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Scientists Deliver 'God' Via A Helmet
Posted by
Zonk
on Sun Oct 07, 2007 11:23 PM
from the don't-forget-the-devil-in-the-details dept.
from the don't-forget-the-devil-in-the-details dept.
prostoalex writes "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: '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.""
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This is the closest to God you can ever get (Score:5, Funny)
Acid (Score:5, Informative)
Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:5, Insightful)
In 2000 years time, would any of the documented evidence be believed? What about in 100 years?
Something to think about...
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:4, Funny)
Hey, Christianity is the belief that a cosmic Jewish zombie, who was his own father, can make you live forever if you eat his flesh. [pizdaus.com]
What's not to like?
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:5, Informative)
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:5, Insightful)
But I don't think you need to. You have clearly demonstrated that you are too ignorant to be able to actually read the damned thing with any kind of social, historical, or other context beyond "aahahah naked guy on torture device" mentality.
So you are right, there is no need to read the bible to become an ignorant, loud mouthed jackass insulting someone elses beliefs. You would fight right in with the bible thumpers too, its not like they read much of it, they are just ignorant, loud mouthed jackasses insulting others beliefs. Right up your alley.
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:5, Insightful)
Tradition has it that Joseph was an old widower with children before he and Mary got engaged. There's also the fact that Jews called their cousins "brothers". Nope, I can't prove that any of these things accurately explain what really happened (as that would be impossible), but it ought to wipe that "I've just stumped `em Bible-thumpin' Xtians with a scriptural contradiction"-smile off your face.
On topic:
Fact A: Religious practices sometimes produce certain psychological effects.
Fact B: For a number of people, the only time they've encountered these certain psychological effects (if ever) was during religious rituals.
Fact C: Scientists have successfully reproduced these certain psychological effects in the laboratory.
Only the modern, enlightened, rationalist intellectuals of today could possibly connect all those facts and conclude that they have "delivered God". It would never occur to them that how we experience a God (if any exist) would necessarily be limited to what the moist computer in our skull can "experience" (i.e. a bunch of neurological signals), and that the explanation of this experience does NOT explain God/gods/fairies.
Believing in God has made me feel good at times; it's also made me feel bad at times. Is it logical to believe in God just because it makes you warm and fuzzy inside? Is it logical to disbelieve in God just because you're life is "shit"? These questions are meaningless because they are merely sentimental. God exists or does not exist however we feel about Him.
So now that we know that this scientific study has no religious or "spiritual" value whatsoever (unless your religion is that shallow), I'd like to express my utmost excitement for the future applications of these findings in the area of Virtual Reality entertainment: Realistic Uber-Creepy Horror Video Games FTW!!!
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Re:Surely this includes the hallucinations (Score:5, Insightful)
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virgin births were pretty common (Score:5, Interesting)
5) Virgin births are rampant throughout ancient mythology, and most sun gods underwent a virgin birth on December 25 (it being the traditionally accepted date when the days visibly begin to grow in length). Many also had 3 wise men follow a star in the east to see the birth. It was practically a requirement of godhood in an age when sun gods were generally considered the most important deities. If you didn't have the trappings of a sun god, you would not have been accepted by Roman society. (This also explains why the Christian sabbath is Sunday.)
Astrologically, the story is explained by the belt of Orion (the three wise men) pointing to Sirius (the brightest star in the sky) which was low in the eastern sky where the sun rose on the winter solstice, all of which occured under the sign of Virgo (the virgin).
Incidentally, the sun gods as a rule traveled the world with their 12 disciples, were then killed, placed into a cave for 3 days, and then resurrected, thereby saving humanity. Astrologically, this is just esoteric symbolism for the sun traversing the 12 signs of the Zodiac, finally losing the war against the forces of darkness on the Winter Solstice, remaining in this darkest mode for 3 days where the sun spent more time "under" the earth than over it, before being reborn again, initiating a new year and new crops, which were essential to the survival of humanity.
