The Organized Church as a dealer in Opiates like effects for the Masses

There are some old remarks from Karl Marx about religion being the Opiate for the Masses that bring up that there may be a drug like interaction from spiritual religion and how it attracts followers. This held in common with the old legend of the Mind's Eye, or the Pineal Gland, being the key for religion appears to be an avenue to explore to check on organized church being basically the dealer of opiate like effects triggered in the masses via Mind's Eye like effect related to serotonin.

There are some studies that bring up the link of those open to spiritual dreams being associated with the Mind's Eye chemical serotonin:

The Serotonin System and Spiritual Experiences
Jacqueline Borg, Psychol., M.Sc., Bengt Andrée, M.D., Ph.D., Henrik Soderstrom, M.D., Ph.D., and Lars Farde, M.D., Ph.D.

OBJECTIVE:

The serotonin system has long been of interest in biological models of human personality. The purpose of this positron emission tomography (PET) study was to search for relationships between serotonin 5-HT1A receptor density and personality traits.

And another for good measure:

Of Serotonin and Spirituality
Scientists see a biological underpinning for religiosity, and it is related to the neurotransmitter serotonin.

By: PT Staff

Serotonin, the brain chemical crucial to mood and motivation, also shapes personality to make you susceptible to spiritual experiences. A team of Swedish researchers has found that the presence of a receptor that regulates general serotonin activity in the brain correlates with people's capacity for transcendence, the ability to apprehend phenomena that cannot be explained objectively. Scientists have long suspected that serotonin influences spirituality because drugs known to alter serotonin such as '___' also induce mystical experiences. But now they have proof from brain scans linking the capacity for spirituality with a major biological element.

The concentration of serotonin receptors normally varies markedly among individuals. Those whose brain scans showed the most receptor activity proved on personality tests to have the strongest proclivity to spiritual acceptance.

Reporting in the American Journal of Psychiatry, the researchers see the evidence as contradicting the common belief that religious behavior is determined strictly by environmental and cultural factors. They see a biological underpinning for religiosity, and it is related to the neurotransmitter serotonin.


Psychology Today Magazine, Nov/Dec 2003
Last Reviewed 8 Jul 2008

There are some other important associations to make as those who take SSRI's most often appear to experience intense dreaming due to the effects of seronin modulation. Others tell they lost all interest in the church spiritual games when they started SSRIs. It appears the drug replace the churches methods for serotonin releases.

One even finds the experiences of dreams from sleep are well associated with the releases of serotonin during progression into deeper sleep phases.

Many of the major illegal drugs that are associated with delusional visions and experiences are serotonin modulators, as Marx suggested Opiates. Even legal prescription drugs often induce delusions in the minds of folks that swear all they are seeing is real and this occurs due to serotonin linked effects on their minds. They see what they term is a reality that isn't real.


It appears in the studies that all the pretty feel good spiritual stories and beliefs of the Bible narrative trigger much of the same effect of dreaming or drugs on serotonin levels. The exception is that if the spiritual dreaming is about Jesus and a Bible episode, this is OK. But if the dreaming goes into other non-biblical delusions it is a mental disorder linked to serotonin imbalance or drug addictions.

It would appear that the organized church has taken these old Mind's Eye concepts and found that these happy stories trigger the like Mind's Eye effects of the Pineal Gland, and people see visions that they consider reality for themselves. Yet, the like effects in the world of mental disorders and delusional issues isn't considered good or real.

Many on religion will declair they have seen the light on Jesus, Heaven, or god as told by the churches and this Mind's Eye effect on the mind, or the Pineal Glands chemical releases, do impart visions in the minds of those so involved. Some are more susceptable than others to these addiction methods, be it happy stories of the Spiritual Religion, or those more susceptable to drug addictions. It explains why there are believers and non-believers by this serotonin individuality of persons.


The suggestion is that Karl Marx's observation appears to have been correct, and the issues of the spiritual mind induced by the organized church creates just as many delusional visions as drugs and these departures from reality cause just as much problems for society that should be based up reality in place of serotonin induced visions for nonrealities.


The other association is that this effect of religion can be enhanced by chemicals that upset the serotonin balances, and one such chemical that upsets the Mind's Pineal gland is fluoride. Then one has to consider if the fluoride causes some societies to become more involved in these Pinal Gland mind's eye visions and spiritual story serotonin releases methods than others.

So basically, it's all in our heads? How do they account for spiritual people who do not regularly practice an organized religion?

reply to post by MagnumOpus


Extremely interesting find, Magnum!
Can you please provide the source links for these studies?

I've been taking SSRIs for 20 years, and they've helped me immensely. I've studied how they work, too, and this information makes good sense.

Thanks for posting, f/s

Originally posted by wildtimes
reply to post by MagnumOpus

 

Extremely interesting find, Magnum!
Can you please provide the source links for these studies?

I've been taking SSRIs for 20 years, and they've helped me immensely. I've studied how they work, too, and this information makes good sense.

