Have you ever experienced déjà vu? I think most of us have. It is also categorized as temporal lobe epilepsy. So it is not only the people diagnosed with epilepsy that can experience hallucinations and other unexplained phenomena as a cause of temporal lobe epilepsy. You can read more about this theory from Michael A. Persinger.Originally Posted by Paulclem
Last edited by Freudian Monkey; 05-18-2011 at 06:02 PM.
What do you mean categorised as temporal lobe epilepsy? Do you mean it is a symptom, because it's only one of many.
I've got an aching knee like my arthritic neighbour, but it would be wrong to assume that I too have arthritis.
What I meant was that as a result of this theory, religious and other unexplained experiences can all be perceived as causes of neurological processes. The fact that déjà vu is one of the symptoms of temporal lobe epilepsy is just an example of how our brain can easily create supernatural phenomena. The research done by Persinger is only one example of this - there's a ton of researches about transcendental experiences and their neurological and sociopsychological nature - for instance about the obvious connection between transcendental experiences and stress.
I think it's still an assumption about such a connection. We know that illness and drugs can induce *edit* similar experiences, but it does not explain the accounts of experiences by mystics for example, who do not use stimulants or suffer from illness. To say it is - without experiemntal corroboration, remains an assumption.
Last edited by Paulclem; 05-19-2011 at 08:13 AM.
A spiritual experience is something misconstrued. Spirituality is the only thing that gives a meaning to our meaninglessness in a world that is so void and empty and so creepy. I do not know, in fact no body knows whether or not God exists but I see great amounts of placating stuffs in spirituality and that is why I hanker after it.
“Those who seek to satisfy the mind of man by hampering it with ceremonies and music and affecting charity and devotion have lost their original nature””
“If water derives lucidity from stillness, how much more the faculties of the mind! The mind of the sage, being in repose, becomes the mirror of the universe, the speculum of all creation.
I take it that you didn't bother reading through the whole article? Or at least you didn't check out the work done by Persinger. His theory has all to do with experimental corroboration.
I might not have been specific enough in my previous messages so let my try to put my point in a more simple manner. The basic concept of Persinger's study was to stimulate his subjects temporal lobes electromagnetically and see which kind of effects this electromagnetic exposure of temporal lobe has on a patients cognition. He studied some 400 individuals and roughly 80% of the subjects were recorded to have had various transcendental experiences. The subjects of the study were all, to my recollection, normal and healthy people.
To me, this study doesn't prove anything other than that the human brain is capable of producing transcendental experiences artificially and that it only takes a tiny amount of electromagnetic exposure (1 microTesla) for this to happen. However as I mentioned earlier, there has also been numerous studies about how people have had transcendental experiences in high stress situations, not to even mention studies concerning group psychology or semiotic studies about the concept of meaning-making in religious rhetoric.
One of the interesting results of Persinger's study was that some people are more receptive to temporal lobe stimulation than others. In other words, some people are more likely to have religious experiences than others. So, according to this research, one might imply that God is a determinist who has prematurely chosen those who have the ability to experience his presence and are therefore more likely to receive salvation (in a Christian sense). Some people have "a talent for religion", as Bishop Stephen Sykes put it.
So wait... does this mean that God is a darwinian?
As a sidenote, I'm not an atheist - just an individual in search of truth. And this is just my opinion on this. I completely accept that other people have their own views based on their own arguments.
Okay - what meaning does it give?
What for some people is a "reasonable debate" is for others a power play.
I want to avoid the power play approach up-front. The dismissal of out-of-body experiences by assigning them a pseudo-scientific label is a power play. I am responding to it by saying up-front that I don't accept such explanations, that is, I will respond to a power play with an outright dismissal. Out-of-body experiences remain as evidence.
Why is consciousness important to discuss?
During the second half of the last century, physicists validated two fundamental religious views of the universe that would have seemed absurd from a scientific perspective 100 years ago. (1) They said that space-time had a beginning. (2) They said it came from nothing. All that is left is to determine how this could have happened. Did space-time (as well as matter and energy) pop out of nothing by chance or were there choices involved.
If you claim it was done by chance, you must assume that there are countably infinite alternate space-time universes since chance would have to operate randomly over its domain of possibilities. For this theoretic approach to work, consciousness must be down-played as an insignificant accident.
If you claim it was done by a single or multiple acts of choice, you introduce dimensions of consciousness outside of space-time where those choices were made. For this theoretical approach, our own consciousness becomes a valuable source of information. If this approach wins out, the religious views that we were "made in the image of God" or that we have a "God within" become validated.
Personally, I'm on the choice side.
