Science, as it turns out, has an answer for everything. Apparently science has come so far that we are now able to diagnose men and women of the past with very specific neurological problems which caused them to see, hear, and therefore believe and say certain things pertaining to the spiritual life. All that to say, Moses and Paul were epileptics. So is R.C. Sproul for that matter.
Michael Persinger, a neuroscientist at Laurentian University in Ontario, believes he has strong evidence that proves the existence of a “god-spot”. This god-spot is responsible for all of the religious experiences anyone has ever experienced in world history. So strong is his evidence, Persinger claims that religious leaders of the past were men and women suffering from epilepsy. Their brains were jogged in such a way that they saw or heard “God”.
What strikes me here is that existential religious experience has never been a strong thread in my life yet I consider faith in Jesus Christ as the single most important aspect of my life. I suppose there was a time in college in which my spiritual consciousness was all in a flutter. During this time I earnestly prayed to hear the actual physical voice of God. I believed in seeing demons and demonic activity and even once thought I heard a demon flying about over my head as I stood and prayed for revival on our campus. These experiences, however, never proved to really pull me closer to God or be more devout in my piety. They were simply experiences. I have no doubt at this moment that those experiences were almost completely generated by my own mind. For example, the flying demon turned out to be a bird making a strange noise that I had never heard. Boy, that was embarrassing to admit when the experience was later reproduced in broad daylight on a tennis court with about five friends, whom I had regaled with my brush with evil. Pure evil…bird.
My faith brings me under the influence of an objective set of truths, the canon of Scripture, which govern my life – including my experiences. If I were to have a vision, it would have to be subjected to the Scripture to see if it lined up with that objective standard. If it did not, then I would write it off as a bad slice of pizza. If it did indeed line up with objective truth, then my confidence would still be in the Scripture and not the experience itself.
I’ve always been a little skeptical about subjective (or mystical, as my seminary brethren like to call it) religious experience. I just finished reading Same Kind of Different as Me for a missiology class. As a story, the book is very strong and contains nuggets of wisdom and palpable and reproducible examples of Christian love and community. As a work of theology, it’s just weak. My wife takes issue with this because as she says, “It wasn’t meant to be a work of theology.” Granted. But everything we say, do, or retell has theological implications. It says something about what we believe about God. And in this postmodern age, people would rather follow experience than good, old-fashioned hermeneutics and exegesis. It’s just not uncommon to hear someone say, “I know what the Bible says, but this is what I know happened to me.” In cases like these, I’m all for the god-spot. It really would explain why so many people say so many nutty things about their own personal experiences. Of the three main characters in the book, two are represented as being driven more by their religious experience than by there objective knowledge of Scripture. And religious experience doesn’t make a thing true.
The thing that urks me about the god-spot is that the science on it is shaky. It doesn’t explain every human experience. It cannot claim that just because this one effect is produced using magnetic fields on the brain that simulate epilepsy, that it is a necessary conclusion that all religious leaders of the past who claim some sort of supernatural encounter are epileptic. That is a simplistic deduction that at best seems premature. Also, if that is indeed the case, does it mean that all human experience can be basically divided into several large categories of experience? By that I mean that religious messages are consistent within just a few basic belief systems. These belief systems are diverse and global and encompass the vast majority of earthly inhabitants. Are our brains so similar that each religious experience can basically find a theological home. Or does it prove that our religious experiences are brain-triggered along with a basic presupposition about God? In other words, if the brain produces religious experience is it something within our human physiology or is it something within our human psychology that makes them similar.
Following this train of thought would make it simply astounding that the major belief systems have any unity at all. I know that some would say you only need to look at Christianity to find that there really is no unity. Even within this set of dogma there is much difference in interpretation and even experience. But the differences in Christianity are largely due to differences in interpretation of Scripture texts. If the god-spot can account for the myriad of different cultures and backgrounds that experience such homogeneous religious phenomena, then it really is something isn’t it? It would be impossible to believe that it would happen at chance.
Also, I don’t like the trend in science that says if it is true of one person then it must be categorically true of all persons. This is not exactly the case behind the science of the god-spot as this study is aimed at understanding the generic brain and its most basic functions. However, to say that this tiny glimpse into brain function explains the revelations of men like Moses and Paul as epileptic episodes is simply to large a gap for me to jump. It would sure take a lot of faith to do so.
To read more about the god-spot, see this article posted at NPR.
For more resources on the topic see this article at Science & Spirit.
I am pleased to recommend a book to you. 
One more thing about Carrie Prejean and I’m done.
I’m enjoying a quiet morning in one of Frankfort’s little treasures. The Kentucky Coffeetree is a quaint place to sit and drink a tall latte while studying or reading. When I have the time (i.e. when school is out) I love to come here and relax in the morning. It’s open early and plenty of folks come to get a quiet start to their day. I’m being treated to Frank Sinatra over the speakers and walls lined with books. It’s all a little too good.
My pastor, Dr. Hershael York, had to bid his father farewell this past Sunday. Wallace York, a lifelong missionary and pastor, went to be with the Lord after a battle with a strange set of medical ailments. As I understand it, this was his first stay in a hospital. As I write this, Dr. York’s mother-in-law also hangs in the balance of life and death. The Executive Pastor of our church and a dear friend is visiting with his mother in Tennessee as she is being prepped to make a move to a University Hosptial in Virginia for surgery on two tumors.
Dear, though the night is gone
When I was formulating a worldview of sex and sexuality – thinking about women and how to relate to them – I had a lot of help from Playboy. Starting very young, I was exposed to the explicit images of pornography from friends of mine whose fathers dabbled in the dark side of sex. This is an odd thing to think, but you have to remember that this was before the advent of the internet when explicit images of women were sought and bought quite purposefully and intentionally. That is to say it shouldn’t have been that easy to come by. But it was.
One thought came blasting into my mind as I surveyed the massive crowd. “The stereotype is deserved.”
