Religious Experiences Cause Brain Damage

You always suspected it. Now, it seems to have been scientifically verified.

Religious Experiences Shrink Part of the Brain

A study links life-changing religious experiences, like being born again, with atrophy in the hippocampus... Scientific American

The original paper can be found here. It’s even more positive in its conclusions than the SciAm author, who is obviously treading carefully so as not to lose any born-again subscribers. Enjoy!

reply to post by Astyanax


Learn to use search.

Jamie.

im not getting the bad connection here.

It said late in life in shrinks part of your brain. Obviously this is not a a part of the body people are concerned or convinced they need.


Now if they linked it to baldness or something as equally asinine im sure youd get a better reaction. According to the same peers i also hear having a big brain related vary little to the 3% you supposedly use in the first place.

I thought religous experiences were caused by brain damage

*HIDES*

reply to post by Astyanax


I wonder, did these 'religious' men have brain damage?

Isaac Newton (Who doesn't know him?)
Wright Brothers (Airplanes)
Samuel Morse (creator of the Morse Code)
Galileo Galilei (Italian Physicist)
Joahnnes Kepler (German Astronomer)
Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician)
Michael Faraday (Discovered Benzene, electromagnetic induction, lines of force, relationship between polarized light and magnetic fields, etc.)
Lord Kelvin (First and second laws of Thermodynamics)

It almost sounds like Religion is onto something!
Let's all get brain damage!

reply to post by Astyanax


In the study, non-religious participants also had greater shrinkage in their hippocampus than non-born again Protestants and members of born again Christian churches.

While the greatest shrinking occurred in those who claimed a ''life changing religious experience'', presumably all the non-born again Christians have also had religious experiences, and they had less damage than the non-religious participants in this study.

I'll take a bit of atrophy from meditation instead of

a brain tumor from a mobile phone any day

One of the other problems with this study is that the shrinkage recorded was done in the 10 years after all but two of the born again participants had had their ''life changing religious experiences''. Therefore, the deterioration to this region of the brain can not be directory linked to their reported experiences, as the observed damage did not occur before or during the subject had their revelatory epiphany.

Following on from that, another problem arises when considering some of the variables involved. Born again Christians frequently have a history of errant behaviour before they ''see the light''; this behaviour may include drug and alcohol abuse. If memory serves me correctly, studies have linked alcohol and cannabis abuse to hippocampal shrinkage later in life, so you would have to consider that when analysing and attempting to glean any meaningful causal factors from the results.

reply to post by Astyanax
]
Covered here www.abovetopsecret.com... and here www.abovetopsecret.com...

This isn't really a religious conspiracy either.

There are studies that say Prayer, Meditation and Spiritual Experiences improve brain functions, then there are studies that say they make the brain smaller.

This proves nothing more than that scientists will "prove" anything to confirm a certain bias. The truth is probably more like:

Certain spiritual/paranormal experiences are good for the brain, others are not. Duh.

reply to post by Skyfloating

I agree 100%

One person says I can show you a stack of books this high ___ proving my point.

The other person says, Yeah, well I can show you a stack of books this high ____ that says your wrong.

(hard to emphasize that on here)

reply to post by Lionhearte


Religious men?
Or so what history says and we all know who wrote the well known history. Winners and liars.

Everyone had and has to make a front when they are in public/church/MSM.
I'm sorry to say this, but I bet most inventors didn't believe in everything from religion. The simple fact to want to know, to discover the truth is the less christian thing ever.

I do find the OP's claim and link a bit disturbing and I don't really believe it has a physical effect on the brain or that the results aren't biased. This comes from a non-believer.

reply to post by Astyanax

You always suspected it. Now, it seems to have been scientifically verified.

I hope you realize the study said born-again Protestant believers AND people with "no religious affiliation" showed hippocampus shrinkage.



Be careful, with whatever brush you use to ridicule the born-again believer you also ridicule the agnostic/atheist.

Originally posted by Lionhearte
reply to post by Astyanax

 

I wonder, did these 'religious' men have brain damage?