Thank you for your very interesting post. What I intended by saying that "we" cannot have a reasonable debate was mainly to stress my opinion about the meaningless nature of theism versus atheism debate. Now I find that we are suddenly dealing with quantum physics and metaphysics, which I don't consider to be an area where a reasonable debate wouldn't be possible, at least if we can find fundamental principles that can both agree.
If you feel that I was making a power play in pointing out that out-of-body experiences are pseudo-science, then you are kind of proving my point about theism versus atheism debate, since out-of-body experiences are generally perceived as pseudo-science. I don't say this as my own opinion, I say this as an individual who has followed this ongoing debate for years. And I only pointed out temporal lobe epilepsy and Persinger because I thought you might be interested to learn more about them, if you hadn't already done so.
But again, even though we might have a debate about our consciousness, free will or reason behind the existence of universe, all these fundamental religious questions ultimately boils down to questions of faith. Like you said, you believe that the world wasn't created by chance. OK, can you present any evidence to support this view? Since faith is not a factor in scientific mode of thinking, there is really no point in religious debate where scientific arguments are against any other forms of arguments. This is all that I have argued here, nothing else.
It's true however that science is nowadays used as a tool of power play, I can genuinely agree on that. It's the empiricists who won't accept any other than empirical evidence. So is there anything we can do about this? Not really. If they have chosen this mode of thinking, there is nothing that can affect their opinion other than empirical evidence.
I'd very much like to continue this debate on a philosophical level, without any allusions to science vs pseudo-science or theism vs atheism debate. I'm very interested to hear your opinion on the founding principles of human consciousness, since you seem to place a lot of your arguments on this cartesian mode of thinking. Personally I tend to lean toward a more Saussurean/Lacanian mode of thinking, and therefore I don't necessarily approve to cogito ergo sum, because individuals can never have an individual language with which they could produce individual thoughts; the very terms, that you use to make sense of the world, have been given to you. In other words, "my thoughts are not my own". This common semiotic view tends to point to a more deterministic worldview: if our consciousness is ultimately based on an artificial system of signs, we can't really rely on our cognition anymore as a source of authentic information - or at least not the consciousness, rather the uncouncious. It also points to a pretty sceptical view towards the existence of god. From this prespective, if there is something that we could call a god, it is most likely something similar to the structure of language.
So how do you defend your statement that consciousness is important in understanding the nature of our existence?
Last edited by Freudian Monkey; 05-19-2011 at 04:40 PM.
I think I agree with you about language although I don't know enough about Saussure or Lacan to have much to say about it.
If a scientist is able to stimulate the temporal lobe and simulate a transcendental experience, that does not prove that the transcendental experience was a delusion. All it shows is that we now have another way to get that experience. A new technique has been discovered.
That transcendental experience is itself evidence--empirical evidence, that needs to be explored further, not dismissed.
Consider the universe popping out of nothing 14 billion years ago. What triggered that event? Was it chance or was a choice involved? If chance caused this event then there are infinitely many space-time universes. I don't have a problem with that, but I do think an infinity of universes is a high price to pay for a theory that refuses to acknowledge consciousness as an obvious place where that choice could have occurred. And our own consciousness would be a door through which we could make further explorations.
I think it is a very good reply.
I once stood on the side of "If you leave the genesis of our universe in the hands of chance, there must invariably be an infinite number of universes due to the nature of that chance" philosophy, and yet I found myself looking in the face of a similar problem when I brought the supernatural into the equation. It is hard to narrow down the amount of supernaturality that is allowed in the equation. When you start discussing limits, you are undeniably discussing theology.
With that said, I am not forsaking my fragile belief in supernatural occurences, but I cannot use that belief as a means of reasoning. As Wilde's Lord Henry might have said, leave theology to those who need it. And theology is always where I end up when discussing this matter.
I believe it was Freudian Monkey who stated that a theist and an atheist cannot have a reasonable debate. I must agree with this statement. The debate ends as soon as it begins, with the introductory statement of, "What I believe is..." It turns into a game of "change the other person's mind", rather than "demonstrate why the other person is wrong." Changing someone's mind isn't empirically valuable. I'm not sure if empirical value is the goal of this thread; it may just be a "quality of life" debate (which is almost always just as fun), but I think I remember someone challenging a non-believer to "give sound reasoning" for their disbelief, and that sounds awfully empirical.
I may be completely off the mark from the discussion at hand, but in reality, I am simply trying to raise my post count.
"Clothes make the man. Naked people have little to no influence on society."
I agree with the stalemate statement. It will never truly be solved or answer, and it upsets me when people take these stubborn positions and entrench themselves in simplistic "right or wrong," and "black and white" opinions.
All the evidence lines up with an atheist, his or her Being, falsehoods line the pockets of the faithful like cheap coin.
I may be completely off the mark from the discussion at hand, but in reality, I am simply trying to raise my post count.That's as good a reason as any to post something.
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