What sort of 'hard evidence' do you think is reasonable for us to expect to find?
Do you seriously think the Christian notion that the soul is capable of carrying a burden of original sin is at all derived from a mystical experience? If so, how?
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What sort of 'hard evidence' do you think is reasonable for us to expect to find?
Do you seriously think the Christian notion that the soul is capable of carrying a burden of original sin is at all derived from a mystical experience? If so, how?
Based on my own experience I've noted that most if not all mystical states wear off. Hours, days, weeks. It varies. And I've noted that no mystic gets to the top of the mountain without help somewhere along the way. Help from above, help from family, from friends, from strangers.
Based on my own mystical experience I've noted that the human body is an imperfect vehicle for the Holy Spirit and we are utterly, utterly dependent on Divine Grace, Divine Wisdom, and unconditional Divine Forgiveness. We can't get Salvation on our own, and we can't hold mana for long. Without Divine Grace and Divine Power, we can't get all the way up the mountain.
Why? Well one theory that I can picture arising from observations of mystical experiences is 'original sin'.
Sounds like a stretch. It also sounds like your understanding of mystical experiences is heavily dependent on Christianity. Please allow me to honesty recommend that you study, say, Taoism as a means of getting a more well-round insight into mysticism.
Sounds like a stretch. It also sounds like your understanding of mystical experiences is heavily dependent on Christianity. Please allow me to honesty recommend that you study, say, Taoism as a means of getting a more well-round insight into mysticism.
Any religion can be interpreted on 2 separate levels, the exoteric (outer, surface) level, and the esoteric (inner, deep) level. On the exoteric level, religions appear as separate entities (christianity over here, islam over there, Buddhism over there etc etc), but on the esoteric level, all religions are saying the same thing, they are all essentially equivalent expressions of religious insight. The esoteric interpretation of Islam is equivalent to the esoteric interpretation of Christianity
An analogy for this idea - the separate religions are like different candy wrappers, which all contain one and the same candy bar
The pseudo-historical Moses, Mohammed, Jesus, and Buddha are at war against each other; while the esoteric/mythic Moses, Mohammed, and Buddha are one and the same being, in full agreement with himself. Just as individual people are esoterically the limbs of the transcendent One Being, so are the various exoteric religions secretly, on the esoteric level, all the one true religion.
The one false religion is the exoteric/Literalist/historicist/exoteric religions (plural); the one true religion is the Esoteric/allegorical/esoteric religion (singular)
For instance, it seems the occipital-parietal circuit creates the impression that god is an object that exists in the world. That is, that god is "real". Again, the amydala creates the impression of an authoritative, frightening, and punitive god. The amydala also, when over-stimulated, prevents people from thinking logically about god.
Because, as I said, there seem to be at least twenty or thirty key functions involved in all of human religiosity -- and different religions sometimes seem to be based on different groupings of functions. For instance, Middle-Eastern religions like Christianity and Islam seem to employ the pariental-frontal brain circuit much less than, say, Eastern mystical religions like Buddhism and Hinduism
This ^ entire paragraph is 100% nonsense (apart from spelling 'amygdala' wrong), you will not find a single serious neuroscientist, or any serious neuroscientific research, which says anything even remotely similar to anything you say here
...research done by Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquili, and others.
Neurotheology, eh? Careful it could end up backfiring. It isn't doing the 'religiosity seems to be ultimately derived from the functioning of the brain' crowd any favors by *gasp* validating parapsychology. Actually it's pulling the rug out from under you.
Possible disruption of remote viewing by complex weak magnetic fields around the stimulus site and the possibility of accessing real phase space: a pilot study
Abstract
In 2002 Persinger, Roll, Tiller, Koren, and Cook considered whether there are physical processes by which recondite information exists within the space and time of objects or events. The stimuli that compose this information might be directly detected within the whole brain without being processed by the typical sensory modalities.
We tested the artist Ingo Swann who can reliably draw and describe randomly selected photographs sealed in envelopes in another room.* In the present experiment the photographs were immersed continuously in repeated presentations (5 times per sec.) of one of two types of computer-generated complex magnetic field patterns whose intensities were less than 20 nT over most of the area. WINDOWS-generated but not DOS-generated patterns were associated with a marked decrease in Mr. Swann's accuracy. Whereas the DOS software generated exactly the same pattern, WINDOWS software phase-modulated the actual wave form resulting in an infinite bandwidth and complexity. We suggest that information obtained by processes attributed to "paranormal" phenomena have physical correlates that can be masked by weak, infinitely variable magnetic fields.
And what the heck is "real phase space"? Sounds pretty darn 'mystical' to me! >.>
No one is talking parapsychology except you, Student. To interpret Newberg's MRI research as "parapsychology" is intellectually irresponsible, false, and misleading.
It's not my fault that you are apparently ignorant of the research done by Andrew Newberg, Eugene D'Aquili, and others. However, given some of the things you've said in this thread, your ignorance does not surprise me. In fact, I would be surprised if it happened that you actually knew something up to date about the neuroscience on this subject.