Michael Persinger is an American scientist who specialises in cognitive neuroscience (the way thinking is affected by the behaviour of the brain). He is also associated with the field of neurotheology - the way religious beliefs are affected by the behaviour of the brain.
He is famous for a series of experiments in the 1980s which claim to show that religious experiences can be created artificially by stimulating parts of the brain with electromagnetism. Persinger's ideas are naturalistic interpretations of religious experience but he is a key scholar for challenges to the argument for the existence of God based on religious experience.
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In the 1980s, Michael Persinger claimed to induce a sensation of a ‘presence’ in normal participants using a device he calls ‘the Koren Helmet’ after its inventor.
Newspapers quickly renamed Persinger's device the "God Helmet"
The device is a snowmobile helmet with solenoids (coils that create magnetic fields when an electrical current is passed through them). The magnetic fields are about as strong as those produced by a hair dryer, though of a different type.
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Persinger suggests that the left and right temporal lobes create our sense of self.
If these two parts of the brain stop communicating, the ‘self’ in the right hemisphere ‘intrudes’ into our consciousness (inter-hemispheric intrusion). This feels like there is another being present in your mind. Persinger calls this effect "sensed presence". Really, it is the other half of our own brain that we are suddenly conscious of, but it feels like an external presence. Persinger argues that this sensation explains experiences of the closeness of God, visitations of angels, saints, ancestors, aliens, ghosts or past lives. |
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Persinger reports over 900 people who took part in his experiments claimed to experience "mystical experiences and altered states". Persinger reports that "at least" 80 percent of his participants experience a presence beside them in the room and about one percent report an experience of "God" and others report less evocative experiences of "another consciousness or sentient being".
As soon as the electromagnetic field is turned off then the experiences cease. When Persinger performed this experiment on Tibetan monks and the Franciscan nun, they reported that the experience was similar to what they experience in their own meditation or prayer. |
Persinger's subjects describe the experience
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It pretty much felt as though I was in total darkness, with a helmet on my head and pleasantly relaxed - Richard Dawkins
On the other hand, psychologist and journalist Susan Blackmore had a strong response to the God Helmet:
When I went to Persinger's lab and underwent his procedures I had the most extraordinary experiences I've ever had - Susan Blackmore Dawkins and Blackmore are both sceptics who attempt to disprove religion and superstition in their writing.
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Charles Foster, in Wired for God? (2010) draws completely different conclusions from research into temporal lobes. He argues that, even though brain structures like the temporal lobes bring about religious experiences, science can’t prove that those experiences aren’t ‘real’. Religious experiences might be our brains ‘tuning in’ to the divine. In fact, God might have created us with temporal lobes in order that we might communicate with him in Foster's words, our brains might be "wired for God".
Craig Aaen-Stockdale criticises this as "classic ‘God of the Gaps’ thinking". This is when believers propose God to be the answer for anything science is (temporarily) unable to explain.
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Andrew Newberg offers a balanced view
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YES
The argument for God based on religious experience has a key premise that, if we experience things, they probably exist. Persinger's experiments show that we can experience things that DON'T exist because of dysfunction in our brains. In particular, religious experiences seem to be things that are created by the temporal lobe, not by a divine being outside our own heads.
Persinger's theories are based on previous research into the temporal lobe, a part of the brain that seems to be linked to religiosity. Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) seems to create "hyper-religiosity" including religious hallucinations. This reinforces the point that experiencing God does not lead to the conclusion that God exists.
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NO
Persinger's experiments have been debunked. Unbiased researchers have repeated them without getting the same results. It appears that Persinger got his "sensed presence" effect because his participants were SUGGESTIBLE - they were influenced by him because they knew what was supposed to happen to them while wearing the God Helmet. This means his theory doesn't explain REAL religious experiences.
The research into TLE seems to be rather exaggerated too. However, even if the temporal lobe is involved in religious experiences, that doesn't show that these experiences aren't genuine encounters. If God exists, he might have created the temporal lobe in order to communicate with us. The fact that our brains are "wired for God" might itself be proof God exists.
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