religious experience Flashcards
what is believed during a religious experience
in a religious experience, theists believe that God interacts with them personally
what is schleiermacher’s definition of religious experience
an experience which offers a sense of the ultimate
what is a biblical example of religious experience
Saul’s conversion - Acts 9
Saul hears Jesus
Saul is cured of his blindness which is a miracle
Saul converts to Judaism to Christianity and changes his name to Paul
what is a weakness of Saul’s conversion
Paul is through to have suffered from epilepsy
he has a sudden fall, is motionless on the ground, gets him self up - though to be a ‘grand Mal seizure’
seeing light and hearing a voice is symptomatic of epilepsy
who did Feuerbach influence
Freud and Marx
what is Feuerbach’s response to religious experience (5)
God is the projection of man’s inward nature
God is made in the image of man
God is a product of wish fulfilment
trinity is a response to loneliness and lack of perfect love
Christianity is about man overcoming limitation - God becomes man and defeats death
what is Freud’s response to religious experience (3)
wish fulfilment
some earlier work looked at psychology of revelation: delusions
the neurosis of religious thoughts are resultant from childhood desires and the wish for a perfect father figure
what is Jung’s response to religious experience - not including collective unconscious
religion is a natural beneficial process which enriches human life
God exists in a psychic reality
what is Jung’s response to religious experience - in reference to collective unconscious
instinct for religious belief in everyone which resides in the collective unconscious
God is an image generated by the collective unconscious to represent psychic wholeness and unity
what has been developed in the last 20 years
neuropsychological explanations developed in the last 20 years
brain scan (physiological explanation)
brain scans on meditating buddhist monks
showed a casual operator in the brain which triggers the experience
what Paul was though to have had (physiological explanation)
temporal lobe epilepsy
what has been linked (physiological explanation)
limbic system - Rex
what did Micheal Persinger create and when
the God helmet - an experiment in the 1980s
what does Michael Persinger specialise in
cognitive neuroscientists / neurotheology
how did Micheal Persinger think religious experiences can be created
religious experiences can be artificially created by stimulating parts of the brain with electro magnetism
explanation of the God helmet itself
‘Korean helmet’ - snowmobile helmet hooked up with solenoids
what did Micheal Persinger suggest
suggested left and right temporal lobes create our sense of self
if the two parts stop communicating, the ‘self’ in our right hemisphere intrudes into our consciousness: inter-hemisphere intrusion
what happens in a inter-hemisphere intrusion
feels like there’s another presence in your mind
“sensed presence”, actually other half of our brain that we’re suddenly conscious of, feels like an external presence
what does the sensation of inter-hemisphere intrusion explain
explains closeness of God/visitations of angels, saints etc
what is the God helmet supposed to do
disrupt communication between temporal lobes by using magnetic fields
this causes an inter-hemisphere intrusion
Persinger claims this might happen naturally because of Earth’s magnetic field -
e.g. producing large crowd UFO sightings
what did Tibetan monks report after using the God helmet
Tibetan monks reported it was similar to what they experience in their own meditation or prayer
outcome of God Helmet
Persinger reports over 900 people who took part in his experiments claimed to experience “mystical experiences and altered states”
“at least” 80 percent of his participants experience a presence beside them in the room
one percent report an experience of “God”
others report less evocative experiences of “another consciousness or sentient being”.
who went against Persinger
in 2005, Pehr Granqvist used equipment borrowed from Persinger himself to test 46 Swedish volunteers
