God Helmet

[Skanky Vamp]

I thought some might have interest in this:

Around the world, people use various methods to connect with the divine and express their spirituality. Buddhist monks meditate for hours. Muslims pray to Allah five times a day. Christians sing songs to God and lift up their hands. Others perform ritual dances or recite ancient scriptures.

Religious activities have long been a subject of fascination, but scientists have taken it to a whole new level in recent years with the field of neurotheology. This emerging area has to do with how religious experiences trigger physical changes in the brain. It has led to some fascinating conclusions as well as the invention of the God helmet, a device that supposedly can induce supernatural experiences.

The goal of neurotheology is to try and determine what is going on with the brain during religious experiences. In the past, scientists have tried to explain religious experiences through activity in the temporal lobe in the brain. In fact, scientists have long viewed people who have religious experiences as having brain disorders including Moses, St. Teresa of Avila, and St. Paul. The account of St. Paul’s conversion in the book of Acts has been a subject of scientific inquiries.

The account in the Bible mentions that Paul experienced a flash of light, voices, and blindness on the road to Damascus. Many scientists claim that Paul suffered an epileptic seizure occurring in the temporal lobe since he experienced many of its symptoms. Scientists, however, are now discovering that many parts of the brain are stimulated during a religious experience. Several studies have been conducted on religious participants while performing some activity.

For example, Dr. Andrew Newberg at the University of Pennsylvania used imaging technology to provide a picture of the brains of Tibetan monks while they meditated. The monks were instructed to pull on a string when they were beginning to enter a meditative state.

Newberg then injected radioactive dye that would provide an image of which areas of the brain were activated by looking at the amount of blood flow. The results of the study found an increase in activity in the frontal lobe, the area of the brain that deals with concentration. Surprisingly, however, Newberg also found a decrease of activity in the parietal lobe, the area of the brain that orients a person in all three dimensions. Newberg speculates that this decrease of activity in the parietal lobe leads to feelings of being one with the universe or with God, something that people often describe in those terms during spiritual experiences.

It could also be why humans lose their ability to differentiate where they begin and someone else begins during religious activities, that sense that they are caught up in the experience and communing with a supernatural being. The studies found similar increases of activity in the frontal lobes and decreases of activity in the parietal lobes in other religious groups such as praying nuns. One group, however, showed different results.

A study of Pentecostal Christians speaking in tongues found that there was actually a decrease of activity in the frontal lobes of the brain, and oddly enough, the language centers of the brain were not activated. These results tend to support the descriptions of those who speak in tongues of losing control of themselves as God speaks through them. Nevertheless, these studies have generated much controversy. Religious experts say that scientists in the field are reducing supernatural experiences to only what happens in the brain. Others believe that religious experience is more than just meditating or praying and can include making certain moral choices or giving to the poor.

Still others question of the methods of the studies since they have not been done on individual, personal experiences but only in larger groups. Questions also remain about the creation of gadgets that try to induce religious experiences by stimulating certain parts of the brain. The most famous of these devices is called the God helmet. Scientist Michael Persinger believes that the God helmet can make a person feel the presence of God. Persinger developed the God helmet with electrodes that produce changes in the electromagnetic field at the temporal lobes.

These electric pulses disrupt the brain, causing the left temporal lobe to explain the activity in the right side of the brain as a presence. In experiments with the device about eighty percent of people reported sensing something nearby. These presences can include both the divine and the demonic. Persinger also believes that some people are more biologically predisposed to sensing the spiritual. The God helmet is a modified snowmobile helmet that features solenoids over the temporal lobes. The device produces electromagnetic fields as strong as those generated by a hairdryer or a landline telephone handset.

The God helmet was not originally designed to provoke religious experiences but to test several of Persinger’s hypotheses about brain function. One of those hypotheses stated that the many paranormal experiences like feeling the presence of spiritual beings like ghosts or angels or the sense of having past lives is due to interhemispheric intrusion. Interhemispheric intrusion happens when the left and right senses of the self that come from the brain are disrupted. Despite the fact that many people in Persinger’s studies sensed another presence nearby, the results of his studies have yet to be scientifically replicated elsewhere.

However, the God helmet has been getting a lot of attention and has been featured in many TV documentaries. Ultimately, more research is needed to determine if the God helmet can actually produce religious experiences related to feeling the presence of a divine being. Studies done by Dr. Andrew Nerberg, though, indicate that the brain does undergo changes during religious experiences and that there is physical activity occurring in the brain when a person speaks in tongues, meditates, and senses that they are connecting with the spiritual world.

These studies even suggest that the brain is already hardwired for religion or for beliefs that supernatural beings exist. The idea that the brain may be hardwired for religion is almost humorous. This would imply that religion is the result of evolution and confers some advantage. Does this mean that atheist suffer some unknown evolutionary disadvantage? Considering how believers and atheist are often at odds this is a strange relationship indeed.

 

[thrasherpix]

I don't feel like going into essay mode, especially as some people would feel attacked (though they wouldn't be), so I'll just keep this very brief. (Yes, the 3 paragraphs that follow are very brief from what I almost went into, and I left out my own musings on what consciousness actually may be, other than how limited it probably is if we only had a proper basis of comparison, more than some, but probably a lot less than much else in the cosmos.)