Thanks for posting, f/s

Hi Wild,

You might like to look into the fluoridation theme and the rise of SSRI's being linked, as one fixes the damages from the other's negative effects on Serotonin. SSRI's are the top selling drugs in the world, and especially in fluoride countries. There is a reason.

The first one is source link:

ajp.psychiatryonline.org...

November 01, 2003
The Serotonin System and Spiritual Experiences
Jacqueline Borg, Psychol., M.Sc.; Bengt Andrée, M.D., Ph.D.; Henrik Soderstrom, M.D., Ph.D.; Lars Farde, M.D., Ph.D.
Am J Psychiatry 2003;160:1965-1969. 10.1176/appi.ajp.160.11.1965

Also, backed up in PubMed:

www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov...

The 2nd one is here:

www.psychologytoday.com...

Of Serotonin and Spirituality
Scientists see a biological underpinning for religiosity, and it is related to the neurotransmitter serotonin.
By PT Staff, published on November 01, 2003 - last reviewed on July 08, 2008

Originally posted by micmerci
So basically, it's all in our heads? How do they account for spiritual people who do not regularly practice an organized religion?

I think Most Psychologists will explain that all human perceptions, both real and imagined, are in the head.

Religion does not have the monopoly on the serotonin games, but they do represent a huge proportion.

Most drug dealing exploits the addiction issues of drugs that modulate serotonin.

Even the music industry works on feel good sounds of music, which it appear Pythagoras found, and this modulates Serotonin. Even today, the big music festivals, like Bonnaroo, down in Tennessee, have these same methods of serotonin explotation mixed with lots of drug use. The very same game made New York's Woodstock a sensation with drugs and music.

I know that I like to play "House of the Rising Sun" on the Organ and real high volume and that leaves me most happy. It doesn't affect anyone else, just my little favorite music.


We see the same things going on with Spiritual Music that many of the Organized Church types have to play to themselves all day long and high volume to keep their mood elevated. This often drives everyone else around them nuts, and it is about feeding their drug like addication process using spiritual music. These folks also just have to go to church to get more of the same good felling to curb their tendency toward depression. This need to hear this Spiritual theme music is as incessant as the need for a cigarette for nicotine addicts. It appears as an addiction, and they generally have to run around talking about it all the time, and loose touch with normality.

The issue is when does this really become bad, and is the bad related to the need of fantastic stories to embellish the miracles into non-reality and psychosis issues. Most of the world bans drugs over these problems with the human mind's loss of reality and the same questions arise with religion's use of a similar addictive technique.

Some explain these factors of religion beliefs as being a mental disorder and depending on the magnitude of the need and the departure from reality thing into that of imagined, it can make for problems. Just like drug uses can't be counted on for truth, these same issues are concerns for those using religion as a drug. Just as an addict migt fight for an addiction, so it appears the followers of religion would rather fight to keep up the good feeling often derived from imagined based faith.

Just like folks get into denial on drug addictions, it appears the organized church followers might be in the same denail of problems. Many of these fantastic stories of religion and the extensive elaboration appear more impressive than the worst drug users stories that I have heard. And the magnitide of the embellishments appear more a real need for drug like rewards than use of critical thinking skills and reality being sought.


One can even note that sex is a serotonin reward effect, and one can find that the big believers like Catholic Priest have this need to exploit kids for sex. That is certainly what is considered a negative effect of serotonin cult issues within the churches. Very similar thing happens with Penn State's coaches covering up Sex Abuse and destroying their program and school.


The bottom line is serotonin plays a big role in the brain reward system and the wellness of how the mind feels and the organized church religions exploits these effects as much as all the others dealing with serotonin effects on the human mind.

The church might attempt to claim, well our serotonin reward methods are better than the others, but is that really so when the reward system seeks to distort the reality of the story of Jesus or other issues of miracles in religion far from reality and into fantasy for the sake of pretty feel good passion stories that reward the mind's serotonin needs that are not fullfilled by natural methods and healty habbits. Did it work out with sex addict Priest that were feeding on church serotonin addict games and exploiting kids for other methods of serotonin reward.

Is the organized church being honest with its followers to not disclose the impacts that society is experiencing from the chemical damage (fluoride effects in particular) to serotonin levels, which in turns affects morality, ability for moral compass, ablilty to insist on reality.

I think you miss understand Marx's quote. Religion is the oppeate of the masses as it eases the pain and unjunstice experienced by the working class in a capitalist society. religion helps sooth the pain like an opiate.

There are long standing differences in how the religious mind approaches issues and how the scientific mind deals with issues. One uses more reality that the other and insists upon it.

There also appear to be brain developement issues connected with the difference in approaches and the difference involves a late maturing brain folds and the issues that correlate to if this fold happened properly or failed to happen properly.

It is contained in this rather deep study of Neurotheology. Lots of heavy reading materials here:

neurotheology.50megs.com...

Iona Miller's NEUROTHEOLOGY 2008:
The Biological Basis of Spirituality;
Post-Metaphysical Spirituality

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A new study of the brain by University of Cambridge scientists explains why some people can’t tell the difference between what they saw and what they imagined or were told about — such as whether they or another person said something, or whether an event was imagined or actually occurred.

