S & R, part 4 - Pathology

Michael Persinger, neuroscientist (of the Dawkins god-machine experience, see 12/12 post), "attempts to explain religious experiences with a radically different theory, one with a pathological slant. ... When the brain is mildly disrupted - by a head injury, psychological trauma, stroke, drugs, or epileptic seizure - our left-brain self may interpret activity within the right hemisphere as another self ... we may perceive a sensed presence as a ghost, angel, demon, extraterrestrial, or God. Religion (or at least the experience of God), ... might be a cerebral mistake. ... [I]nspired in part by ... epileptic patients ... [who], when their temporal lobes were stimulated, reported hearing voices and seeing apparitions ... [Persinger built] a device consisting of solenoids that encircle the head and deliver computer-controlled electromagnetic pulses to specific regions of the brain. ... 600 subjects ... he claims that as many as 80 percent 'sense a presence'." (p.55)