The God Chemical: Brain Chemistry and Mysticism - series on NPR

I heard 2 of the episodes from this series last week on NPR. Very interesting stuff. David
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The God Chemical: Brain Chemistry And Mysticism

For much of the 20th century, mainstream science shied away from studying spirituality.
Sigmund Freud declared God to be a delusion, and others maintained that God, if there is such a thing, is beyond the tools of science to measure.

But now, some researchers are using new technologies to try to understand spiritual experience. They're peering into our brains and studying our bodies to look for circumstantial evidence of a spiritual world. The search is in its infancy, and scientists doubt they will ever be able to prove — or disprove — the existence of God.

I spent a year exploring the emerging science of spirituality for my book, Fingerprints of God. One of the questions raised by my reporting: Is an encounter with God merely a chemical reaction?

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104240746

this just proves it

What is truth to you is not truth to everyone and no one can say for sure they know the truth. If science cannot prove or disprove something that is all you can say about it, that is that science is of no use in this area.

I like to think thoughts like this. We can see only a certain amount of "frames" per second and a certain amount of light waves. We can hear just a small part of the frequencies of sound. We can smell and feel in limited ways. Yet we feel that reality is only what we can experience and measure.

It could be that there is a whole other realm or existence that our senses cannot detect. If so and I think it is very likely, is seems foolish to me to make statements of fact about things we cannot prove exist or don't exist.

Shall I leap right into rebutting all that's wrong with your post, or would you like a bit of time to think it over and see what you might be missing on your own first?

You know what I think. It really doesn't matter what I think does it.

Currently my assessment wouldn't be very generous. Perhaps there's more substance there, but you certainly haven't put it on the table.

That's a shit load of thinking.

It doesn't really matter what you think either.

Guess I have to illustrate.


Is the truth of George Washington being the first President of the United States true for only some people, like, say, only the people who want to believe or are made happy by the idea, or is it true for everyone?

Muddying up the idea of truth and trying to blur it with matters of personal perspectives is just a cover for poorly supported ideas.


In other words, sort of like the Republican attitude toward science, say, regarding evolution or global warming, where you only pay attention to science when you like what it's saying? Or is a matter of conveniently putting religious ideas in a special category where they don't need the proof we'd expect from anything else?


Poor analogy. A person can be blind from birth, have no idea what seeing is really like, but sighted people can repeatedly and reliably demonstrate abilities that blind people don't have. A blind person won't have to "take it on faith" that there's really something going on with this "vision" thing.

An explosive-sniffing dog can repeatedly find explosives a human being would never sense, but we don't have to take that on faith either. Their performance has measurable results.

Religious belief? What can a believer do that's anything like a sighted person telling a blind person about vision? A blind person can ask ten different sighted people what color shirt he's wearing, and probably (unless he runs into someone who's color blind or just a trouble maker) get the same answer ten times. Religious and so-called "spiritual" believers don't much agree at all, or have to be so vague ("Well, I know there's something!") it would be the equivalent of being told, "Yes, your shirt has some sort of color, I know it!".

The special "sense" of mysticism, rather than being like the special physical senses of people, animals, and instrumentation, turns out to be utterly indistinguishable from wishful thinking and delusion.


You can't absolutely prove that invisible pink unicorns exist or not, but you're on far more sound footing going with "probably not". Gods, spirits, and plenty of other supernatural things can be shown to be an awful lot like invisible pink unicorns.

You have every right to believe whatever you want to believe. You also have every right to use tired old arguments to support your beliefs, or to be as shallow as you like in how much you can be bothered to think or explain. I expect you to take full advantage of these rights.

"If science cannot prove or disprove something that is all you can say about it, that is that science is of no use in this area." How true this is because science and the SM is based on empiricism, and empiricism ONLY addresses evidence obtained from the 5 senses. Therefore, science cannot even comment on something thought to be supernatural.

You might say everything we know of many otherwise invisible things happens via instrumentation which we can read with basic physical senses, or indirect effects of invisible things on visible things (you can't see gravity itself, but you can watch something fall), but then again, what do you know about your family and friends that you don't know via your five senses?

