenon?
I don't see why it matters if the hat is necessary for the sensations to be experienced, Salt still makes no sense.
1. People experience weird sensation.
2. People atribute sensation to the supernatural.
3. Biological origin of sensation is discovered.
4. Someone concludes this is reason to believe in the supernatural?
This doesn't make sense to me. If you want to believe in the supernatural, whatever, but I cannot fathom how someone discovering a secular explanation for a previously claimed supernatural phenomenon is in any way support for the divine.
Also: I've never experienced hallucinations despite how much sleep I deprive myself of. To be honest, it's kind of dissapointing.
It's not, and I'm pretty sure I never said it did. I just said that being able to duplicate the experience (as in, we can prove that it was an honest experience that actually happens and we can prove it) makes it more understandable for me. (Well, I didn't say that explicitly, but it's what I mean.) It means that people who claim to have these experiences aren't just talking out of their asses and it also means that it doesn't entirely come down to upbringing or environment if our science says that anyone can experience these things given the proper brain juice.
Not crazy rambling = more understandable, is all, I guess. It doesn't prove anything, it just makes it easier for me to believe folks who says so might be on to something (or at least have a reason for what they're saying.)
I wonder how I get them to put that hat onto my head.
This is where religion neatly steps in and says "Those who are of true faith don't need unassailable proof that he exists, only that he operates in mysterious ways".
At which point this phenomenon is no less convincing than pretty flowers.
You mean the people who think that pretty flowers are evidence of the occurence of virgin-births?
I avoiding comparisons to such a specific and relatively well understood quasi religious phenomenon because it places to much focus on the role of this neurological mechanism as the creation of a relationship with god.
Note: The God Helmet doe not make people see God. It does not make people feel connected to God.
This is a device that can stimulate a perceptual semantics misfiring to give the sense that an unseen or unheard precense is, in fact, present. Although Pesinger, in his knobjockeying way, promotes the term God helmet and talk continuously in religious terms these days, this is not a specifically religious phenomenon. Seen unseens have been associated with the paranomal, magic and weird alien butt spelunking nonsense for years. I'd be very interested in seeing the language used by Persinger's participants in describing the experience, because previous descriptions I've seen have not been particularly religious in their language at all, unless you count relgious under the general umbrella of "stuff that gives me the heebie jeebies".
I've seen little to no information of this other epiphanic experience described in the article. The other information seems to suggest that it has never been replicated. (which isn't particularly surprising; Persinger's idea of methodology is "Well some of it was double blind... no I can't remember which"). Even if there is something distinctively spiritual about the sensation created by the God Helmet, the experience of a deep sense of calm and understanding is so different from the tendency towards religious beliefs that the Near Death Experience comparison doesn't really work.
I'm not entirely disagreeing with you, but I'm gonna take a left turn on this whole temporal lobe thing and say that in the context of the neurological religious experience as a whole, the relevance of the God Helmet is extremely dubious.
Don't know about you guys, but I already have a special helmet that creates euphoric religous feelings.
I don't have a special helmet so much as I have access to many varying means of other sorts. Many of which are rather too scary for me to ever try.
OH WAIT
- "Proving once again the deadliest animal of all ... is the Zoo Keeper" - Philip J Fry
Oh, that? I was thinking of a more long-term sensation/experience.
Granted, but we still don't know anything about how powerful the experience is in the first place. Unless you've seen something that I haven't.
Persinger's main criticisms, that I've seen, of those who have failed to replicate this experience are that they did not give enough time for the God Helmet to work and allowed participants to get distracted. So essentially, being alone, undisturbed, for long periods of time, focusing on your own sensations occasionally leads to an experience that is comparable to the effects of meditation. Who knows what role the God Helmet's even playing in that?
I agree.
The fact that you can assist in generating this brain state through technological means should not make it any less profound.
Just because you want it to be mundane, doesn't make it so.
Are you arguing these sensations have a supernatural component, or what? Your use of the words 'profound' and 'mundane' confuse me.
Uh, that's not actually what lokes is saying, far as I can tell
I agree - Lokes is saying that because Persinger is a media-loving, attention grabbing hack (my words, not his, not necessarily my opinon) that the whole discussion has been framed inappropriately (or at least may well have been framed inappropriately) in terms of religion and deities.
Lokes has largely stayed above the fray with regard to the profoundity/mundanity of the experience itself.
I think that the real danger here is of this experience becoming commercialized, and almost becoming like a "drug".
"Hey, I'm feeling a bit crap today, I think I'll go strap on my God Helmet"
Also, I am off to go find out whether profundity and mundanity are words.
EDIT: Profundity is a word! And it was a typo that I left out the second "o", but it turns out that I spelled it correctly, its proFUNDity not proFOUNDity. Talk about an awesome typo...
EDIT2: Mundanity is also a word. No such humourous typo.
D'oh!
That would be awesome.
I don't really think you can compare the two. I think the word you're really looking for is 'addiction'.
Seriously... I doubt its something that could be described unless experienced, and even then it might be difficult to put the experience into words. How do you describe an experience of totality? What words could possibly be used to describe the feeling of 'being in the presence of God'? In essence, you're going back over the difficulties ever founding father of ever faith has faced. (Except maybe Mohammad, who had an angel whispering cliff notes into his ear.)
It's not like there's anything else in life that you could possibly compare it to...
Maybe if people were coming out of the experience and saying things like "Better than sex." or "That feeling I got when my first child was delivered.", then the associated feelings would be easier to relate to and describe.
But for everyone to only describe the experiences as 'peaceful', 'calming' or 'in the presence of the divine', doesn't tell you Jack Shit. Unless you've previously experienced the 'presence of God', that phrase doesn't mean *anything* to you.
Given that, I suppose the whole thing just needs to be done with a more solid methodology.
Don't let Stanley Milgram within miles of this fucking thing.
Trippy.