religious experience

Question 1

what is believed during a religious experience

Answer 1

in a religious experience, theists believe that God interacts with them personally

Question 2

what is schleiermacher’s definition of religious experience

Answer 2

an experience which offers a sense of the ultimate

Question 3

what is a biblical example of religious experience

Answer 3

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

Question 4

what is a weakness of Saul’s conversion

Answer 4

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

Question 5

who did Feuerbach influence

Answer 5

Freud and Marx

Question 6

what is Feuerbach’s response to religious experience (5)

Answer 6

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

Question 7

what is Freud’s response to religious experience (3)

Answer 7

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

Question 8

what is Jung’s response to religious experience - not including collective unconscious

Answer 8

religion is a natural beneficial process which enriches human life
God exists in a psychic reality

Question 9

what is Jung’s response to religious experience - in reference to collective unconscious

Answer 9

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

Question 10

what has been developed in the last 20 years

Answer 10

neuropsychological explanations developed in the last 20 years

Question 11

brain scan (physiological explanation)

Answer 11

brain scans on meditating buddhist monks

showed a casual operator in the brain which triggers the experience

Question 12

what Paul was though to have had (physiological explanation)

Answer 12

temporal lobe epilepsy

Question 13

what has been linked (physiological explanation)

Answer 13

limbic system - Rex

Question 14

what did Micheal Persinger create and when

Answer 14

the God helmet - an experiment in the 1980s

Question 15

what does Michael Persinger specialise in

Answer 15

cognitive neuroscientists / neurotheology

Question 16

how did Micheal Persinger think religious experiences can be created

Answer 16

religious experiences can be artificially created by stimulating parts of the brain with electro magnetism

Question 17

explanation of the God helmet itself

Answer 17

‘Korean helmet’ - snowmobile helmet hooked up with solenoids

Question 18

what did Micheal Persinger suggest

Answer 18

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

Question 19

what happens in a inter-hemisphere intrusion

Answer 19

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

Question 20

what does the sensation of inter-hemisphere intrusion explain

Answer 20

explains closeness of God/visitations of angels, saints etc

Question 21

what is the God helmet supposed to do

Answer 21

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

Question 22

what did Tibetan monks report after using the God helmet

Answer 22

Tibetan monks reported it was similar to what they experience in their own meditation or prayer

Question 23

outcome of God Helmet

Answer 23

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”.

Question 24

who went against Persinger

Answer 24

in 2005, Pehr Granqvist used equipment borrowed from Persinger himself to test 46 Swedish volunteers

Question 25

what happened in Pehr Granqvist’s experiement

Answer 25

could not reproduce the sensed presence

Question 26

difference between Persinger and Granqvist’s experiments

Answer 26

Persinger’s participants knew what was supposed to happen

Granqvist’s didn’t