Searching for God inside the brain.

[bindeweede]

"Functional" MRI, as opposed to.....? But I know nothing about this sort of thing.


http://www.newsmonster.co.uk/searching-for-god-inside-the-brain.html

[Zaira]

Well that’s where my God is. Where is yours? ;)

[Lord Muck oGentry]

Well that’s where my God is. Where is yours? ;)

Well, if you're going to talk about God, some of us coarse-minded brutes are going to ask not about what's going on inside your head but about what's going on outside it. :-)

[Zaira]

I have been reading about us being our own Gods and creating own reality from the thoughts we entertain, so I can at least entertain the thought that that's where God is if anywhere - in my head.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

I have been reading about us being our own Gods and creating own reality from the thoughts we entertain, so I can at least entertain the thought that that's where God is if anywhere - in my head.

Zaira,

You are incorrigible. :-)

[Zaira]

Thak you. :smiley:

[bindeweede]

In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence—a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is—or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language—terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe.

(From the full article in Scientific American.)

I wonder if this is classed as an hallucination or delusion.

Zaira, to answer your question, the article doesn't define "God", but if it means the "God" I assume the nuns believe in, then he is neither inside my head or out of it. He doesn't exist.

[bindeweede]

In a series of studies conducted over the past several decades, Persinger and his team have trained their device on the temporal lobes of hundreds of people. In doing so, the researchers induced in most of them the experience of a sensed presence—a feeling that someone (or a spirit) is in the room when no one, in fact, is—or of a profound state of cosmic bliss that reveals a universal truth. During the three-minute bursts of stimulation, the affected subjects translated this perception of the divine into their own cultural and religious language—terming it God, Buddha, a benevolent presence or the wonder of the universe.

(From the full article in Scientific American.)

I wonder if this is classed as an hallucination or delusion.

Zaira, to answer your question, the article doesn't define "God", but if it means the "God" I assume the nuns believe in, then he is neither inside my head or out of it. He doesn't exist.

The final paragraph of the article......

Moreover, no matter what neural correlates scientists may find, the results cannot prove or disprove the existence of God. Although atheists might argue that finding spirituality in the brain implies that religion is nothing more than divine delusion, the nuns were thrilled by their brain scans for precisely the opposite reason: they seemed to provide confirmation of God’s interactions with them. After all, finding a cerebral source for spiritual experiences could serve equally well to identify the medium through which God reaches out to humanity. Thus, the nuns’ forays into the tubular brain scanner did not undermine their faith. On the contrary, the science gave them an even greater reason to believe.

[Lord Muck oGentry]

I have been reading about us being our own Gods and creating own reality from the thoughts we entertain, so I can at least entertain the thought that that's where God is if anywhere - in my head.

Zaira,

I think we have discussed this before:

http://www.prospect-magazine.co.uk/article_details.php?id=8625

Whether something exists or not has nothing to do with whether it exists-relative-to-what-is-in-your-head.

Forget gods. Try unicorns.

[Zaira]

Tom,

"Zaira, to answer your question, the article doesn't define "God", but if it means the "God" I assume the nuns believe in, then he is neither inside my head or out of it. He doesn't exist."

I agree. The nun's God doesn't exist. The God I'm reading about is more in the mind.. The power (potential) of the mind, when used correctly, will show us that we are in fact our own God! We are in control of our own life and our own destiny!

[Julia]

Zaira, if you genuinely want to learn something from this or any other sceptical site, you'll have to accept one thing:

There is only one reality. The idea that you can choose your own personal reality is nonsense - it makes the concept of "reality" meaningless. People can INTERPRET reality in different ways but facts are facts.

[Zaira]

Julia,

"There is only one reality. The idea that you can choose your own personal reality is nonsense - it makes the concept of "reality" meaningless. People can INTERPRET reality in different ways but facts are facts."

I never said I choose my own reality. I said I create my own reality. There is a difference. And it is to do with cause and effect. Let's say I seriously upset someone and they are planning to get back at me - I did that, I caused it, I created it.

You and others keep talking about me learning things here. I have learned a lot believe me, but some of you have failed to understand what I mean by creating my own reality. Is that not what we are doing when we create our own destiny?

[Cuddles]

You and others keep talking about me learning things here. I have learned a lot believe me, but some of you have failed to understand what I mean by creating my own reality. Is that not what we are doing when we create our own destiny?


No.

[Zaira]

Explain please.

[Julia]

Fer Pete's sake, Zaira, we have explained this to you in simple language several times! REALITY and DESTINY don't mean the same thing - you are comparing apples and oranges. I don't even know what you mean by destiny. If you mean "a course of action planned before I was born and impossible to change", as in the religious concept of predestination, you can't make your own destiny anyway. If you mean "a path in life leading to a goal", of course you can make your own destiny within reason, but you can't have your very own personal reality. There's nothing to stop me convincing myself that World War II took place between 1929 and 1934, but it doesn't alter the established fact that the actual dates were 1939 and 1945.

Sorry to SHOUT, but I can't understand why you find this so difficult to grasp...

[Zaira]

Julia,

Calm down, sweetie.

Whose Pete? :smiley:

We each live in a reality we created for ourselves from our thinking and our beliefs. We co-create and share our perception of reality. But Reality is an illusion and Destiny is not carved in stone.

By Destiny, I do not mean predestination. What I mean by Destiny is Future. My future is not carved in stone. With every breath I take, with every thought I have, with every action I make, with every word I utter, I create my own tomorrows!

"There's nothing to stop me convincing myself that World War II took place between 1929 and 1934, but it doesn't alter the established fact that the actual dates were 1939 and 1945."

It isn't about convincing yourself of anything. It just happens. It is happening all the time. Every thought you have tends to express itself sooner or later in your life. You as an individual are putting together all the elements that are needed in order for you to get what you want, what you think about, good and bad, positive and negative. It's there, it happens, we are doing it all the time albeit unawares.

Thought is creative. All thought, good and bad, is creative and tends to become a material thing. All I'm saying is that once you become aware of it, you can direct your thinking to be much more positive in order to have more positive results.

You shout all you want - I was an abused child up until I was 19, I'm used to shouting, it doesn't bother me. And I understand what you are saying. But what you need to understand is that those are your beliefs and these are mine. I can't let go of mine anymore than you can let go of yours.

Isn't the board about sharing and discussing our thoughts, ideas, and beliefs? Would you try this hard to convince a believer that God didn't exist? And, if you would, wouldn't that make you as much of a skeptic pusher as the bible pusher?

Skeptics don't seem to believe in very much. I believe in a lot of things, it doesn't mean I think they are all real. I'm playing a waiting game called 'Have faith until you believe and believe until you know'. I'm only at the I believe stage. I don't know the truth and I suspect you don't either. And perhaps we never will but there is no harm in believing - so long as we don't deliberately hurt ourselves or anyone else in the process.

[Zaira]

Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one.
- Albert Einstein


The distinction between the past,
present and future is only a stubbornly persistent illusion.
- Albert Einstein

[Zaira]

One more -

We shall require a substantially new manner of thinking if mankind is to survive. - Albert Einstein