The most prevalent sun god during the Roman Empire was probably Mithras, who had Persian origins. The story of Mithras had all of these elements, but also borrowed them from earlier traditions. The oldest one we know of, and possibly the original, was the Egyptian god Horus [uwm.edu]. The sun-disk on Horus' head was adopted directly into Christian iconography [test-cornerstone.org], eventually evolving into the modern halo. Horus was called Iu-em-hetep, or Iusa in Egyptian, a name which evolved to Yeshua (Hebrew), then Iesu (Greek, who had to drop the trailing 'a' which would have implied the feminine), then Iesus (Latinate form of Iesu), then finally Jesus around the 1600s when the letter J came into usage.
The current Christian version of the sun god story comes from the Council of Nicaea, which at its heart was an attempt to establish a universal Roman religion to eliminate the religious feuds that were occupying the empire at that time. As a universal religion it had to incorporate the essential elements of all the major competing sects of the day, so sun god symbolism figured heavily in the resulting unified doctrine. Constantine's miraculous "conversion" however, was more likely political expediency - an attempt to centralize and control worship from Rome. And it worked, for over 1000 years. Still doing a half-decent job today, in fact.
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Re:Acid (Score:5, Interesting)
He describes it as excessive emotional "kindling" (often associated with epilepsy -- the tact I believe Scorsese adopted in the Last Temptation of Christ) that leads one to invest spiritual significance in events and experiences most people would experience as ordinary or mundane.
Now place your God Helmet on your head and reread this post -- you'll see what I mean.
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Tact vs Tack, the showdown (Score:5, Informative)
1. The sense of touch; feeling.
2. The stroke in beating time.
3. Sensitive mental touch; peculiar skill or faculty; nice perception or discernment; ready power of appreciating and doing what is required by circumstances.
( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tact [wiktionary.org] )
Tack
1. small nail with a flat head
2. loose seam used to temporarily fasten pieces of cloth
3. (nautical) part of a sail (Wikipedia) specifically the lower corner on the leading edge of the sail relative to the direction of the wind.
4. (nautical) direction, hence approach try a different tack. Specifically a course or direction that enables the vessel to head upwind. See also reach, gybe.
5. part of the harnessing for a draft animal or riding animal, e.g. a horse pulling a wagon, or a riding horse. Includes bit, bridle and reins.
( http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tack [wiktionary.org] )
Tack No. 4
People miss this one all the time, you adopt a tack, tact is what I lack
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neurotheology; God in mushrooms (Score:4, Informative)
Google has more on neurotheology [google.com]
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Re:neurotheology; God in mushrooms (Score:4, Interesting)
Most designer or party drugs (speed, MDMA), and so called 'smart drugs' (see 'smart shops' [wikipedia.org] or 'head shops'), are non-addictive. They are usually banned on a pretext of anecdotal evidence or a few cases of death or illness following use, which generally could have been avoided with proper precautions and quality control. For instance, Psilocybin mushrooms (as the GGP mentions) have been shown to produce religious experiences.
As for designer drugs, from the wiki page on effects of MDMA [wikipedia.org]:
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Not entirely new. See: ergotism (Score:5, Interesting)
Short version: it's produced by the toxin a parasitic fungus that grows on certain kinds of grain and grass. Eating contaminated grains produces LSD-like hallucinations, but also extreme vasoconstriction that often (but not always, if the dose is low enough) results in gangrene. Which in turn often resulted in death.
Apparently, the problem was big enough at times that (A) they had a monk order (the Order of St. Anthony) specialized in trying to save people affected by the result, and (B) outbreaks of whole freakin' cities dancing euphorically in the streets and having mystical/religious visions and revelations.
Kinda makes me wonder how many of the prophecies and martyrdoms that the the various religions were based on, well, were just the result of hallucinations. I mean, obviously some people lied their arse off to gain an advantage or revenge in the name of religion, but I'm willing to admit that some were genuinely honest and relating miracles and stuff they actually witnessed. Or, rather, and this is the important part: thought they witnessed, while on an ergot trip. Or while they were delirious with fever, or having a bad heat stroke (having visions and revelations in the desert sure was common), or any other kind of hallucination and delirium.
