I agree that "god" is what people call a brain in some sort of different, enhanced, state and that must have something to do with our own sense of feeling and powers of explanation. I think it was Aldous Huxley who theorised that people who have god experiences have more mescalin occurring naturally in their brains than the rest of the population. I think the way our brains create a world for us to live in that we think is reality gets changed during meds/trips so different bits are emphasised, we have a part of our brain that handles spacial dimension so if that gets altered it might forget where to put our boundaries and leave us thinking we are in an infinite space. If you ever had a mushroom or LSD trip you'll know that all sorts of profound revelations pop up. The trick is to not take them too seriously. If our consciousness and sense of place in the world and reactions to it are all chemicals and neuronal activity, as I would argue, then the wild feelings of joy and wisdom you get must be coming from alterations or additions to those chemicals. Some people are maybe more prone to god experiences through meditation or fasting etc. A god gene perhaps.
I think it would be fascinating to get an enlightened head into an MRI scanner and see how it compares to a tripping head. I know there are differences in the subjective experience but are there enough similarities to categorise them the same way? The main similarity for us is the feeling of "holiness" or special knowledge you get from both states. In my first mushroom trip I saw loads of Greek gods floating about in the sky like perfect statues. I wasn't so out of it that I wondered why I saw gods. The only thing I could come up with was the Freudian notion that the unconsciousness mind has a rather fantastic opinion of itself so if you put it in charge it will give you these delusions of grandeur. I know someone who works at Imperial college in London which is one of the main teaching hospitals, and I asked him if I could stick my head inside his MRI machine when I was meditating (he writes the software for them) but he couldn't see the scientific value. Or at least not enough to cancel all the researchers who are queueing round the block to do potentially life saving work! Like Buck I say we get scientific about it, the better the machine the better the results. I'm sure we'll get a proper decent map of where consciousness occurs in the brain and how it works. But unlike Buck I think it will all be chemicals and neurons, unless Penrose is right and there is a quantum element. In a field where nothing has been definitively explained you have to keep your options open. ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <sharelong60@...> wrote: Salyavin, I've been wondering about this: what if "God" is simply what people call it when, let's say, 99% of their brain is functioning in a very, very healthy way? I do think there are some people, in all spiritual and or religious systems and even outside of them, who have 99% of their brain functioning in a very, very healthy way. I find it fascinating that they then speak about God or Brahman or Allah, etc. Is this not worthy of scientific exploration? I say let's hook some of these people up to an fMRI machine and see what's going on. Then let's continue the discussions on that basis. Otherwise, not even the scientists are being very scientific! As for me, I suspect that this is what's going on with such individuals. I think they have a whole lot more of their brain functioning healthily than I do. So I'm willing to pay attention to what they say. Because I'd love to get to that same point, have a brain that's optimally functioning. On Monday, February 17, 2014 1:12 AM, salyavin808 <no_re...@yahoogroups.com> wrote: comments below ---In FairfieldLife@yahoogroups.com, <authfriend@...> wrote: Exactly. Just as Brahman is not a proper name, but Brahma is (or Zeus, or Wotan, etc.). For theists, these named gods are, strictly speaking, demiurges, deities subordinate to the Ultimate Reality, the Ground of Being. The Tao is another term for the latter (which, according to Laotze, is "eternally nameless"). In some religious systems perhaps, but not the ones the quote is aimed at. Nothing wrong with not being a believer, but if they're going to argue with theists, these new atheist dudes need to read, at the very least, David Bentley Hart's The Experience of God: Being, Consciousness, Bliss so they have some idea of what they're talking about. He really blasts them for their willful, arrogant ignorance, but they deserve it. As might have been mentioned, this experience of god is most likely a different state of consciousness and the neural functions and the hormonal, chemical systems that support it. I say "most likely" because it isn't like the new religious have got anywhere nearer to proving that there is "something else", some brahma or whatever you want to call it today. How many ways of saying "We want there to be more" can there possibly be? All you have here is a new way of saying the same old thing. An involving argument is no substitute for evidence. It's a security blanket. Judy is correct. What Stephen Roberts (who he?) doesn't get is that "God" is not a proper name. The trouble with these new atheist types is that they have no sympathy for theology so completely misunderstand the language that theologians use.