Not everyone who has mystical experiences becomes religious in the traditional sense. A great many people who were brought up to be religious can be zealots without having a mystical experience (and they're not hard to bring about, even without drugs), and the music and symbols are of the same magic that flags and the music of patriotic parades have on the human psyche: that is, it's tribalism, not spirituality, and this is something many of the more lucid leaders from historical times to today realize and try to incorporate into state (or other tribal affiliation) propaganda, or stymie or even prohibit it (be it by law or vigilantes burning down their churches) if it conflicts with that. And tribalism is very much tied to survival (even if it went from necessary survival in the prehistoric days to necessary evil in recorded times, and now increasingly counterproductive given industrialization and weapons of mass destruction).


And the other thing is that while I don't doubt mystical experiences can be induced by messing with the brain--I'd be skeptical of anyone who said it couldn't be--it doesn't disprove mystical or supernatural realities, any more than seeing sounds as colors while on LSD doesn't mean colors don't exist. I bet touching parts of the brain with electrodes could induce strong recollections, but it doesn't mean those memories are false, or that it could stimulate audible hallucinations but doesn't mean that sound doesn't actually exist.

And even more so, though beyond the scope of this article...just because we have NO way to sense something doesn't mean it therefore does not exist. I seriously doubt ants recognize cars and worked buildings (despite similarities of a building and anthill) and I wonder what it is we can't see, and what we don't even build instruments to see because it never even occurs to us to try. Hell, when I hear of people searching for signs of ET intelligence I can't help but wonder, "But if you found such evidence, even if it were on this planet, would you even know it, especially if they didn't want us to notice or existed in some other quantum level?" I know people like to think human intelligence is the pinnacle, but even our own creations are starting to prove us wrong on that.

 

[ILLYRIAN]

Oh dear, what a load of er .. ..
I'm not a great believer of the church but even I could see the crap.
God is said to have created Mankind yet some wally states that he could show where the failings of the brain are.

An account of the bible states that Paul had certain experiences on his trip to Damascus.
When was that before, the bible was written?
So maybe 2,000 years ago!
And them scientist say he might have had an epileptic seizure, I'm guessing these *self professed intelligent wally's* were not there of that time but of this time, but where from some 2,000 years after the event.
How on earth would those so called intelligent persons think that what happened to Paul was a religious experience. Oh and if you were to experience a flash of a bright light in front of you might you be left blinded? No mention of any time frame was mentioned (half a second or twenty years).

No mention of the construction of what the God Helmet looked like left me thinking of a hat of silver foil. Oddly enough I thought that was of an intelligent design, not.

Is a Tibetan Monk capable of living in Pennsylvania? As far as I am concerned a Tibetan Monk is a Monk who lives in Tibet, if I am not wrong, how did DR. Newberg get the imaging technology to Tibet?

Why could those thick as a brick wallys from Pennsylvania Uni not concentrate their combines intelligencies on something worthwhile, like why does it rain up in Canada but down in America?

I'm sure thrasherpix could have written a shorter reply, as could have I. The problem thrasherpix may have found as would have I, would be how to make the reply be without the use of very colourful language. OR not said in Tongues.

 

[Ethan Reigns]

The original article fails to close the loop - proving consciousness is tied to physical characteristics. If we consider neurons to be made of protons, electrons and neutrons, the only one of those that is mobile under normal circumstances is the electron except possibly for the proton in a hydrogen ion. Do we consider the movement of ions in nerve cells to be consciousness? Is one electron the basic unit of awareness? Do we have a hierarchy where a crystalline array is a group of thoughts, an ionic compound a free thought, a covalent bond a trapped thought, a metal as free thoughts and an insulator as enslaved thoughts? Our speculations about the correspondence of brain activity to thought of various types is never explained. A nerve impulse in the visual cortex is light. Why is an identical impulse elsewhere something different? How do people retain as many memories as they do with finite brain cells? The original article makes a large number of assumptions whose existences are never acknowledged, let alone proven.

None of this addresses religion but it should be noted that the anecdotal research does not postulate any connection that is visible between consciousness and brain activity.

 

[November]

Twas interesting, ta for posting, where did you find the article?

My neck is badly out of place right now so I'm reading in double vision, hopefully my post isn't just gibberish.

I think they're studying the wrong bit of the body... I wana know whats happening in the spine. Maybe they're picking up brain reactions from another area of the body. It starts in another space. Brain tries to makes sense of it, sets off the fancy snowmobile helmet.

Wonder what would happen if crystals were involved or different vibrations from music or chanting. Even if they measure in nature vs indoor worship. Seems so restrictive, like growing pot a lab and claiming its as medicinal as the stuff grown under the energy of the sun.

neurotheology

Cool word! New neuro buzz word. I like this one better than neuro science 😛

all three dimensions

There's only 3?

Persinger also believes that some people are more biologically predisposed to sensing the spiritual

Agreed. Definitely people in the world more tuned in. I fear these people are most vulnerable to mainstream harm.