For example, at the risk of offending the French, I wonder about Joan d'Arc. Went and fought for the good ol' Salic law that women can't inherit anything at all, and got burned at the stake... all supposedly because of a divine vision commanding her to. Could it be that the poor girl had just eaten a bit of bad rye?
How many other saints and prophets had?
Or given a tightly knit group that travelled and ate together (e.g., monks in the same monastery, or let's say... 1 guy and his 12 apostles?) it only takes one contaminated meal for _all_ of them to have an acid trip together.
Or here's another thought: almost 1% of the population are schizophrenic, and at least _some_ forms of it are characterized by hallucinations. And in the ancient times and middle ages, it could only be worse, since they didn't have psychiatrists and neuroleptics: once started on the road to madness, the only way was towards worse. Stuff like hearing voices, seeing ghosts, etc. Given thousands of years and populations of millions of people, odds are good some will eventually have delusions of divine miracles and messages.
Briefly: Is it still a miracle if it only happened in someone's drug-addled brain?
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Proof! (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, Jebus, curse these rotten, immoral Satanic Scientists to the ever-lasting hell they deserve!
Re:Proof! (Score:4, Insightful)
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Maybe it's a God *Magnet*... (Score:4, Interesting)
(Hey, no less crazy than any other hypothesis out there)
Three words: (Score:4, Funny)
Magic helmet (Score:5, Funny)
Elmer Fudd: [singing] I am going to kill the Wabbit!
Bugs Bunny: [singing] Oh, mighty hunter, twil be quite a task. How will you do it? Might I inquire to ask?
Elmer Fudd: [singing] I will do it with my spear and magic helmet!
Bugs Bunny: [singing] Your spear and magic helmet?
Elmer Fudd: [singing] Spear and magic helmet!
Bugs Bunny: [singing] Magic helmet?
Elmer Fudd: [singing] Magic helmet!
Bugs Bunny: Magic helmet.
I guess they came to the wrong conclusion... (Score:5, Funny)
I think they discovered a G-something, but not exactly God.
Interesting but metaphysically inconclusive (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Interesting but metaphysically inconclusive (Score:4, Interesting)
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Re:Interesting but metaphysically inconclusive (Score:4, Interesting)
So, what you're saying is that the tribe which believes in a god of some sort, will be more united and aggressive than a tribe which doesn't, and therefore have an evolutionary advantage ? And you do realize that the tribe members are less likely to kill each other, at least as long as heathen enemies exist ?
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Re:Interesting but metaphysically inconclusive (Score:5, Informative)
In terms of early tribalism, the ones that figured it out grew into stable societies and prospered. The ones that didn't either stayed extremely small so that ordinary family bonds took care of most in-fighting, or were simply wiped out. Evolution.
A good example of religeon's utility is what happened in a lot of Eastern European nations after the communists had thoroughly suppressed the churches: they lost the old "love your neighbor, work hard, don't step out of line, and God will reward you in the end" ethic/morality. By the time my parents (who are from a formerly communist country) entered the work force (several generations later) it had become a sport to slack off as much as possible and steal some little thing from work each day - and I'm talking about the vast majority of the population here. After all, if it isn't somehow wrong to steal from the state, and be a burden on society in general then why bother working hard?
It doesn't sound like much but it adds up fast when you consider how many people did this, and that their economies really weren't geared to mass produce cheap, disposable items like ours are (pens are worth a hell of a lot more when they're made of metal rather than cheap plastics). If the communists had simply found a way to get (well, force) a genuine endorsement from the various churches (like all the rulers of the even more brutal and repressive fudal system that preceeded many of their regimes had) rather than fighting them and thus convincing the population that they were evil, they would have lasted a lot longer (higher levels of production, less energy expended policing the population).
I know, I'm simplifying in order to illustrate my point - there's obviously a lot more to it than that, and what you describe isn't invalid by any means (one only has to look at the Islamic world to see it in action). I just don't think it precludes the fact that religeous beliefs do serve to enforce societal norms - whatever those may be.