Isaac Newton (Who doesn't know him?)
Wright Brothers (Airplanes)
Samuel Morse (creator of the Morse Code)
Galileo Galilei (Italian Physicist)
Joahnnes Kepler (German Astronomer)
Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician)
Michael Faraday (Discovered Benzene, electromagnetic induction, lines of force, relationship between polarized light and magnetic fields, etc.)
Lord Kelvin (First and second laws of Thermodynamics)

It almost sounds like Religion is onto something!
Let's all get brain damage!

Wow, what a long list of fools!!! ^^^^

reply to post by Pimander

This isn’t a religious conspiracy either.

I agree, which is why I posted it in Science & Technology. That also explains why I didn’t bother to search this forum for duplicate threads. A moderator, semperfortis, moved the thread here. Perhaps, if you ask nicely, he’ll move it back. I must admit it seems to be getting more attention here, though mostly of the wrong sort.

reply to post by Lionhearte

I wonder, did these 'religious' men have brain damage?

Isaac Newton (Who doesn't know him?)
Wright Brothers (Airplanes)
Samuel Morse (creator of the Morse Code)
Galileo Galilei (Italian Physicist)
Joahnnes Kepler (German Astronomer)
Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician)
Michael Faraday (Discovered Benzene, electromagnetic induction, lines of force, relationship between polarized light and magnetic fields, etc.)
Lord Kelvin (First and second laws of Thermodynamics).

Yes, they almost certainly did.

All were scientists (or ‘natural philosophers’ in the case of Galileo, Newton et al.) in an age when safety in the lab was unheard of and everybody tossed toxic substances around as if they were buttermilk. Newton, in particular – after years of sticking knitting needles into his eyes, inhaling lead fumes and ingesting deadly substances during his futile experiments with alchemy, and afterwards coming into frequent contact with heavy metals as master of the Royal Mint – must have done himself serious damage. It showed, too; in later life he was given to seizures and episodes of irrational, hysterical behaviour.

Brain damage doesn’t make people stupid nearly as often as it makes them prone to convulsions, blackouts, sensory distortions and malfunctions, physical coordination problems and so forth. It all depends, I suppose, on which part of the brain has been damaged.

Let's all get brain damage!

Beware what you wish for.

Originally posted by Lionhearte
reply to post by Astyanax

 

I wonder, did these 'religious' men have brain damage?

Isaac Newton (Who doesn't know him?)
Wright Brothers (Airplanes)
Samuel Morse (creator of the Morse Code)
Galileo Galilei (Italian Physicist)
Joahnnes Kepler (German Astronomer)
Blaise Pascal (French Mathematician)
Michael Faraday (Discovered Benzene, electromagnetic induction, lines of force, relationship between polarized light and magnetic fields, etc.)
Lord Kelvin (First and second laws of Thermodynamics)

It almost sounds like Religion is onto something!
Let's all get brain damage!

You may consider refining your logical skills. It's religious experiences, not religion, which is referred to here.

But in any case the survey group is too small to give significant results.

Originally posted by User8911
Everyone had and has to make a front when they are in public/church/MSM.
I'm sorry to say this, but I bet most inventors didn't believe in everything from religion. The simple fact to want to know, to discover the truth is the less christian thing ever.

You're wrong here. You're starting from a modern viewpoint, which is heavily slanted towards your beliefs which have been formed by your upbringing and environment in the late 20th/early 21st century.

Religious people who were scientists, inventors and discoverers in centuries gone by, were trying to find out ''how god did it''.

Sir Isaac Newton, for example, founded his theory of gravitation without it conflicting in any way with his devout Christian beliefs. There is absolutely nothing in the theory that he developed which contradicts Christianity or the God that he believed in. In fact, he spent over two decades of his life trying to find a Bible code.

Georges Lemaitre, the Belgian Cardinal, is another example of someone whose religion led to important scientific advancement. In the 1930s, the Steady State theory was extremely popular amongst physicists, yet Lemaitre was convinced - through his religious beliefs - that the universe came into existence through a sudden, spontaneous and creative event.

His observations led to him forming the theory which later became generally known as the Big Bang theory; a theory which is still almost universally accepted amongst leading physicists today ( universally ? Big Bang ? I made a funny ! ).

A finding that a total life upheaval would not cause (/ occur parallel to) a substantial change in the brain would be more shocking to me.

In any case, ask some people who have had one if they care.

Wow thats funny. I posted this..... here...www.abovetopsecret.com... on the 29th and then this article comes out on the 31st.