Biotheology

[Galapagos]

Originally Posted by pamela

My son has a history of seizures although non epileptic in origin. Last year, after a lengthy convulsive seizure, something odd occured. He would pray constantly. .....

I'm a bit curious-- has anyone ever responded to him while he was praying? I mean, has he ever hallucinated any voices, had any "miraculous revelations" etc...

[pamela]

hi Galapagos,
No he has not heard any voices. He does though at times, refers to something that he calls "daymares". He sees a vision that he states comes out of his eyes.Now these are unpleasant images that mainly involve someone being hurt or killed. Quite disturbing, and they seem to follow a pattern, triggered by stress. As long as he remains relatively calm and happy, they are nonexistant.

[Turtle]

Originally Posted by Galapagos

The article in the OP has much interesting information about extreme spiritual experience, but according to Atran(in "In Gods We Trust") these are not the experience of your average religious believer. Most people do not experience seizures, practice meditation or trance states, or have fits of glossolalia.
Here is the summary/conclusion of Atran's chapter "Waves of Passion" addressing the frontal lobe theories of Persinger etc..: ...

Well, we appear to have rung your gong G! It will take me some time to get to all your interesting references in even a cursory manner, but I do agree about the "...not the experience of your average religious believer..." line. It is the unfortunate cargo of so much of psycho-neurology that the majority of data comes from pathological subjects, and so too seems the case for using the new real-time brain imaging technology so far. I suspect that the 'average Joe' professing a belief in God (some 60 to 70% of Americans according to many polls asking the question "Do you believe in God?") has a range of distinctive brain activity that is separable by its form from the zealots on either end of the curve.

Well, off to do some reading then. I'll make haste slowly.