The Null Device

Religious belief and delusion

One of the speakers at the Cognitive Science Conference in Sydney claims that religious belief and delusion are related phenomena, and studying the former could help understand the latter:
Many religious beliefs were triggered by a bizarre or unexplained "religious experience", often produced by changes in brain activity. For example, it had been shown that when Buddhist monks went into deep mediation and had a sense of "being at one with the world", they also had decreased blood flow to the part of the brain responsible for concepts of the "self".

There are 5 comments on "Religious belief and delusion":

Posted by: RhinoSteve http:// Tue Jul 15 18:57:06 2003

This is an old trick going back to Nazi Germany to get rid of religion. Nothing but updated "facts" that Niche and Freud used to do. Ok so the brain does something when you get "spiritual" -- so what? The spirit is the driver of the body. Take this to the analogy of the driver and a car. When you look at the car and it stops you notice a mechanical section that moves when something blocks the car ... but you ignore that the driver exists. So many of these researchers are so spiritually ruined, their opinions are occluded in this matter.

Posted by: acb http://dev.null.org Wed Jul 16 04:57:22 2003

Ah, Godwin's law rears its head again I see.

What do you make of recent findings into the neurological basis of mystical experience then? Were they put there by God to test us like dinosaur fossils?

Btw, it's spelled Nietzsche.

Posted by: Graham http://grudnuk.com/ Wed Jul 16 15:03:25 2003

I bet you we could probably find fossils of Jesus.

Posted by: dj http:// Thu Jul 17 01:15:58 2003

Is that Jesus or Jebus?

Posted by: Paulo http:// Thu Jul 17 13:02:56 2003

One could ask too: "Cause or effect" ... just a thought