Questions directed to atheists and agnostics only

format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis

Well that depends on how you define your terms.

Scientists can poke at your brain to make you "feel" a profound spiritual experience, indistinguishable from "contact with God". They can do the same with drugs.

But then I suppose you could always argue that God is more likely to connect with us if we are brain damaged or on drugs. One great thing about "spiritual" and "God" beliefs is that you can change them to match pretty much any data we collect.

Well, certainly changing one's beliefs to match the data one collects would be a reasonable thing to do, if one was wanting to operater purely rationally.

But in this case I don't think your suggestion has much weight. Those same techniques can be used to make you sense all sorts of things. My wife has had two strokes. So I don't take brain injuries lightly. In the second it profoundly effected her affect and the perception centers of her brain. She saw things that were not there. She saw people as perfectly whole if on her right side and as being just skeletons with bloody sinew hanging from the bones if standing to her left side. And those standing directly in front of her she saw both halves at the same time. It was a very traumatic time for her, and for all who cared for her, because the experiences were so vivid that she could not tell whether they were real or not. Nor could she be confident that normal things were not hallucinations as well.

A nuerosurgeon will stimulate the brain as you described to find out where she is as she operates. The patient may even smell Grandma's muffins, though Grandma has been dead many years. The fact that these things can be artificially induced does not mean that there is no real set of Grandma's muffins. In fact, the ability to stimulate them in the brain makes me more certain that there must be something real for the brain to correlate those sensed experiences to in real life.

format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis

Indeed. And there is evidence that it has gotten into some peoples' systems and done them harm - so it is relevant. There is no such evidence regarding anything "spiritual".

Have you not in the past commented on the number of atrocities commited in the name of relgion? It seems that when people become spiritually perceptive, it very much matters whether they are breathing in good or poisionous spiritual perceptions.

format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis

Well that depends on how you define your terms.

Scientists can poke at your brain to make you "feel" a profound spiritual experience, indistinguishable from "contact with God". They can do the same with drugs.

But then I suppose you could always argue that God is more likely to connect with us if we are brain damaged or on drugs. One great thing about "spiritual" and "God" beliefs is that you can change them to match pretty much any data we collect.

That is very true. If fact my former mentor would have carried it much further. I too agree that many physical stimuli can can be interpreted to be a mysterious spiritual experience.

I will go even further and state that many teenagers at about the age of 16 become overwhelmed with a sense of insight and feeling of contact with a level beyond themselves. I would even say that is the result of the beginning adult neurological maturity and an awareness of bicameral thought process.

Now with that said how would one recognize a true spiritual experience? To be honest the only ways I know that a person could recognize a feeling as a spiritual experience will be if they have either total faith and confidence that such exists or they have had the misfortune to have experienced both physical and spiritual stimulus to the limbic system and have felt the differences.

Personaly I would say that one distinguishable difference between stimuli and spiritual experience is the length of time the effects last. With physical stimuli, the person needs to search for the same conditions or substance that caused the feeling over and over again. The search becomes addictive and is an almost insatiable drive.

With a spiritual experience, the feeling never leaves. It needs no further stimuli, the memory alone of it is sufficient and it does result in profound, noticeable personality changes, that can only be described as fulfillment.

Maybe off topc, but anybody here familiar with the research re the "god gene"?

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medi...p?newsid=16378

format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis

Maybe off topc, but anybody here familiar with the research re the "god gene"?

Don't know much about it. If it exists. If it was a mytho or what.

I have not come across the "god Gene" however, in physics there is now some speculation about a "God Particle" Which seems to be stirring up some interest.

format_quote Originally Posted by Pygoscelis

Maybe off topc, but anybody here familiar with the research re the "god gene"?

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medi...p?newsid=16378

pygo,
you might find this interesting. an atheist once gave me some links about memes. according to him, religion could be classified as a "mind virus."
i never got around to reading it and have long ago lost the links but check here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Memes

i have read part of this research named the GOD gene

and i can only tell you about what happened in the times of the prophet Muhammad (peace beupon him)

there was some of the peope of Mekka who was against believeing in one God like Omar ibn elkhattab he used to hate mulsims and hurt them .

but as we muslims know that our prophet prayed and called Allah to guide one of the Omar's and after a while this man Omar Ibn elkhattab became one of the companions of the prophet and he became one of the best defenders of islam against the non muslims.

so his believe did change from many gods to become a believer in one GOD without assosiating any partners with him and he become one of the best muslims that we know about ...

i have a new question to all :

what is your explanation of the following red colored portion of the hadith said by the prophet (peace be upon him) from more than 1400 years:

in the book of authentic hadith named "sahih Bukhary"

Narrated By Abu Huraira : The Prophet said "If a house fly falls in the drink of anyone of you, he should dip it (in the drink), for one of its wings has a disease and the other has the cure for the disease."

in your opinion how did the prophet know that their is a cure in some parts of the house fly ?

and thanks all for replying...