Challenges from Science Flashcards
How did Persinger induce religious experiences in people?
Persinger stimulated people’s temporal lobes using magnetic waves, which induced a religious experience in 80% of people who participated in the experiment.
Who did Persinger’s experiment not work on, and why is this not a reliable account?
Dawkins tried the experiment but didn’t experience anything; however, he has very low temporal sensitivity, and furthermore, he did not actually want to feel the presence and had prior knowledge of the experiment.
Who is Ellen White and what happened to her?
She was a founder of the Adventist church and claimed to have 2000 visions in the form of messages from God. however many believe that after a traumatic injury when a stone was thrown at her face which lead to her having visions and a changed personality in line with temporal lobe epilepsy.
Why do the church still accept Ellen White’s visions?
They happened 8 years after her childhood injury.
What experiments did Ramchandran do?
He measured the skin responses of people with and without temporal lobe epilepsy to different words and found that people with temporal lobe epilepsy have stronger skin responses to religiously charged words than others.
Why do some people dismiss Ramchandran’s experiments?
You cannot generalise; just because some people with temporal lobe epilepsy reacted strongly to religiously charged words, that doesn’t mean that everyone with temporal lobe epilepsy will have the same reactions.
Why are Freud’s 3 wishes used to reject religious experiences?
Freud suggests that we only have religious experiences because we want to have them because they fulfil our 3 wishes. However, many argue that perhaps God designed us to want him to exist in order to communicate with us
Why do some people not count religious experiences on drugs as real religious experiences?
Because there is a natural explanation for the experience, if God wants to contact us, he can do so without the need of hallucinatory drugs, etc.
What does William James say to counter the criticism of drugs?
He believes that religious experiences can be induced by drugs; it is more about how you change your life after the vision that counts.