Turns out it results from a normal variation in a fold at the front of the brain called the paracingulate sulcus (PCS), the scientists said.

Who you gonna believe? Me, or your lying memory?

This brain variation is present in roughly half of the normal population. It’s one of the last structural folds to develop before birth, so it varies greatly in size between individuals in the healthy population. The researchers discovered that adults whose MRI scans indicated an absence of the PCS were significantly less accurate on memory tasks than people with a prominent PCS on at least one side of the brain.

Then along comes an interview with one of the researchers looking at the Lower serotonin levels make people more open to religious practices, experiences::

www.beliefnet.com...


Study: Brain Chemicals Key to Spiritual Experience
Lower serotonin levels make people more open to religious practices, experiences.
BY: Frederica Saylor

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"The problem we find with a lot of the religion and health and spirituality findings and movement is the tendency to overinterpret without rightly contextualizing and being a bit more cautious about things."

What appears to be coming out is those persons subject to religion process the message for chemical reward, and don't have the mental process to seek reality and truth over that for mental reward spirituality and imagination that depart from reality thinking.


A brain developmental disorder is presenting as being the root for the extemes of spiritual beliefs, and the inabilty to separte imagination from reality.

Originally posted by woodwardjnr
I think you miss understand Marx's quote. Religion is the oppeate of the masses as it eases the pain and unjunstice experienced by the working class in a capitalist society. religion helps sooth the pain like an opiate.

Opiates alter the reality.

en.wikipedia.org...

The sense in which the metaphor "opiate" is used has been interpreted in several ways, some of which may differ from the way opium is thought of today.[citation needed] At the time when Marx wrote this text, opium was legally available in some parts of the world, although there were attempts to regulate, legislate and prohibit its use, sale and production, due to the negative effects the substance had on individuals and society in general. According to McKinnon (2005), there seemed to have been five primary senses which opium could be used as a metaphor in the mid nineteenth century:

1.Opium was a keyword for widespread social conflict, particularly the First and Second Opium Wars.
2.It was the source of an important "social problem", one of the first "public health" concerns, known as "baby-doping" (giving a child opium to keep them quiet).
3.Opium was the source of fantastic visions of the "opium eaters" (De Quincey, the Romantic Poets, etc.).
4.Morphine, the principal and most widely known and widely produced opiate of the day—at the time called morphium -- has at its etymology "dream-inducer". In this sense, opium is what someone is given to induce them to experience a fantasy instead of a reality. This is related to, but distinct from, the above baby-doping usage.
5.Opium was an important medicine. It was used as a painkiller or sedative, but also for a wide range of ailments, including combatting cholera.

It has been proposed that the "Pineal Gland" (The ancient Mind's Eye that gave rise to the belief in religions) releases an excess of Serotonin in the "Near Death Experience" (NDE) phenomena that many connect with rising to go off to Heaven that religion folks want to support or prove with examples for the effect. While we don't have good research for the serotonin rise in humans, there is some from the animal domain that show the phenomena appears to be very likely and quite possible. It is also supported by the observations of '___' effects on the mind, which are tired to serotonin rise and delusions.

www.newscientist.com...

Near-death experiences may be triggered by serotonin

THE bright light at the end of the tunnel which some people close to death describe may result from a flood of serotonin in the brain.

Near-death experiences (NDEs) are reported by around 1 in 5 critically ill people, and their cause is a mystery. Alexander Wutzler's team at the Charité University of Medicine in Berlin, Germany, wondered if serotonin - a neurotransmitter involved in mood regulation and processing vision and sound - plays a role.

They gave six rats an overdose of anaesthetic and found that serotonin levels in their brains had tripled by the time they died (Neuroscience Letters, DOI: 10.1016/j.neulet.2011.04.051).

There are still other researchers that postulate that "the light at the end of the Tunnel" effects are Nature's design to lessen fear and trauma in the mind and sooth the fear or process for death. The Catholic Church appears a bit disturbed that what many tell is going off to meet god is just a chemical trip much like taking too much '___' sometimes leads to OBE effects. It is suggested that god created serotonin, or perhaps the reverse that serotonin created the beliefs in religion and the need to have faith to believe what this effect creates as various visions linked with OBE:

www.ncregister.com...

Long Before ‘Brainsoothing,’ God Created Serotonin
According to authors Lionel Tiger, an anthropologist, and Michael McGuire, a psychiatrist, human beings invented God long ago as a way of soothing themselves, given the troubling realization that one day they will die. Death, it seems, is too horrible to bear. In self-defense, man created God, together with the comforting thought of an afterlife and religious stories that explained life and the surrounding world.

These consoling myths release serotonin, a brain chemical that acts as a natural stress reliever. The prospect of death gives us “brainpain,” which serotonin alleviates by “brainsoothing.” Thus the brain creates God and religion, and then feeds on its creation to offer comfort. Such a stark realization, of course, should send us back to a primitive state of severe anxiety. The authors, however, do not seem to mind discrediting their readers’ only antidote to the meaninglessness of existence.

