If the God-experience is merely a brain function, can atheists have the God-experience?

Answer 1

Anyone can have a god-experience with the right combination of drugs.

Answer 2

The Intangible/Invisible mind does exist... someone who has had an OBE (Out of body journey) is time-honored with of that the mind is reduce loose the guidelines and now not an results of the mind on account that we are not contained in the body and the actual mind would not come alongside...... I have had OBE's for over 50 years now... The Soul/Spirit, awareness is residing in the mind now to not be at a loss for words with the guidelines it truly is actual The ideas works via the mind at the same time as we inhabit a actual body... The Brian needs the guidelines to exist while the mind does now not decide on the mind to exist.. when we die we purely shed the actual body and flow residing house The e-e book: The Afterlife Experiments : leap ahead clinical data of existence After lack of life Gary E. R. Schwartz with regard to the author Dr. Gary Schwartz is director of the Laboratory for Advances in interest and well being (formerly universal as Human energy structures Laboratory) on the college of Arizona. he's on the instantaneous a professor of psychology, drugs, neurology, psychiatry, and surgical treatment on the corporation of Arizona. he's a graduate of Harvard college, and has taught at each and each Harvard and Yale, preserving the positions of professor of psychiatry and psychology for purely about 3 a lengthy time period. He has revealed better than 4 hundred tutorial papers.

Answer 3

Yes, we can. When I was a Christian, I on a few occasions had overpowering apparitions or visions that would utterly crush me and convict me of my sin and my need for a Savior.

Since becoming an atheist, I still have these experiences, but because the symbol of Fenrir wolf has become the predominant symbol in my life, my out-of-body/vision experiences are of Fenrir, not Jesus & Mary.

Purely neurological, none of them actually exist as deific beings.

Answer 4

Every religion in the world has the god experience, so it is not limited to christianity or any one faith. The atheists who are more into spiritual enlightenment (some atheists adopt eastern mysticism like toaism and such since it doesn't have a god) do get the "god experience" in the same way.

Answer 5

of course athiests can experience god! if they want to then they can! it just takes time to get used to the hole thing. Experiencing God is the most amazing thing ever! but its not just a brain-function. its physicaly as well! for example, when your filled with the holy spirit then, you feel amazingly warm inside! you can start shaking or crying, and have no control over it. But if you want it to stop then it will! Its amazing!!!

Answer 6

Yes. But I would contend that we know very little about the brain or the mind, and thus the function may not work the way some now postulate.

Answer 7

What do you mean by "God-experience?" If an atheist has a "God-experience," he or she would simply dismiss it as a brain function.

Answer 8

Yes, because God speaks to those who do not believe as well they do not know it is him.To me Gods wisdom comes from universal consciousness out side the brain to the brain

Answer 9

supposedly there's a god gene as well


The God gene hypothesis states that some human beings bear a gene which gives them a prediposition to episodes interpreted by some as religious revelation. The idea has been postulate and promoted by geneticist Dr. Dean Hamer, the director of the Gene Structure and Regulation Unit at the U.S. National Cancer Institute. Hamer has written a book on the subject titled, The God Gene: How Faith is Hardwired into our Genes.

According to this hypothesis, the God gene (Vmat2), is not an encoding for the belief in God itself but a physiological arrangement that produces the sensations associated, by some, with the presence of God or other mystic experiences, or more specifically spirituality as a state of mind.

Simply put, the gene is involved in monoamines, neurotransmitters that have a lot to do with emotional sensitivity. The interpretation is that the monoamines correlates with a personality trait called self-transcendence. Composed of three sub-sets, self-trancendance is composed of "self-forgetfulness" (as in the tendency to become totally absorbed in some activity, such as reading); "transpersonal identification" (a feeling of connectedness to a larger universe); and "mysticism" (an openness to believe things not literally provable, such as ESP). Put them all together, and you come as close as science can to measuring what it feels like to be spiritual. This allows us to have the kind of experience described as religious ecstasy.

What evolutionary advantage this may convey, or what advantageous effect it is a side effect of, are questions that are yet to be fully explored. However, Dr. Hamer has theorized that self-transcendence makes people more optimistic, which makes them healthier and likely to have more children.

Contents [hide]
1 Controversy
2 References
3 See also
4 External links



[edit] Controversy
John Polkinghorne, a fellow of the Royal Society and a Canon Theologian at Liverpool Cathedral, was asked for a comment on Hamer's theory by the British national daily newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. He replied: "The idea of a god gene goes against all my personal theological convictions. You can't cut faith down to the lowest common denominator of genetic survival. It shows the poverty of reductionist thinking." Some believe Polkinghorne's criticism of reductionism is overly defensive and poorly deliberated, however: to prove the existence of a God gene does not necessarily overthrow the basic theological truths underlying the connection between the physical world and the spiritual, nor does the search of such gene ignore the impacts of society, culture or religion as Walter Houston projects.

Walter Houston, the chaplain of Mansfield College, Oxford, and a fellow in theology, told the Telegraph: "Religious belief is not just related to a person's constitution; it's related to society, tradition, character—everything's involved. Having a gene that could do all that seems pretty unlikely to me."

Hamer responded that the existence of such a gene would not be incompatible with the existence of a personal God: "Religious believers can point to the existence of god genes as one more sign of the creator's ingenuity—a clever way to help humans acknowledge and embrace a divine presence." A verse in the Christian New Testament (Luke 12:48) could be interpreted as not inconsistent with the concept of a genetic predisposition regarding faith: "To whom much is given, much shall be required."

The DVD commentary for "The God Who Wasn't There" provides a counter-argument -- followers of non-Judeo-Christian religions experience similar emotions to Christians after their meditative and other religious exercises, too. Humans may simply be adept at undergoing psychological changes if they engage in activities that require extended attention.

Answer 10

Sprirt is MInd. But the bio-chemical middle circuit called the brain, limits one's ability to experience it. We have the ability to block out things to avoid sensory overload, and a nervous breakdown as well. And we have to train ourselves to reuse our psychic abilities.