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1. Two philosophers who claimed that religious experiences are a kind of wish-fulfilment and a product of human urges or desires that we are not always aware of are…
a. Marx and Freud
b. Freud and Katz
c. Katz and Marx
d. Katz and Maus
2. Which of the following is NOT a possible non-religious explanation for corporate religious experiences?
a. They are projections from the human psyche of unconscious needs and desires e.g. the children of Medjugorje experienced visions of the Virgin Mary because their society had been torn apart by war and they needed to feel protected by a mother figure.
b. The people who have these experiences were said by Freud to be expressing and projecting an unconscious death drive out onto the world.
c. They are products of mass hysteria.
d. They result from clever manipulation and encouragement within the group by someone who is a trusted authority figure e.g. a guru or prophet.
e. In cases like the Toronto Blessing, the Freudian id has been given permission to express itself by the priest (who represents the superego).
3. TRUE or FALSE? Conversion experiences frequently involve the brainwashing of the person who converts.
4. TRUE or FALSE? Starbuck’s study of conversion led him to conclude that this type of experience typically involves the successful resolution of an identity crisis similar to that often experienced by older people who are close to death. .
5. TRUE or FALSE? Michael Persinger’s research on the temporal lobes suggests that religious experiences are ‘all in the mind’ in the sense that they tend to arise in people with overactive temporal lobes.
6. TRUE or FALSE? Persinger designed a ‘God Helmet’ that stimulated the temporal lobes of those that wore it, inducing in a majority an unsettling experience of a ‘sensed presence’, that there was a being of some sort in the room with them.
7. TRUE or FALSE? Support for Persinger’s perspective comes from the research of neuroscientist Professor V.S. Ramachandran who is an expert in brain disorders. He found that his patients with epileptic seizures sometimes had intense religious experiences.
8. Which of the following is NOT a possible criticism of Persinger’s research on the temporal lobes?
a. Attempts to replicate Persinger’s study by other researchers have failed to produce the same results.
b. A study of Hindus practising yoga found that parts of the brain other than the temporal lobes were involved in their religious experiences e.g. there was found to be decreased activity in the parietal lobes. This entails a loss of sense of self that is often reported in mystical experiences.
c. A lot of people who say that they feel in the presence of God are not scared by the experience like many of the people who wore Persinger’s helmet. Their experiences would also not conform to Otto’s description of the numinous experience which includes ‘awe inspiring terror’ as well as awe and wonder.
d. The God Helmet did not work on Richard Dawkins when he wore it.
9. TRUE or FALSE? More recent research on the use of psychedelic substances like psilocybin in clinical trials involving patients who are struggling with a terminal cancer diagnosis, addiction, and depression, suggests that the mystical experiences induced by these substances can have profoundly transformative, therapeutic benefits that tend to confirm William James’s view that – in the absence of being able to make conclusive judgements about the veridicality of such experiences – they should be be judged by their ‘fruits’, their beneficial effects.
10. TRUE or FALSE? fMRI scans of the brain activity of patients under the influence of hallucinogens in the aforementioned clinical trials are different from scans taken of advanced meditators. This lends additional confirmation to philosopher Steven Katz’s claim that drug experiences are not the same as mystical experiences.
ANSWERS
a
b
False – there is no psychological test that can distinguish between a brainwashed and non-brainwashed person. This leads most academics to reject the brainwashing explanation for some conversion experiences.
False – Starbuck’s study of conversion led him to conclude that this type of experience typically involves the successful resolution of an identity crisis similar to that often experienced by adolescents.
True – though sceptically inclined, Persinger has stated in interviews with two journalists (Ian Cotton and John Horgan) that he is not trying to ‘dismiss God’ but simply trying to understand the part of the brain that is implicated in religious experience.
True
True
b – It was brain scans of Buddhists doing meditation and Carmelite nuns in prayer that revealed this, not Hindus practising yoga. Note also in relation to d that although Dawkins did indeed try Persinger’s helmet and it failed to work on him, his experience is not especially significant because it is that of one individual.
True
False – the fact that brain scans of Christian Carmelite nuns in prayer are similar to those of Buddhist meditators (a discovery made by the neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman) further suggests that Katz may be incorrect about there being a lack of a common core to mystical experiences, though this commonality can only be said to exist at the neurological level.