{"id":753,"date":"2008-09-25T20:56:24","date_gmt":"2008-09-26T00:56:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=753"},"modified":"2008-09-26T08:27:57","modified_gmt":"2008-09-26T12:27:57","slug":"revelation-and-reality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/?p=753","title":{"rendered":"Revelation and Reality"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A discussion I had at my blog a long time ago resurfaced. Long time commenter The Jewish Atheist today &#8220;reposted&#8221; <a href=\"http:\/\/jewishatheist.blogspot.com\/2008\/09\/repost-this-is-your-brain-on-god.html\" target=\"_blank\">this<\/a>. The gist of the discussion boils down to on the one side:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Millions of people have had &#8220;revelatory&#8221; experiences.<\/li>\n<li>While certainly some of them are due to insanity or fraud &#8230; clearly by the numbers not all are.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The counter argument, provided in the link above argues:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Yes, but that doesn&#8217;t mean they are &#8220;real&#8221; experiences of what you perceive them to be.<\/li>\n<li>In fact, look here, some researcher has produced an apparatus which by putting on this large helmet and applying large (fluctuating?) magnetic fields to the cortex one can simulate similar experiences.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>There&#8217;s a problem with that counter argument. And the problem is that it is irrelevant.<\/p>\n<p>Consider CGI in the cinema. Now good CGI which looks &#8220;real&#8221; takes a lot of stuff. You need, in the theatre, a good sound system and good quality projection, and a good audience. On the production side, you need a staff of talented programmers, artists, and a big bank of dedicated graphics &#8220;super-computers.&#8221; With that, you can give the impression of &#8220;seeing something real.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>To &#8220;mimic&#8221; the revelatory experience you need an experienced technician and some specialized equipment. Just any strong magnet won&#8217;t do. I performed experiments and TA&#8217;d in labs doing NMR (MRI without the &#8220;imaging&#8221;) in school. Those experiments produce very strong (not so quickly fluctuating) magnetic fields. People coming out of MRI machines aren&#8217;t claiming &#8220;I heard the Virgin speak&#8221; in great numbers. No. The magnetic field application has to be specifically engineered to simulate this effect.<\/p>\n<p>Humans are physical. If we have revelatory experiences, they impact our physical being. If you cannot mimic that experience with some sort of apparatus or cortical stimulation of some sort <em>then one has <\/em>to wonder if in fact those people are actually lying. That this experience is something of which the human organism is incapable &#8230; and if incapable, how is it happening?<\/p>\n<p>The problem is that &#8220;intense specific pattern of electro-magnetic stimulation&#8221; to the brain &#8230; OK say that can <em>simulate<\/em> a revelatory experience. Nobody is suggesting that stray radiation is floating around causing it spontaneously. If you see a series of images flash before your eyes in the absence of the cinema you suspect it might be real. If you have a revelatory experience in the absence of a laboratory &#8230; you <em>also<\/em> might suspect it is real. And in both cases, that might be a better guess than not.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<em> <\/em><\/strong>Edited, some grammar corrected and language clarified.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>A discussion I had at my blog a long time ago resurfaced. Long time commenter The Jewish Atheist today &#8220;reposted&#8221; this. The gist of the discussion boils down to on the one side: Millions of people have had &#8220;revelatory&#8221; experiences. While certainly some of them are due to insanity or fraud &#8230; clearly by the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,29,36],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-753","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-marko","category-religion","category-science"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=753"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/753\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=753"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=753"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stonescryout.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=753"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}