Neurotheology Team Proves “God Helmet” Is Real

I think this manipulation sort of highlights the underlying idea that some people are predisposed to religiosity and some are not. Sort of a counterproductive mechanism if you're, say, god.

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experiential phenomena in the participant’s brain, including: altered mystic states, visions of God, and the feeling of a sensed God-like presence

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Sooooo DMT in helmet form.

"Give him an extra dollar."

What I'm really taking from this is that there is a helmet that will make you all fricked up and you can pass a drug test the next day.

This is progress people.

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neurotheology

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This is a thing?

I don't remember if the previous experiments / scientists had a decidedly atheist bent, or if a slew of atheists grabbed on to the results as proof that religious experiences were easily induced hallucinations. But the wording of this article suggests these researchers set this experiment up in a fairly open minded manner, and don't seem to be jumping to conclusions as to what this means... which is the way it should be. It's important to try to keep biases (in either direction) from influencing conclusions.

On the one hand it may be said that the mind can easily be influenced to see things (whether by influence of magnets, drugs, etc.). I'm sure it's even possible to tweak such influences so that those under the influence are more likely to perceive what is suggested. Because perceptions can be created / influenced via this method, though, it doesn't logically follow that all similar experiences can only be created by a similar mechanism, and it doesn't invalidate the experiences of others that don't match our own. It could be easily argued, after all, that God created everything and is in everything, including the ability to experience experimentally induced perceptions. In this context, perceptions-- real or imaginary-- are still only data points and we would still have to choose what such experiences mean to us and choose to grow towards or away from God. Note: this thread isn't the place to argue that. It's probably the main argument that comes out of a topic like this, but the experiments, in themselves, are currently inconclusive.

In a similar vein, other scientists who work with hallucinagens have suggested the paradigm that the human mind and senses have evolved to filter out much of the reality around us. Typical healthy men & women only visually perceive the smallest sliver of EM frequencies (what we call visible light); other creatures-- some insects, for instance-- evolved to utilize UV or IR radiation / light moreso than the visible spectrum. This is just one example. The perceived advantage to filtering out parts of reality would be that too much data is overwhelming. We've evolved to focus on what helps us most and gives us the greatest opportunities to survive and succeed as a species.

With this in mind, that specially tuned magnets can alter perception does not lead to answers so much as it leads to more questions: are such perceptions based purely on internal phenomena and combinations of memories, etc., or do the magnets alter the fine tuning of our brain in a way that makes it pick up signals that it normally doesn't?

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Neurotheology

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Rockwell's Retro Encabulator:

Retro Encabulator