Still others research biologists promote that religion and god is made in the minds of man since the Creation of the world, due to Serotonine Effects and the Mind's Eye Pineal Gland:

jonprins.tumblr.com...

Rutgers University evolutionary biologist Lionel Tiger thinks we can pinpoint specific chemicals, genes and clusters of neurons that give rise to religiosity: “Religion is really made by the brain. It is a secretion of the brain,” says Tiger, who thinks the root of religious belief is an evolutionary drive to seek this “secretion”—namely serotonin—which provides the believer with feelings of well-being. A neurotransmitter that regulates mood and appetite, serotonin is linked to feelings of well-being when it floods the central nervous system.

“One of the ways of looking at religion is to what extent and how does it generate the serotonergic juices that make us feel good,” says Tiger. Attending a religious service, for example, can be a flurry of social activity and controlled procedure, which releases a cocktail of serotonin-led neurotransmitters in the brain. This chemical response “soothes” the organ, he says, echoing the results of recent studies. Working with neuroscientist Michael McGuire, Tiger has connected this research on serotonin as it works in the brain with the social aspects and origins of religion.

And still more leading edge sciences of the mind show considerable support for the theme that religious tendency and the extremes of beliefs are highly motivated by serotonin chemistry in the brain:

samsnyder.com...

• The frequency of religious obsessions in OCD populations in the United States has been estimated to lie between 10 percent and approximately 30 percent. The frequency of religious obsessions in the OCD population in countries of the Middle East runs much higher, with at least half of the patient population reporting religious obsessions.

• The clinicopathological functional and structural imaging studies of OCD suggest a consistent finding: There is abnormally increased activity in orbitofrontal cortex and in subcortical basal ganglia and limbic circuits. When patients are treated with serotonin reuptake inhibitors, the functional activity in the OFC and caudate nucleus resolves toward normal.

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• Disorders of excessive DA and reduced serotoninergic functioning, such as schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder, are often associated with increases in religiosity. Antipsychotic agents that block DA actions at the level of the limbic system and agents that increase central serotonin activity result in reductions in religious ideation/behaviors and a resolution of religious delusions in these patients. Hallucinatory agents that purportedly enhance religious or mystical experiences do so by reducing central serotoninergic activity and enhancing central dopamine transmission.

So, what the sciences is showing is that much of what religion claims to be god's working to lead them off to heaven may be nothing greater than well established effects from Serotonin shifts, much as '___' might cause these same light sensing and Out of Body type experiences. These effects appear to have set up the theme of afterlife in the old religious cultures that carry forward into days system of religious beliefs. The theme of folks even crossing into other demensions is promoted via this Biochemical effect on the brain's loss of reality.


These are all illustrations for how the science minded truth seekers would approach some of the testimony of the religious that tend to promote beliefs that defy simple realities.

More and more science looks into the religious mind day by day and appears to be finding some major associations of the frontal brain issues that open the door for religious miracle beliefs. Now the OBE issue is being associated with NDE and serotonin level effects on the brain's delusions per the need of religion to sell god, but really is the effect of boost to serotonin. So, one can begin to see how the churches exploit the effects on the mind of this biochemical, either via fantastic explanations of maracles, afterlife, and the power of god. The churches are dealers that profit from the effects of opiate type serotonin effects on the brain.

Certainly, even the feel good issues of fellowship add to the effects of serotonin increase in the masses of the churches, and even the effects of love others contribute to serotonin releases.

But, are these biochemical effects that of god or just the normal chemistry of the mind linked to Mind's Eye of ancient knowledge and the origin of religion in the minds of man.

So serotonin cures disease too I guess? And saves your life? And inspires you to help and feed others? Im guessing the effects of it go for 50+ years non stop too?

Originally posted by isaac7777
So serotonin cures disease too I guess? And saves your life? And inspires you to help and feed others? Im guessing the effects of it go for 50+ years non stop too?

I don't think one can say it in queit that way. Well regulated serotonin levels maintain good mental health, as well as physical health in the long term. Serotonin is difficult to measure and give orally, so the tricks are tryptophan and SSRI's to get broken systems working. The best would be never to have allowed poisons to upset the balance to begin with, but corrupt issues of environment and fluorides affect large areas.

Serotonin imbalance is associated to many mental health problems from Obcessive Compulsive Disorders, Depression, and more.

www.drjoecarver.com...

When Serotonin is moderately low, we have the following symptoms and behaviors:


· Chronic fatigue. Despite sleeping extra hours and naps, we remain tired. There is a sense of being “worn out”

· Sleep disturbance, typically we can’t go to sleep at night as our mind/thought is racing. Patients describe this as “My mind won’t shut up!” Early-morning awakening is also common, typically at 4:00 am, at which point returning to sleep is difficult, again due to the racing thoughts.

· Appetite disturbance is present, usually in two types. We experience a loss of appetite and subsequent weight loss or a craving for sweets and carbohydrates when the brain is trying to make more Serotonin.

