God is in your mind?

SIRIUSB · 12-16-2011, 06:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by RVCA

Is it a mud-sling? I suppose it would be, if you considered yourself some great philosophical intellect. And it may be the case that you are, indeed, a great philosophical intellect. You posted a thought (the "archetypal" thing) that I could not make sense of, so I politely asked you to explain it further. You sarcastically shrugged off my request, so I'm doing nothing other than calling you out on your crap.

You know the old adage, "if you can't explain it to a five year old, you don't understand it well enough"?

Ok ok . . . I apologize. You're right.

Guybrush · 12-16-2011, 06:35 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Above

To quote Albus Dumbledore: "Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?"

I have a slight problem with this idea. We humans are equipped with sensory apparatuses that perceive the world. They are made to perceive the real world and not a fantasy one because if they did, they wouldn't be useful. As far as we know, is if a train is heading straight towards you at speed and you for some reason see it as a harmless cloud of gas, the train will still hit you if you don't move out of the way. Your hallucination has little bearing on that fact.

Healthy people perceive something that closely represents part of reality, like electromagnetic radiation at certain wavelengths. As social animals, humans also synchronize their perception of reality which is part why isolation is often an important step in psychosis. If you have a psychotic version of reality in your head, meeting others may mean meeting more real versions of the world which contradict your own. Most healthy people will challenge their perception of reality if it frequently contradicted.

Perception is flavoured by feelings, but generally speaking, God is felt rather than perceived. Fully conscious, healthy people generally don't see God manifested (not really). Believing in God doesn't mean your prayers will be answered, even if you believe they will. The point is, believing in something doesn't necessarily make it real. You'd have to believe so strongly that you are completely trapped in your own version of reality and even then, the train would still hit you.

I believe the most useful perception of the universe is the one which most closely resembles reality because, put short, it's just more predictable and practical.

SIRIUSB · 12-16-2011, 06:40 PM

Psychology Theorist Carl Jung developed the theory that we contain within our psyche, genetically, the great archetypes from the past. For instance, the earliest archetypal imagery Man possesses is the night & day. When the sun went down for prehistoric man, very bad things happened. Sun came up, things got better. The Sun & the Moon after many generations become a symbolic image inside our psyche that we start to attach significant other things to, for instance the Abrahamic god, it is symbolically attached to the rising/resurrecting Sun. Man then recreates story after story of symbolic themes to highlight and understand this Daytime & Nightime experience. It has evolved to where we are this day.

Howard the Duck · 12-16-2011, 07:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tore

I have a slight problem with this idea. We humans are equipped with sensory apparatuses that perceive the world. They are made to perceive the real world and not a fantasy one because if they did, they wouldn't be useful. As far as we know, is if a train is heading straight towards you at speed and you for some reason see it as a harmless cloud of gas, the train will still hit you if you don't move out of the way. Your hallucination has little bearing on that fact.

Healthy people perceive something that closely represents part of reality, like electromagnetic radiation at certain wavelengths. As social animals, humans also synchronize their perception of reality which is part why isolation is often an important step in psychosis. If you have a psychotic version of reality in your head, meeting others may mean meeting more real versions of the world which contradict your own. Most healthy people will challenge their perception of reality if it frequently contradicted.

Perception is flavoured by feelings, but generally speaking, God is felt rather than perceived. Fully conscious, healthy people generally don't see God manifested (not really). Believing in God doesn't mean your prayers will be answered, even if you believe they will. The point is, believing in something doesn't necessarily make it real. You'd have to believe so strongly that you are completely trapped in your own version of reality and even then, the train would still hit you.

I believe the most useful perception of the universe is the one which most closely resembles reality because, put short, it's just more predictable and practical.

Quote:

Originally Posted by SIRIUSB

Psychology Theorist Carl Jung developed the theory that we contain within our psyche, genetically, the great archetypes from the past. For instance, the earliest archetypal imagery Man possesses is the night & day. When the sun went down for prehistoric man, very bad things happened. Sun came up, things got better. The Sun & the Moon after many generations become a symbolic image inside our psyche that we start to attach significant other things to, for instance the Abrahamic god, it is symbolically attached to the rising/resurrecting Sun. Man then recreates story after story of symbolic themes to highlight and understand this Daytime & Nightime experience. It has evolved to where we are this day.

all well & true, but how does these two tie in with the neuroscientific explanations about perception of God?

i still anchor it with the chemical leu-enkephalin

SIRIUSB · 12-16-2011, 07:20 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Il Duce

all well & true, but how does these two tie in with the neuroscientific explanations about perception of God?

i still anchor it with the chemical leu-enkephalin

Leu-enkephalin . . . isn't this a morphine-like neurotransmitter?

