07-18-2003, 06:54 PM
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#7 (permalink)
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Loser
Location: SF Bay Area, CA
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From another board:
Quote:
how can someone determine whether they are genuinely in love? i think the question is even harder to answer because each person who believes they have had a religious experience will interpret it through the filter of their own religious beliefs, which will influence their description of the experience, and make comparing their experience with the experiences of others less reliable, presuming that comparison with others is a method of determining how genuine the experience is.
however... i've found the stuff i wanted to post about in my first reply... resources on the work of dr. michael persinger. he has reproduced spiritual experiences (and other emotional states) in a lab setting. below are a bunch of links/reading material i've found so you can read further. i think it might be fair to say that persinger is trying to answer some of the questions you're asking, but you should read and decide that for yourself.
this is your brain on god, from wired magazine 1999, is the first article i remember reading about this, where the author describes his experience under persinger's lab equipment.
Neuropsychological Bases of God Beliefs is the book persinger wrote on the topic of spiritual experience... you can read the first four pages at amazon, where he begins discussing characteristics of the "god experience" in a fairly careful, evocative manner, you may find it interesting. i also found a review of the book here and a related page discussing persinger's work.
here is a list of persinger's publications, which would make an ambitious reading list, and his bio at laurentian university, which is not too informative on the topic of spiritual experience but is interesting for background purposes.
you may also find the following informative:
a post discussing persinger in the MAPS forum archives
another article in wired about inducing religious experience
a PBS feature with persinger interview snippets
new scientist article about paranormal beliefs and brain chemistry
google queries i used:
http://www.google.com/search?q=induc...ous+experience
http://www.google.com/search?q=Dr.+Michael+Persinger
http://www.google.com/search?q="Neuropsychological+Bases+of+God+Beliefs"
i didn't do any searches that took me beyond persinger's work, i'll leave that to you if you're interested in finding more.
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