

What God does to your brain - mychaelangelo
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10914137/What-God-does-to-your-brain.html

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s_baby
>But if Newberg and his colleagues are correct, such experiences are not proof
of being touched by a supreme being, but mere blips in brain chemistry.

Is there any human experience, real or not, that can't be described as "mere
blips in brain chemistry". Everything we experience is going to have a neural
correlate. To a Buddhist this is an affirmation that what they experience is
qualitatively unique as they claim. To an atheist this affirmation that it's
all just chemistry. What both are doing is re-affirming their own preconceived
notions and beliefs. That's not taking a more "critical eye of events".

~~~
dm2
The human brain is the most complex thing in the known universe. Scientists
know a lot about it but there is a huge amount more to learn.

Looking at dreams and out-of-body experiences is interesting to help answer
your question.

There have been studies trying to prove out-of-body experiences were real
rather than created inside of the brain by placing phrases above hospital
rooms to see if anyone remembers ever seeing these. To my knowledge nobody has
seen any of these phrases during an out-of-body experience.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Parnia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sam_Parnia)

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-
body_experience](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Out-of-body_experience)

Dreams can seem just as real as real life so I'd speculate that there is
nothing that happens in our brains that can't be explained by our brains
chemistry.

There have also been many types of experiences from taking prescription and
recreational drugs. DMT is said to transport you to other sides of the
universe and allow you to see machines and beings that you could otherwise
never imagine. I've heard of one person saying that they started taking a new
medication and could create persistent worlds within their brains that they
could visit and continue to build upon each night, then the dream world they
created disappeared and never returned once they stopped taking the
medication.

~~~
s_baby
>Looking at dreams and out-of-body experiences is interesting to help answer
your question.

Two points on this:

OOBE are a different class of experiences. It's a completely different state
characterized by theta wave activity whereas mystical experiences are
associated with delta and gamma waves. Having a malleable sense of self and
experiencing dream-like states aren't equivalent phenomena.

People experience what is traditionally considered real(physical reality) and
have naive interpretations of what that is(flat world, anthropomorphize
animals, finite universe, etc...). Same goes for any other state of
consciousness. An interesting counter example is shared hallucinations in such
dream states. If you and someone else experience the same phenomena within the
same state it goes from a 1st person experience to a 3rd person experience.
That doesn't mean the hallucination is there in a physical sense but at the
same time the experience suggests and underlying "realness" to it.

>Dreams can seem just as real as real life so I'd speculate that there is
nothing that happens in our brains that can't be explained by our brains
chemistry.

That's my point. Finding neural correlates doesn't prove/disprove anything as
both sides of the argument often like to believe. The experience of the world
is also just brain chemistry. We only know the world through experience(and by
association biochemistry) so it's not a useful distinction.

------
dm2
So basically us non-religious folk should meditate and actively participate in
community groups in order to be healthier and live a longer life. That's
reasonable.