Howard the Duck · 12-16-2011, 07:33 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by SIRIUSB

Leu-enkephalin . . . isn't this a morphine-like neurotransmitter?

yes

i can't cut and paste bits from this article, but please read paragraphs 1.2 and 1.3:-

http://philipclayton.net/files/paper...rsonAndGod.pdf

Guybrush · 12-16-2011, 07:37 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Il Duce

all well & true, but how does these two tie in with the neuroscientific explanations about perception of God?

i still anchor it with the chemical leu-enkephalin

I'm no expert on the brain chemistry of religion I'm afraid, but I have read that epileptic seizures can give intense religious experiences with the power to religiously convert the epileptic.

A quick search on google scholar got me this scientific article f.ex :

Quote:

Recent reports of the discovery of a “God module” in the human brain derive from the fact that epileptic seizures in the left temporal lobe are associated with ecstatic feelings sometimes described as an experience of the presence of God. The brain area involved has been described as either (a) the seat of an innate human faculty for experiencing the divine or (b) the seat of religious delusions.

In fact, religious experience is extremely various and involves many parts of the brain, including some that are prehuman in their evolutionary history and some that are characteristically human. In the continuing integration of such experiences, spiritual formation takes place. Thus the entire human brain might be described as a “God module.”

Such a process is only possible because of the brain's complexity. The human brain is the most complex entity for its size that we know of. As used here, complexity is a specialized term denoting the presence of a web of interlinked and significant connections—the more intricate the web, the more complex the entity. Complex systems develop only in a milieu that provides both lawfulness and freedom, and they tend to be self-organizing, becoming more complex and more effective as a result of both inward and outward experience. The evidence suggests that both personal growth and spiritual growth are processes of complexification of character, and of the brain itself. This thesis is tested in light of the work of William James and James W. Fowler.

source >> The []God Module[] and the Complexifying Brain - Rausch Albright - 2003 - Zygon® - Wiley Online Library

Howard the Duck · 12-16-2011, 07:44 PM

yes i'm aware

i'm here just testing a hypothesis that this God feeling has its roots in the neuro-transmitter leu-enkephalin (basically an opiate) that is shared through people following a certain branch of religion through the neuroscience of empathy, merely by interaction, speech and emotiveness

the article i posted has an in-depth analysis of cognitive apparatus and sensory perception of God as well

RVCA · 12-16-2011, 08:16 PM

I remember reading a short paper my psychology professor wrote called "Is God in the Amygdala?", but I no longer posses the paper. However, a google search of the same title turns up this (obviously based) article, which is kind of similar.

Are humans 'hard-wired' to believe in God?

Howard the Duck · 12-16-2011, 08:21 PM

^^well, that sort of confirms my hypothesis

though I wouldn't place it in the Amygdala, but the entire brain

lemme break down my hypothesis some more:-

Individualistic experiences

Autosuggestion - speaking in tongues, a still small voice that is God
entering into trance-like state triggering release of opiates and "reality" perception chemicals like serotonin

Group Experiences

Prayed over, singing praise - empathetical on a neuro-scientific basis for release of leu-enkephalin

Edit

i also see the need for most believers in some sort of "pattern recognition" - even if things happen in your favour just coincidentally, it is because God is watching over them

i put this down to our evolution since the days of being hunter-gatherers, our neural pathways are wired in such as way for us in order to strategise and see "patterns" in order to maximise survival

12-16-2011, 06:40 PM	#33 (permalink)
SIRIUSB Luciferian Join Date: Aug 2011 Posts: 278	Psychology Theorist Carl Jung developed the theory that we contain within our psyche, genetically, the great archetypes from the past. For instance, the earliest archetypal imagery Man possesses is the night & day. When the sun went down for prehistoric man, very bad things happened. Sun came up, things got better. The Sun & the Moon after many generations become a symbolic image inside our psyche that we start to attach significant other things to, for instance the Abrahamic god, it is symbolically attached to the rising/resurrecting Sun. Man then recreates story after story of symbolic themes to highlight and understand this Daytime & Nightime experience. It has evolved to where we are this day.

12-16-2011, 08:16 PM	#39 (permalink)
RVCA （￣ー￣） Join Date: Jul 2009 Posts: 3,270	I remember reading a short paper my psychology professor wrote called "Is God in the Amygdala?", but I no longer posses the paper. However, a google search of the same title turns up this (obviously based) article, which is kind of similar. Are humans 'hard-wired' to believe in God?