As far as diseases, the Serotonin pathway to melatonin and sleep disturbance is likely the worst to cause chronic illnesses. When Serotonin is low, it can lower melatonin and screw up the cellular replair systems done while in sleep. This causes high rates of oxidative stress that doesn't get repaired by the enzyme processes. It makes for heath problems from Chronic Fatigue to cancers.

reply to post by MagnumOpus

I think Most Psychologists will explain that all human perceptions, both real and imagined, are in the head.

I fully agree. In fact, I believe this to be a fact itself:

Hard-wired for religion

Religious people often talk about how difficult it is to have faith in God and stay on a spiritual path. They like to think of themselves as brave souls choosing the road less often taken, going against the grain of a materialist, godless, faithless culture.

Actually, there's increasing evidence that the truth is just the opposite, since the minds of human beings are hard-wired for religion. What's difficult is recognizing our instinctual propensity to believe, and choosing a course that leads in the direction of reality.

source

Are humans hard-wired for faith?

A faith with a God who is indifferent toward people is simple to imagine. But it's much harder to find. The Abrahamic conceptions of God include the monotheistic definition of God in Judaism, the trinitarian view of Christians, and the Islamic concept of God. All these, according to followers, interact directly with humans who worship them, these Gods speak to their follower, and are directly involved in every aspect of their lives. And furthermore, these Gods are cruel and jealous, and demand blind obedience.

Believers will say their religion reflects Divine Will: that's the way God planned it. What makes religious people think their God is the right one? What if religious people are worshipping the wrong God, or what if a God does not exist? With all the many religions, Gods, and Goddesses out there, what makes people these days think they are right, and others are wrong?

Religion is based on Faith, not on Logic. Read that Blind Faith.
Is Christianity Really Brainwashing?

The last time that I was around a church much, I noted that is was being loaded up with lots of people with diagnosed mental disorders, and the church became so dysfunctional that it was impossible to have a game of volleyball work. Plus, when it came to honesty, many in the church didn't appear to know how to stick to the truth in recounting anything.

In addition, it came to light that a huge number were taking medications for mental disorders. In this day and age the dysfunctions were starting to outnumber the functional. But then, their system appears to select for those with serotonin disorders.

Then all these patterns of really bad church experiences were coming into the news from the Jim Jones Kool-Aide cult games to the Heaven's Gate asteroid cult, all of which killed themselves. It makes one wonder further when you hear Baptists speaking on tongues and wallowing around on the floor and others standing around impressed.

Then I noticed lots of Christians were down on Bertrand Russell, who is one of the Nobel Prize types that speaks against religions. Bertrand Russell is a UK national and connected with starting the Manhattan Project for the nuclear bomb and even the cover up of the reasons for the JFK assassination, but he is totally against the Christian themes.

"Philosopher Bertrand Russell wrote:

"'Religion is based...mainly upon fear...fear of the mysterious, fear of defeat, fear of death. Fear is the parent of cruelty, and therefore it is no wonder if cruelty and religion have gone hand in hand.... My own view on religion is that of Lucretius. I regard it as a disease born of fear and as a source of untold misery to the human race.'"

Bertrand Russull is a very prolific writer on many issues and also that of religion:

www.users.drew.edu...

Why I Am Not A Christian
by Bertrand Russell

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That is the idea -- that we should all be wicked if we did not hold to the Christian religion. It seems to me that the people who have held to it have been for the most part extremely wicked. You find this curious fact, that the more intense has been the religion of any period and the more profound has been the dogmatic belief, the greater has been the cruelty and the worse has been the state of affairs. In the so-called ages of faith, when men really did believe the Christian religion in all its completeness, there was the Inquisition, with all its tortures; there were millions of unfortunate women burned as witches; and there was every kind of cruelty practiced upon all sorts of people in the name of religion.

You find as you look around the world that every single bit of progress in humane feeling, every improvement in the criminal law, every step toward the diminution of war, every step toward better treatment of the colored races, or every mitigation of slavery, every moral progress that there has been in the world, has been consistently opposed by the organized churches of the world. I say quite deliberately that the Christian religion, as organized in its churches, has been and still is the principal enemy of moral progress in the world.

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When you hear people in church debasing themselves and saying that they are miserable sinners, and all the rest of it, it seems contemptible and not worthy of self-respecting human beings. We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages.

A good world needs knowledge, kindliness, and courage; it does not need a regretful hankering after the past or a fettering of the free intelligence by the words uttered long ago by ignorant men. It needs a fearless outlook and a free intelligence. It needs hope for the future, not looking back all the time toward a past that is dead, which we trust will be far surpassed by the future that our intelligence can create.

One thing one notices is the churches appear to seek out serotonin linked mental disorders and reinforce the issues of depression from that serotonin imbalance. Thus, one finds the Christians must always be the sinner and proclaim negative self image, as happens in the presentation for depression. Lots of the serious extremes of religion stem from a temportal lobe mental disorder and a brain folk devolmental association, and even many of the NDE issues are serotonin associated.


All these factors from the stange effects of the churches being loaded up with folks with known mental disorders to the point that playing volleyball was technically impossible in a church environment, plus all these other essentially crazy cult disorders, plus some of the brightest minds in the world going against religion as essentially a disorder of the mind changes one's opinion of the organized church.

