scientific challenges to religious experiences Flashcards
(19 cards)
what did Freud say about religious experiences?
dismissed religious experiences as proof for God’s existence
what did Freud mean by saying people were completely ‘material’?
if we could understand everything there is to understand about the physical/biological side of life we would fully understand human beings
what does Freud mean when he says it ignores our ‘metaphysical existence’?
that part of us which is not physical
our soul
what did Freud say religion and religious experiences was?
wish fulfilment
what does Freud mean by wish fulfilment?
idea of God helps us to not fear the unknown and death but people wish for things that aren’t there
what did Freud mean when he said religious experiences were just illusions?
believed when someone was having a religious experience all they were doing was projecting their oldest and deepest ideas
why would Freud dismiss religious experiences as proof?
it is not objective
it is an illusion
religious response to Freud’s criticism:
wish fulfilment is just a hypothesis that can’t be tested so it remains a hypothesis
doesn’t prove that God doesn’t exist
what is temperal lobe epilepsy?
an abnormal state of the brain that may have caused religious experiences to happen
an example of someone who may have had temporal lobe epilepsy:
St Paul
why is it believed that St Paul had temporal lobe epilepsy?
when he heard the voice of Jesus this may not be genuine
St Paul hints at a condition that he calls ‘thorns in the flesh’
when he converted he saw lights, visions, heard voices etc which are all associated with temporal lobe epilepsy
what does temporal lobe epilepsy show about religious experiences?
suggests they are self generated and not from God
not genuine experiences
what is neurotheology and how does it link to religious experiences?
uses neuroscience to show that religious experiences can be stimulated through devices
who came up with the idea of the God helmet in neurotheology?
Michael Persinger
what did Persinger find with the God helmet?
it stimulates the temporal lobes and leads to experiences that are similar to those described in religious experiences
religious response to temporal lobe epilepsy:
if God wants to give us a religious experience it has to be processed by our brain so the brain is the only way of processing anything
so there has to be an area responsible for processing anything
many experiences processed by temporal and frontal lobes so God uses these to bring religious experiences
who supports religious experiences through temporal lobe epilepsy?
William James
why does William James support religious experiences through temporal lobe epilepsy?
great mystics prepare mystical consciousness deliberately
people can reach out to God and have a religious experience
supported by Jesus’ teachings where he says people should be persistent when they pray to God
what is the Good Friday Experiment?
aimed to investigate whether psilocybin (a drug) could induce a religious experience
10 students given the drug and 10 others got a placebo in a religious setting (during Good Friday service)
9/10 who had psilocybin had a religious experience
1/10 who had a placebo had a religious experience