The difference between science and non-science is a process of verification that attempts to weed out bias, error, and preconception. The "five senses" are incidental, only related in that it's easier to verify that what one person perceives through their senses matches what another person senses. If you think you have some sort of internal "sense" of mystical, supernatural things, that should be totally accessible to science, at least if there is any means whatsoever to systematically verify any claims you make based on that sense.

If you want to defend the supernatural on the basis that, well, the supernatural isn't supposed to be verifiable (which often goes along with the strange notion that it's somehow virtuous to believe things without proof), I suppose you can, but that makes all the talk about "senses" pretty much besides the point, and it leaves the so-called supernatural indistinguishable from wishful thinking, fearful thinking, or delusion.

nothing more. That is its limitation. It must be observable and quantifiable. We can observe radio wave with instrumentation designed for that purpose and we can verify atomic reactions by observing the expected results of experimentation.

You could use assistive technologies and funnel all information about the outside world through a single sense. What does the number of senses matter?

You want to carve out some special niche for things that are simply "known" without validation, or are "sensed" in "other ways", "other ways" which are curiously incapable of being verified the way things which are sensed through touch or sight or hearing can be -- I get it. I just don't buy that there's anything special there, and if there is, you leave yourself absolutely no basis for distinguishing truth from fantasy or delusion.

At any rate, trying to make an analogy about light beyond the visible spectrum or sounds beyond human hearing, the analogy that in part prompted by first reply in this subthread, is utterly pointless. If the "spiritual" sense is anything like that, then it's open to validation, just like infrared light and ultrasonic sound are open to validation. Even if there is no technical instrumentation to translate "spiritual" sensation into one of the more prosaic five senses, you've got the people who claim to have this sense, who can do things like, oh, write and speak. If that doesn't lead to validation, the problem is not with some limitation of science, it's a problem of the validity of the data.

than is there. I am merely pointing out that the Scientific Method and the empiricism on which it bases its method of objective proof is limited. The SM is all about observation. The process begins with collecting observable data and ends with observing results which confirm the validity of that data. You said "the problem is not with some limitation of science, it's a problem of the validity of the data". There most certainly is a limitation to science, or to be more precise, the SM. That limitation is as you said," a problem of the validity of the data", which of course, the SM is based upon. BUT the SM has a built-in mechanism for correcting itself by its ability to use new observable data to validate a theory as "proof".

All that remains outside this so-called limitation of science is stuff that might be interesting to speculate about, but doesn't serve much use (except, perhaps, inspiration for imaginative fiction writing and poetry) until you can perhaps later reach a level of proof where an idea is at least a little more likely than not, delusion, and stuff you've already ruled out as wrong.

That's a "limitation" I have no problem with, but then again, I don't have anything to peddle, justify, or extol as virtuous that requires people to buy into it without a least a little proof.

I suppose you might put matters of personal taste and personal values outside of the reach of science (not completely, however, since the reasons for various personal preferences and values can be studied scientifically), but if you cast religious and spiritual beliefs this way, they aren't about "truth" of any deep sort, and more to the point of this subthread, they certainly aren't about special kinds of sensory perception.

People sometimes say how a particular religious or spiritual belief "works" for them, but the way such things "work" and the truth of those beliefs are separate issues, like telling a small child to clean his room or Santa won't bring presents. This might "work" in the sense that the parents and the child both get their desired outcome (clean room, presents), but that doesn't make Santa Claus real. Similarly, the success of finding a sense of purpose, escaping an addiction, or finding a community of people you identify with through a religion has nothing to do with the validity of the doctrine of that religion.

it,then it doesn't exist.

...dully repeating yourself, with decreasing substance?

The only thing I am saying is that empiricism doesn't even have the capability to prove nor disprove diety. But,there are certainly other epistemologies that can greatly increase the probability of divine existence. And when used in conjuction with science can develop an even much stronger case.

You say "empiricism doesn't even have the capability to prove nor disprove diety" as if that's not just a limitation, but a failing of empiricism. What I see is that the concept of deities is what's lacking, not empiricism.