Toss in all the sexual perversions against children being covered up by the churches, and one sees lots more of the crimnal mindset living and growing within the churches. The church was more interested in cover up than openly dealing with the problems and they totally lost moral compass considerations

Church ministry appeared more and more from all the scandals of Tammy Faye and the other like three angles boadcasting, was about riches earned from the shallow of mind and easily exploited. More and more persons of the Church caliber were given to telling lies and more of a criminal mindset than one of responsible, having real moral compass, and being good stewards to all.

Adding to the findings, there are simple human biological mind factors that appear to be a simple reason for this belief in god, heaven, and afterlife. And the churches exploit this serotonin imbalance effect, rather than sticking to the truth.

home.earthlink.net...

Religion is a Mental Illness

Christians would have you believe atheists do not have as high as morals as Christians. They want you to believe they are somehow better people than atheists. Yet, the Federal Bureau of Prisons 1997 statistics show that a Christian is 50 times more likely to end up in prison than an atheist.

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Temporal Lobe Epilepsy disorder has been linked to extreme religious experiences. Patients who have TLE may have sudden and dramatic spiritual changes. There are many instances of these patients converting from agnostic or atheist beliefs to strongly active religious faiths. TLE causes abnormal electrical activity in their temporal regions and has been directly linked to these radical changes in religious belief and personality changes. Curiously, religious chanting and meditation reduce the activity of frontal lobe activity, which heightens Temporal Lobe activity. Further research in this area has uncovered that electrical stimulation of areas in the Temporal Lobe also produce these spiritual experiences. The electrical stimulation caused the control group to report feelings of "well being" euphoria and a feeling of a "presence".

Being a formal military pilot, it is amusing to hear people attribute seeing a light in a tunnel to a god when experiencing near death experiences. This is often accompanied by feelings of euphoria. Coincidently, military pilots experience the same feelings when taking oxygen deprivation training. When the brain is deprived of oxygen, the first thing that happens is all colors fade to gray. Soon after, experiences of euphoria and well being are felt. Finally, all light closes in to a pinpoint, like a light in a tunnel just before the loss of consciousness.

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It is a statistical fact that the higher your education, income, and intelligence, the more likely you are not to believe in a god. For every college student that converts to a religious belief system, 17 college students convert to secular or atheist beliefs. "Secular Humanists" have an average intelligence of 15 I.Q. points above their Christian conterparts. Studies have shown the average atheist to have an I.Q. of 9 points higher than the typical Christian.

All the games of afterlife appear well associated with just serotonin effects on the brain due to oxygen depravation effects and a natural effect of the Pineal Gland. Even all the Temporal Lobe issues show up as to why some are so extremely off on an extensive self aggrandization trip speaking of miracles and fantasy of religions, and totally ignoring rational thought and reality.

Churches are loosing their following and for good reasons, they have become corrupt on delivery of simple truths because all they seek is money and pulling the wool over the eyes of the simple minded.

reply to post by MagnumOpus

All these factors from the stange effects of the churches being loaded up with folks with known mental disorders to the point that playing volleyball was impossible in a church environment, plus all these other essentially crazy cult disorders, plus some of the brightest minds in the world going against religion as essentially a disorder of the mind changes one's opinion of the organized church.

I too have seen this from my own days going to church and being involved with the people there. Let's look at this from a psychological point of view for a minute:

Doesn't it take a mental illness to believe that:

A human being could live inside of a fishes belly?

That a senior citizen built a big wooden boat, and was then able to physically load every pair of animal species in his lifetime from all over the planet, and then believe they all lived like that for 40 days and nights?

To believe that a book which is jam packed with contradictions, atrocities, and absurdities is about a "Divine " "Supernatural" "Loving," "Perfect" Creator/Being?

That a person will get a free ticket to an exclusive Heavenly Paradise for eternity, just for whispering an acceptance speech to an imaginary friend to which no historical evidence exists, and not one first hand eyewitness account exists?

To believe that a peaceful, loving, and righteous person of the Judaism, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, Wiccan, etc Faith/Belief will go to "Hell" just because they do not happen to share some narrow minded, and hateful views as you?

It is a mental illness indeed when people believe in talking snakes, talking donkeys and, and talking shrubbery.

And curiously, to some, if you do not believe in this tripe, you are a Satanist, and are going to Hell.

Originally posted by autowrench
reply to post by MagnumOpus

 

All these factors from the stange effects of the churches being loaded up with folks with known mental disorders to the point that playing volleyball was impossible in a church environment, plus all these other essentially crazy cult disorders, plus some of the brightest minds in the world going against religion as essentially a disorder of the mind changes one's opinion of the organized church.

I too have seen this from my own days going to church and being involved with the people there. Let's look at this from a psychological point of view for a minute:

Doesn't it take a mental illness to believe that:

A human being could live inside of a fishes belly?

That a senior citizen built a big wooden boat, and was then able to physically load every pair of animal species in his lifetime from all over the planet, and then believe they all lived like that for 40 days and nights?