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Re:Interesting but metaphysically inconclusive (Score:5, Insightful)
The first and most major result of such experiments is to show that no "religious experiences" can be trusted as personal proof of an almighty being. Just because you have had a few instances in your life when you truly felt God's presense, that alone should mean virtually nothing without some other verification. If this sensation can be created without God's presense, then it is no longer valid "proof" of his existance.
While this induced stimuli is artificial, it still shows that such stimuli can be false. A computer screen can "trick" the human brain into thinking there are actual monsters on a screen, but that just shows that simply seeing something is not proof that it is really there. I will need some other form of proof other than just a vision of a monster is inside my wall, because there could be a tv projector creating the image.
There are also natural causes of false stimuli. I could see a mirage of water on the road ahead of me when there is no water for instance.
Of course nothing in this study "proves" that there are no such things as true divine experiences. All it "proves" (as if a single study could ever prove anything) is that simply believing that you have had a religious experience is largely meaningless. The next step in the research is to find natural causes of such metaphysical perceptions. That would still not prove anything, but it would again make if far more likely that any divine experience is untrustworthy.
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Inconclusive metaphysics? Is there any other kind? (Score:4, Informative)
True, it just tells us that there is probably nothing "magical" or "divine" about the experience itself. Indeed, if the experience can be triggered in a laboratory, it is reasonable to assume it happens "naturally" outside of the laboratory as well -- it doesn't necessarily follow that the such natural experiences accurately correspond to actual phenomena any more than is the case when people put on this helmet. Feeling as if you're in the presence of a god, demon, ghost or lurking shadow monster is something most of us can say we've experienced, but empirical evidence for gods, demons, ghosts and shadow monsters is decidedly lacking. The most rational explanation for such experiences is they are all "in our heads" so to speak. That doesn't mean it's the correct explanation, but it's the one I'm going with for the time being.
It is an interesting question, but it should be asked with the proper emphasis, in the proper context. Being capable of sensing the presence of empirically unverifiable entities is an ability in the same way that being fooled by an optical illusion is an ability. So instead of asking "why" we have evolved this "ability," I would ask how we have evolved this attribute.
It could be that this attribute itself conferred some useful survival and reproductive benefit, or it could be a neutral or slightly counterproductive "side effect" of attributes that are too advantageous to have been eliminated by natural selection. Humans, like many animals, have an agency detection system of sorts
Combining these two attributes (overactive agency detection + social simulation, projection and empathy) it's not hard to imagine why people might sometimes have experiences such as those described in the article and that they would take the shape of religious icons that have been conditioned from youth to treat as real, true and important. Given the self-propagating and self-reinforcing (what you might call "memetic") quality of these beliefs and their consequential social importance, it may indeed be in one's best interest (from a survival and reproductive point of view) to at least give the appearance of earnestly believing in them, which the occasionally "feeling" of an invisible "presence" would help produce. So it could be a component of a sort of evolutionary feedback loop.
For more on religion from a sociobiological perspective, and its potential implications, I recommend Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon by Daniel Dennett and Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer. The preceding is mostly a crude reformulation or extension of the ideas contained within those volumes.
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Re:Interesting but metaphysically inconclusive (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:For those which modded insightful there is a di (Score:4, Interesting)
Given that there is apparently an organ in the brain for sensing God, I would say that the burden of proof is on those who say it is for something other than sensing God.
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Philosophically Uninteresting (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Philosophically Uninteresting (Score:5, Insightful)
But from the theistic perspective, it seems obvious that if God exists He would build the brain with some capacity to detect His presence under certain circumstances
Interesting spin, but you're stretching it. And I think this is interesting, because every time science learns something about the universe or the mind like this the rhetorical effort required to work God back into the model gets more tortured. And that trend, I would say, constitutes a hint as to where to look for philosophical insight, were one inclined to glean some.
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Re:Philosophically Uninteresting (Score:5, Insightful)
Science and religion are orthogonal to each other. The set of axioms that runs:
wouldn't last five minutes in Introduction to Logic 101.
