God in the Brain?
Finding reason to explain the outward and proactive denial of the evidence that surrounds us by members of religious organisations has always fascinated me. How could an apparently rational person be suffering a sickness of such a magnitude? I have watched Christians deny Evolution without even knowing what it is! I have watched Muslims deny the origin of the Quran. I have wondered what a Christian would say to the charge that the bible is nothing more than a mythological personification of cosmological events and that we still celebrate the birth of the Sun/Son 3 days after its death on the winter solstice (December 22 in the northern hemisphere by the way fellow Australians :)). These questions and many more have fascinated me since I can remember even having independent thoughts as a child.
Aside from those who are not genuine in their delusion for the obvious gains in money and power (i.e. their pawns), I have always been in awe when observing a person suffer such severe delusions with incredible conviction. Having a keen interest in Psychology, I have also wondered if we would ever have a rational explanation for this observation.
Maybe we have found one? As many are now outwardly hypothesising (and others, once did it in silence), religious conviction and psychological disorder are not that unlike.
http://www.sciam.com/print_version.cfm?articleID=434D7C62-E7F2-99DF-37CC9814533B90D7
Of course, this does not detract from the sheer awe.
October 14th, 2007 at 11:39 am
As I understand it, a ‘true’ religious experience is characterized by a change in the person towards respecting all life. Experiences which don’t bring about this change are pretty useless, and might indeed be mental illness. If people talk about such experiences in terms of God or Buddha, that’s just a mental frame of reference that allows people to talk about the experience. I’d probably just say ‘wow’.