To believe that a book which is jam packed with contradictions, atrocities, and absurdities is about a "Divine " "Supernatural" "Loving," "Perfect" Creator/Being?

That a person will get a free ticket to an exclusive Heavenly Paradise for eternity, just for whispering an acceptance speech to an imaginary friend to which no historical evidence exists, and not one first hand eyewitness account exists?

To believe that a peaceful, loving, and righteous person of the Judaism, Islamic, Buddhist, Hindu, Atheist, Wiccan, etc Faith/Belief will go to "Hell" just because they do not happen to share some narrow minded, and hateful views as you?

It is a mental illness indeed when people believe in talking snakes, talking donkeys and, and talking shrubbery.

And curiously, to some, if you do not believe in this tripe, you are a Satanist, and are going to Hell.

Hello AutoW,

One will find many times that most in the church are very literal (as opposed to highly literate-meaning they understand the higher concepts of allegory and metaphore) in their readings and they basically are functionally illiterate when it comes to the allegory and metaphore interpretations of the various writings of Bible History.

When there is such a low functionality, one should expect there are major problems in the churches beliefs becoming corrupted due to frequent and serious failures to communicate.

All that turns off the highly literate of mind, as one can't fix stupid to that degree and the best one can do is just walk off and ignore such a group.

So, one typically finds they can't play VB technically, unless it is highly dumbed down. They also can't read with the highly literate concepts of allegory and metaphore being understood, and lots of that technique causes vagueness that is subject to the wildest interpretations.

It is not any wonder that Nobelists and the highly intelligent folks see problems with the church mantra that exploits human mental issues associated with Serotonin and the Pineal Gland's ancient effects associated with religions. Churches seem to seek out and collect those with this mental processing defect and the low serotonin effects that promote an addictive like need for church methods.

This appears not a method that promotes high intelligence and well balanced of mind, but one that seeks the lower intelligence that can't process reality from fantasy stories.

Originally posted by autowrench
reply to post by MagnumOpus

 

I think Most Psychologists will explain that all human perceptions, both real and imagined, are in the head.

I fully agree. In fact, I believe this to be a fact itself:

Hard-wired for religion

Religious people often talk about how difficult it is to have faith in God and stay on a spiritual path. They like to think of themselves as brave souls choosing the road less often taken, going against the grain of a materialist, godless, faithless culture.

Actually, there's increasing evidence that the truth is just the opposite, since the minds of human beings are hard-wired for religion. What's difficult is recognizing our instinctual propensity to believe, and choosing a course that leads in the direction of reality.

source

Are humans hard-wired for faith?

A faith with a God who is indifferent toward people is simple to imagine. But it's much harder to find. The Abrahamic conceptions of God include the monotheistic definition of God in Judaism, the trinitarian view of Christians, and the Islamic concept of God. All these, according to followers, interact directly with humans who worship them, these Gods speak to their follower, and are directly involved in every aspect of their lives. And furthermore, these Gods are cruel and jealous, and demand blind obedience.

Believers will say their religion reflects Divine Will: that's the way God planned it. What makes religious people think their God is the right one? What if religious people are worshipping the wrong God, or what if a God does not exist? With all the many religions, Gods, and Goddesses out there, what makes people these days think they are right, and others are wrong?

Religion is based on Faith, not on Logic. Read that Blind Faith.
Is Christianity Really Brainwashing?

Hello AutoW,

I don't think one can say everyone is hardwired for faith, as many just don't buy into the religion claims. What I am seeing is there appears to be perhaps a defect in the human brain development, as reported in the Cambridge research that speaks to a brain fold that fails to mature. And from that association they find people fail to process and keep separate reality and stories of fantasy. This affects, they tell, about half the population.

So, when this fellow speaks to hard wired for relgion, it appears to be this portion with this brain issue, which also involves the serotonin effects and the ancient associations of the Pineal Gland to religious beliefs to the tiems of ancient Egypt and the Annunaki of Sumeria, It appears the Annunaki may have been the first to exploit this defect and Pineal Gland to have the concept for god, and a drug like dependence upon god.

articles.cnn.com...

After spending his early medical career studying how the brain works in neurological and psychiatric conditions such as Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease, depression and anxiety, Newberg took that brain-scanning technology and turned it toward the spiritual: Franciscan nuns, Tibetan Buddhists, and Pentecostal Christians speaking in tongues. His team members at the University of Pennsylvania were surprised by what they found.

"When we think of religious and spiritual beliefs and practices, we see a tremendous similarity across practices and across traditions."

The frontal lobe, the area right behind our foreheads, helps us focus our attention in prayer and meditation.

It appears this wired effect is these frontal lobe issues the many other reserarchers are exploring, and that together with the Serotonin effects from the Pineal Gland appear why half of populations are believers and the other half just realists that can process the difference between fantasy visions and reality.

Time will tell as the research improves. But the issues of the organized church is causing their very existance problems because they won't address the problems with their cult of serotonin group following depression characteristics and doing methods that are similar to what drugs do in reward systems for serotonin.