It's sort of like saying, "I want to believe in God. Damn it, I know there's a God! So if empiricism won't get me there, then it's empiricism that's the problem!".

When people aren't deliberately vague about what they mean by God some very specific definitions of God can definitely be disproved. A literal God of the Christian Bible almost certainly does not exist, because that God is tied down to clearly erroneous, disproved information. That God can't be 100% denied, as nothing can be, since you can always go crazy and talk about things like Satan planting fossils, but it's about as sure as anything gets that the Biblical literalist's God does not exist.

Imagining gods which are more likely to exist is just a matter of getting more vague and loose with your definition of God. Call God "the sum total of the universe", and you've got damn near 100% chance of a God -- a God which is nothing more than a mere synonym for "universe", even if you hope sneak in other cultural baggage about the idea of God by playing-with-definitions slight-of-hand.

What are these "other epistemologies", and what is there to recommend them over (or in addition to) empiricism?

Empiricism(and the inductive and deductive steps in the SM)is the most objective of all epistemologies, being totally dependent on observable data. Other ways of knowing,some of which have been used for centuries, are more subjective in nature. A few are philosophy, history, mathematics, theology,etc.. The premises, postulates, and axioms developed in these areas are routinely ignored by modern humanist/atheistic thinkers. Now I ask you, who are the truly free thinkers here? Empiricism is very good and necessary, but alone , it cannot answer all questions. There is NO epistemology or combination of them that will ABSOLUTELY prove anything beyond the physical. Even with eyewittness and historical accounts, and circumstancial evidence, "proof" is still subjective. Even with science, "proof" is subject to change with the addition of new evidence. Math is probably the only one where "proof" is absolute.

First we're talking about science and the scientific method, then you shift into talking about positivism and empiricism, and then try to pull fast one by acting as if the scientific method can't deal with mathematics or history.

Can we both agree that absolute proof is a straw man? I'm not expecting ABSOLUTE proof of anything. The scientific method isn't about absolute proof, it's about establishing reasonable and growing confidence in what you hold as a body of knowledge, it's about making increasingly better predictions, it's about getting as close to the truth of the world we live in as possible.


It could be said that anarchy is the ultimate freedom, but few people want to live in anarchy. What degree of freedom are you looking for? The "freedom" to state illogical, irrational, unproved and unprovable things and have those things respected as great ideas?

Theologians aren't creating anything that's the equivalent of mathematics, unless their gods are nothing more than intellectual playthings, meeting no other standards of proof other than, if you're lucky, a little bit of internal logic starting from gratuitously selected premises.


And sometimes the only answer to some questions is "I don't know". The universe isn't obligated to answer our questions. Just because you can't get an answer one way doesn't mean there has to be some other way to get the answer you want.

You asked what other epistemologies were. I told you. Positivism = empiricism. Math is a different epistemology. History is a different epistemology. Good night.

...since you started talking about the idea of ABSOLUTELY proving things that absolute proof is not relevant to this discussion, hoping that you agree, and that you understand that absolute proof has nothing to do with the scientific method or with my expectations of people who profess religious ideas.

I don't agree that "math is a different epistemology", which even if it could be said to be true in some way is just piling on unnecessary confusion. Math is simply an extension of logic, it's what you get when you take a set of postulates (which can be arbitrary) and follow them to their logical conclusion. The postulates we normally use are postulates that mirror physical experience... you have two apples, someone gives you two apples, you find you have four apples. Trigonometry grew out of the perceived physical realities of architecture and engineering.

History can be commentary and opinion, but when it comes to accessing which events have or have not happened in the past, history is at its best very scientific. Science isn't only about rulers and Geiger counters and litmus paper. That George Washington was the first President of the United States is as much a scientific fact as it is a historical fact.

This is all besides the point. I'm sure you could quibble about what I wrote above to endless lengths of distraction. You're avoiding the elephant in the room like the plague: religious and spiritual beliefs.

