Since we're ever so concerned with mental health these days, I think it's time to address a group that rarely gets help:
http://www.science-spirit.org/printerfriendly.php?article_id=130
It's also been known too that neurotransmitter levels have often been an indicator of how "religious" someone is. Someone with higher levels of dopamine (which is interpreted in the temporal/frontal lobes) is often "more religious." Likewise, someone with low dopamine and high serotonin is often more likely to be agnostic/atheist.
What's more curious, however, is the other implications of high/low dopamine/serotonin. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that makes people hyper/gittery, whereas serotonin makes you calm/numb. Is this why so many "fervent" Christians look crazy? Is it because they are crazy?
Is religion a socially acceptable mental illness? I mean, if someone claimed to have a leprechaun watching them, and they had to do modify/inhibit their behavior to prevent that leprechaun from killing them, we'd have them locked up in a padded room. But substitute the word "God" for "leprechaun," and we can describe most of Christianity right there.
Melon
http://www.science-spirit.org/printerfriendly.php?article_id=130
Has TLE changed the course of civilization? LaPlante and many other TLE experts speculate that the mystical religious experiences of some of the great prophets were induced by TLE — because the historical writings describe classic TLE symptoms. The religious prophets most often thought to have had epilepsy are Mohammad, Moses, and St. Paul. Dostoevsky, another famous epileptic whose works are filled with ecstatic visions of universal love (and terrible nightmares of uncanny fear and radical evil), thought it was obvious that Mohammad’s visions of God were triggered by epilepsy. "Mohammad assures us in this Koran that he had seen Paradise," Doestevsky notes. "He did not lie. He had indeed been in Paradise — during an attack of epilepsy, from which he suffered, as I do."
When Mohammad first had his visions of God, he felt oppressed, smothered, as if his breath were being squeezed from his chest. Later he heard a voice calling his name, but when he turned to find the source of the voice, no one was there. The local Christians, Jews, and Arabs called him insane. When he was five years old, he told his foster parents, "Two men in white raiment came and threw me down and opened up my belly and searched inside for I don’t know what." This description is startling similar to the alien abduction experience described by people with TLE.
Note that the overriding emotion experienced by Mohammed, Moses and St. Paul during their religious visions was not one of rapture and joy but rather of fear. When Moses heard the voice of God from a burning bush, he hid his face and was frightened. Luke and Paul both agreed that Paul suffered from an unknown "illness" or "bodily weakness" which he called his "thorn in the flesh." Many biblical commentators have attributed this to either migraine headaches or epilepsy. Paul did once have malaria, which involves a high fever that can damage the brain. Other psychologists have noted that likely TLE sufferers such as Moses, Flaubert, Saint Paul, and Dostevesky were also famous for their rages.
It's also been known too that neurotransmitter levels have often been an indicator of how "religious" someone is. Someone with higher levels of dopamine (which is interpreted in the temporal/frontal lobes) is often "more religious." Likewise, someone with low dopamine and high serotonin is often more likely to be agnostic/atheist.
What's more curious, however, is the other implications of high/low dopamine/serotonin. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter that makes people hyper/gittery, whereas serotonin makes you calm/numb. Is this why so many "fervent" Christians look crazy? Is it because they are crazy?
Is religion a socially acceptable mental illness? I mean, if someone claimed to have a leprechaun watching them, and they had to do modify/inhibit their behavior to prevent that leprechaun from killing them, we'd have them locked up in a padded room. But substitute the word "God" for "leprechaun," and we can describe most of Christianity right there.
Melon