The only rational thing to say is that science does not allow us to make statements about the existence of 'God', which should hardly be a surprise to anyone.
Science deals largely with the study of symmetries.. things that allow us to ignore some kind of change. The laws of projectile motion remain the same (are symmetric) regardless of whether you're facing north or south; whether you're standing in Boston or Beijing.
One thing that's extremely easy to ignore is 'agency'. You can write a doctoral thesis on the kinetics and aerodynamics of a curveball, but you can't use any of it to 'prove' or 'disprove' the existence of Nolan Ryan. Science only allows us to talk about how the ball behaves subsequent to a given set of initial conditions. It doesn't allow us to extrapolate that behavior back to the agent which imposed those original conditions.
At the end of the day, there are only two possible end-states for science: Either we'll be able to reduce the creation of our universe to a set of repeatable phenomena that could be reproduced by an intentional agent with sufficient resources, or we'll find that we can't reduce the creation of our universe to a set of repeatable phenomena. In other words, we'll either prove that 'God' could exist, or we'll prove that 'God' must exist.
Besides, science doesn't have all that much going for it in the Universal Truths department. It has a tendency to paper over difficult fundamental questions by slapping a name on what happens, and sweeping the rest of the mess under the rug of combinatorial complexity.
When Newton published his theory of gravity, it was denounced as mysticism by his peers. They considered the idea of 'action at a distance' tantamount to saying, "God did it." General relativity papered over the problem by calling it 'curved space/time'. We still don't really have any solid answers on what 'space' or 'time' are, and the mechanism of 'gravity' is still an open question, but GR has great predictive power, and tons of experimental validation.
In 1909, Rutherford discovered 'the hand of God' when he proved that electrons don't fall to the lowest possible energy state as predicted by the most basic laws of electrodynamics. Quantum theory papered over that problem by calling it 'uncertainty'. The fact that we can't explain 'uncertainty' in any terms other than 'it just happens' is something we can ignore. QT also has great predictive power and tons of experimental validation.
The small fact that GR and QT are mathematically incompatible -- meaning they can't both describe the same universe -- is something we don't talk about when the children are in the room.
Ffor all the intricate math, and all the really cool things we've done by reducing physics to engineering, we're still dealing with the simplest cases of the simplest pieces we can find. Inverse-square law? We're so excited about being able to call it a Universal Truth that we'll ignore the fact that the N-body problem is provably unsolvable in the general case. Protein folding? Meh.. let's harness a few teraflops of distributed processing power and brute-force our way through the umpty-zillion possibilities. Consciousness? It is to laugh. 'God'? Not even on the map.
A large part of what makes science and math such great tools is that they tell us their own limits. We know for a fact that mathematics as we practice it today cannot derive all possible truths from a finite set of axioms. We know that science doesn't give us the tools to discuss matters of agency or initial-first-causes.
Watching people ignore those limits and use 'science' to 'disprove God' offends me as a mathematician.
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Re:Philosophically Uninteresting (Score:5, Insightful)
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This is going to be an unpopular opinion (Score:5, Interesting)
I'd like to see this work from a distance (Score:4, Funny)
Imagine if you could get a machine that could give a whole room full of people the feeling of god at the press of a button. Has amazing potential for abuse. What if it fit in your pocket and worked within a proximity - then everyone around you would feel your presence! hmmm, I wonder if my wife would then show me respect? Probably not :-(
I wonder how it would apply to sales, getting a job, meeting the oppsite sex, a president negotiating with another one. Certainly would add value to face time.
Re:Obligatory (Score:5, Insightful)
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Re:Slashdot.. not just for tech.. (Score:5, Insightful)
How is this not news that matters? Isn't this a little more important than articles about the latest nuance in the Linux Task Scheduler? Might it not help us understand that whole religion bit that's been, you know, an integral part of the human experience for all of observable history?
Perhaps a little introspection as to what about this article so upsets you would yield some overall personal benefit.