If you really want to see the problems highly evident in a church, then look into the Singles groups, and there one finds lots of those that have problems, so many their spouse departs from them. Sometimes, the difference is the spouse refuses to address the religion of the other, which stems from the Bichemical and Devopmental differences in the human brain.

It appears the churches tell that the higher function folks are defective, when the issue may well be the religious mind has the issues of failure to process information using reality.

Of Course, this offends the higher thinkers such as Bertrand Russell and many others that have the higher minds to deal with the various issues that religion fails to address. So, the reality oriented sciences minded people don't agree with the religious fantasy story minded and it appears to be this issue of serotonin imbalance exploitation along with this brain deveoplment defect in around half the population.


So, in the history for the United States we see folks like Thomas Jefferson have a breaking away from the embellished miracles written in religion via his Jefferson Bible and the inclusion of separation of church and state from running the Government. I think that was a wise choice and stems from the inate higher reason that Jefferson was well known for.

Now, with the churches falling flat on their faces for a number of reasons, but mainly failure to accomodate sciences, as they resisted Gallileo in his time, the churches enter a phase were reason will put them out of the business of serotonin dealing and exploitation of brain artifacts that depart from reality and reason.

Since so many of the Bible Narratives are story telling and the issue is beliefs and faith, reseach from Cambridge along these lines becomes important to consider.

www.cam.ac.uk...

A new study of the brain explains why some of us are better than others at remembering what really happened.

A structural variation in a part of the brain may explain why some people are better than others at distinguishing real events from those they might have imagined or been told about, researchers have found.

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The University of Cambridge scientists found that normal variation in a fold at the front of the brain called the paracingulate sulcus (or PCS) might explain why some people are better than others at accurately remembering details of previous events -such as whether they or another person said something, or whether the event was imagined or actually occurred. The research was published today, 05 October, in the Journal of Neuroscience.

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This brain variation, which is present in roughly half of the normal population, is one of the last structural folds to develop before birth and for this reason varies greatly in size between individuals in the healthy population. The researchers discovered that adults whose MRI scans indicated an absence of the PCS were significantly less accurate on memory tasks than people with a prominent PCS on at least one side of the brain. Interestingly, all participants believed that they had a good memory despite one group’s memories being clearly less reliable.

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“Additionally, this finding might tell us something about schizophrenia, in which hallucinations are often reported whereby, for example, someone hears a voice when nobody’s there. Difficulty distinguishing real from imagined information might be an explanation for such hallucinations. For example, the person might imagine the voice but misattribute it as being real. PCS reductions have been reported in previous studies of schizophrenia, and our results are consistent with the idea that this structural variability might directly influence the functional capacity of surrounding brain areas and the cognitive abilities that they support.”

This Cambridge Site also appears to show a Brain Scan Photo for the defect area of the brain and the appearance is that is is near the Pineal Gland area of the brain, if the red dot is indicative for the area of interest.

All of which makes this even more interesting to follow. Still more insights here:

www.msnbc.msn.com...

What really happened? Sharp memories tied to brain crease

There are two types of people in the world: those who remember everything exactly as it happened and those who have a tendency to muddle what’s happened with what’s imagined.

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In contrast, people with a less pronounced fold, or a non-existent one, seem to have problems distinguishing between what they actually experienced and what they might have imagined or heard about, Simons said.

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It might also have an impact on how judges and juries perceive eye-witness testimony, Simons said. You could imagine that people without the fold “might witness a crime and then talk to someone else,” he explained. “Or they might read a newspaper report about the crime and then misremember what they actually saw.”

The tricky thing about this kind of memory issue is that people generally don’t recognize they have it, Simon said. They think their memories are every bit as accurate as everyone else’s.

Perhaps one day some enterprising defense lawyer will ask for brain scans of prosecution witnesses to see if they have accurate memories.

These same type questions would appear in the issues of persons witness on religion issues, as it directly applies to some having lack of abilty to process fantasy from reality. Such would also tend to explain matters like huge variability in what folks saw in the JFK assassination, for instance, where the forensics evidence departs from the memory of hospital attendants, or the number of shots fired.

The very same issues would apply to how Jesus Cross and Tomb story was processed by those being in the proximity of the event.

reply to post by MagnumOpus

This appears not a method that promotes high intelligence and well balanced of mind, but one that seeks the lower intelligence that can't process reality from fantasy stories.

At the very great risk of being flamed....
thank you.

Originally posted by wildtimes
reply to post by MagnumOpus

 

This appears not a method that promotes high intelligence and well balanced of mind, but one that seeks the lower intelligence that can't process reality from fantasy stories.

At the very great risk of being flamed....
thank you.

Ha, You are welcome Ms Wild.

I thought you would really get into that Cambridge Brain Fold study. It certainly explains what is going on when I see this happen in a lot of people that claim to be normal. I have had persons stand right beside me and explain what we both saw and it not be based in reality for what was there. It happens a lot when you start checking for observation details.

The question is how much of this effect happens in the retelling for the Bible stories over the hundreds of years it was kept as oral laws and such.