"Is religious experience merely an electronic impulse? 'God, Ghosts, and Magnets' asks this question. Some of the world's top neuroscientists have found a link between a specific part of the brain and moments of religious experience. If their theory about the brain is correct, faith and religious experience may simply be an electromagnetic field in the brain."
This piece expounds on "visionary" religious experiences such as the one experienced by Philip K. Dick, who might have been a temporal lobe epileptic. Philip Klass and others have accused alien abductee Whitley Strieber of having TLE, although an EEG test failed to find any evidence of it.
Whitley Strieber
I've wondered if TLE is really a "disease" in the normal sense of the word. It seems to me that people with the ability to enter nonconventional states of reality are the engine that drives the collective unconscious. Obviously, communing with the "imaginal realm" can be accomplished through other means, such as psychedelics, but I suspect that those with an organic predisposition are uniquely equipped. And not necessarily for the world's betterment.
Darwinian neurotheologists maintain that religion helps ensure group survival by encouraging social cohesion. Of course, the bloody irony is that religion is one of the leading causes of death among humans (as George Carlin is fond of pointing out). Carlin's sentiment is pretty easily qualified: George Bush believes he has been personally appointed to "liberate" Iraq by an omniscient supernatural being; Palestinian suicide-bombers believe that blowing up large numbers of Jews is extremely godly.
I can't help but think that we've outgrown religion -- we just haven't realized it yet. Religion begs replacement. But what, exactly, will plug that gnawing existential hole in our psyche is a question of overarching importance. If communion with the "mystical" is a necessary component of our humanity, can we thrive in a world that's been effectively sterilized, wiped clean, demystified?
Or is there indeed something very much like the "mystical" that we should take studious pains to preserve and cultivate? By destroying the strange fervor that ignites endless bouts of ethnic cleansing do we also purge the world of the "sense of wonder" sought by secular humanists and theologians alike?
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