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Re:...maybe (Score:5, Interesting)
What's dangerous is if someone manages to come up with a cure for this, or other religious afflictions. Or, even worse, a vaccine or other preventative measures. Then I predict all hell will break lose.
Regards,
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*Art
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Re:...maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
Brain surgeons have long known that stimulation of the temporal lobe can make people hear voices. That doesn't count as proof that 'voices' don't really exist, though.. unless you're writing the Cliff's Notes summary of The Matrix.
One could just as well ask why such a center exists in the brain if nothing exists to stimulate it.
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Re:serious answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
If for example I had a "taste box" that made everything taste like chocolate...it doesn't prove that nothing exists that tastes of chocolate.
And for all the theists I know, only a small fraction would tell people they are going to burn in hell or go around forcing people (forcing what exactly?). The overwhelming majority don't do that and either silently disagree (by respecting your beliefs) or state their beliefs in a civil, non confrontational way. On what you say about a double standard I think you're reading different semantics to what they mean. You can respect (accept someone has a POV in a civil manor), but disagree with them.
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Re:serious answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
2. Evolution. Populations of moral animals survive better than populations of immoral ones.
3. You can't model the Big Bang with Newton's Third Law, so don't try. And since "time" and "cause and effect" are aspects of this universe, it doesn't make sense to ask what happened "before" the Universe or what "caused" it.
4. Hopefully, the fact that you love your family manifests itself in observable facts about the real world, something that religious statements usually lack.
You're welcome.
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Re:serious answer. (Score:5, Insightful)
Science can't explain how or why the initial conditions of the universe came about. But religion can't either. All it does is replace those unknowns with totally unsubstantiated story, and in doing so creates even more unknowns. For example, religion can't explain how or why an omniscient personal God came about.
I presume there's evidence that you love your three daughters, so you can "prove" it to me. Otherwise, no, I wouldn't believe it. If I claim the plate of spaghetti I am about to eat loves you, but I can't prove it, should you believe it? I certainly hope not, because there's no evidence that my spaghetti even exists, let alone that it has exhibited love for your daughters.
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Re:serious answer. (Score:5, Interesting)
You must be living in a special world, never heard of various other relogions offering similar ancient stories which to me are not distinguishable (since i shed of my childhood Christian indoctrination) ?
"you don't think your existance is a good reason to at least contemplate it?"
Um, I've looked at myself, contemplated the existence of the Hebrew God, and read a bit here and there about the background of biblical stories. When I add all up my conclusion for now is that there is abundant evidence that the bible is a collection of subjective and heavily edited material. Resulting in a strange mix of violence and orders to kill quite a few people I rather not kill, such as name-calling children, teenagers in puberty, and people spreading other beliefs.
Looking at it from a philosophical pov i think the alternatives given by modern biology are a lot more coherent. This magnetic machine does not disprove God, something which is impossible by definition, but it is another indication that there is a God-shaped hole in the brain waiting to be filled with whatever religion available.
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Re:Proves nothing (Score:5, Insightful)
The *point* of the demonstration is to show that there is an area of the brain that is trivial to stimulate and which causes "connection to the sacred". What it shows is that religious experience is hardwired into us. It is not learned and it is not a mystical thing. It is a physical part of the brain.
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Penfield Mood Organ (Score:4, Interesting)
"Another device from the novel is the "Penfield Mood Organ," named for neurologist Wilder Penfield, which induces emotions in its users. The user can dial a setting to obtain a mood. Examples include "awareness of the manifold possibilities of the future," "desire to watch television, no matter what's on it," "pleased acknowledgement of husband's superior wisdom in all matters," and "desire to dial." Many users have a daily schedule of moods. The Mood Organ also has a setting for depression states, which contradict its original purpose to cheer up its user." - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Do_Androids_Dream_of_Electric_Sheep%3F [wikipedia.org]
A device which can make you see god also sounds like the mercerism box in DADOES?
Its not the rarest meme in sci fi but YGBM (you gotta believe me) technology is well explored in a book I picked up called Rainbow's End, Vernor Vinge was the author I think.
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