This is the Religion/Theology forum. I'm clearly challenging the notion of religious "truth", what makes religious claims reasonably exempt from proof, what value they have if they have no standards of proof, if they have anything to do with reality. Why don't you want to address that? Even if I accepted that math is "a different way of knowing", are you expecting that I'll give religion a pass because, well, maybe it gets to be a "differnt way of knowing" too?

Which is released at peak experience, most often death, which might be the cause of the rather similar 'hallucinations' related by those who are revived after clinical death.

There are other ways of producing DMT, a long sit in a lightless cave will do it for one. Cave-sitting has been a staple of hermits, mystics and the odd new-ager for quite some time.


Interesting stuff. I recommend 'The Spirit Molecule' by an accredited scientist Dr Rick Straussman. http://www.amazon.com/DMT-Molecule-Revolutionary-Near-Death-Experiences/dp/0892819278

Before people go screaming 'woo', this guy got clearance from the government to experiment with what is considered a 'class one' substance. His experiments and results are fascinating and well-documented.

Seeing the universe come apart at the seams convinced me.

Dr Straussmans books and research should be required reading for anyone embarking on an enlightment quest.

One of my favorite books on the subject is William James "The Varieties of Religious Experience." It was definately shaded by the time it came from...but was still a great critical thinking piece.

What science will fail to see or discuss is the very nature of the mystical experience. Shamanic Journeys, Holotropic Breathing, Yogis in pose, Llamas in day long meditations... all have the thread of the mystical as well.
So is the chemical responsible? or is the belief? Proving a chemical is secreted is going to create yet another chicken or egg argument, to a degree. Is the chemical different for a christian or a muslim? ya, could create questionb we don't really neeed the answer to.

Then again, finding a chemical or hormone secreted at a given heightened altered state of consciousness will help to maybe "prove" that one's visions aren't completely random. It would be interesting to see where the chemistry comes from. Will the pineal gland which we thought was just a vestigal gland be proven to be a key element? This is really exciting.

Having been part of Native American-style drumming circles and participated in a few journeys and breathworks...I know that the validity of a vision does not rest on proving it. The beauty of it is that it holds significance for your own personal growth and Life's questions - that can't be quantified no matter what. It is yours and it's value is most important in the moment - though the details of the vision may fade, the impact can be sometimes seen in changes of life-course, and usually for the benefit of those involved.
The fact that this discussion may re-enter into scientific consideration is actually heartening. The value of our collective visions, such as the election (and even war and torture) , are good for us to look at as a people. To see the discusion started by William James a century ago finally continued, could be really awesome.

I want to say something for everyone who reads the article and who might not be familiar with Graham Hancock's work. This is his thinking (put in my words):

A slightly different perspective is not so much that these experiences are a result of the chemical on the brain as they are a result of the changing of the wavelength of the brain.

In other words, when the brain is altered with substances, it changes the wavelength. This also changes what can be perceived. An analogy would be a radio--if you change the dial, you get a different type of result.

Same with the brain--change the frequency (which is what the substances) do, and the brain can then pick up other realities.

This is pretty much well known in many other parts of the world and is the way shamans, for example, get in touch with spirits of those who have crossed over. Also how they talk to beings in other dimensions and are able to effect healing.


Cher

(source quote) NEW ORLEANS — "A leading scientific group has announced its intention to boycott Louisiana because of a new state law that could open the door to teaching creationism in the public schools.
The measure, signed into law last summer by Gov. Bobby Jindal, allows teachers to “use supplemental textbooks” in the classroom to “help students critique and review scientific theories.”
A leading Christian conservative group here, the Louisiana Family Forum, championed the law; a member proposed the bill to its legislative sponsor.
Scientists denounced the law as a back-door effort to sneak creationism into the classrooms.
In response to the law, the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology, formerly the American Society of Zoologists, wrote to Mr. Jindal this month to announce it would not hold its 2011 annual meeting in New Orleans, opting for Salt Lake City instead."

Are you a proponent of ID?

about the role of mirror neurons in mimetic rivalry and scapegoating violence. And for mimetic rivalry, there's no place like the R/T forum! :)