Let’s define a mystical experience first. Dan Merkur, author of Gnosis: An Esoteric Tradition of Mystical Visions and Unions, lists the five most common symptoms of a mystical experience (from The God Part of the Brain, pg 134)

• a sense of unity or totality
• a sense of timelessness
• a sense of having encountered ultimate reality
• a sense of sacredness
• a sense that one can not adequately describe the richness of their experience

I was deeply religious as a child, from about age 4 to 12. I was so terrified of burning in hell that I was baptized 3 times in 3 different churches. I went to Sunday school, church, bible camp, I sang hymns, I prayed, I studied and read my bible, and had bible lessons for a short while. But in all those years, I never once had a mystical experience. I never felt god. I never felt the touch of the divine.

After I gave up on religion, I wandered from one spiritual practice to the next. I meditated, I practiced all kinds of energy woo, I sat in circles with others and we prayed and chanted, I sat in a sweat lodge and chanted and drummed and sweated. I tried my hand at everything I could think of. I had heard others talk about connecting with the divine, of having mystical experiences. But in those many years of spiritual searching and experience, I never felt anything mystical. I never felt a sense of timelessness, or one with the universe. I never felt a sense of sacredness or ultimate reality. Not once.

Maybe, unlike 85% (or more) of humanity, my god gene is turned off. So, I thought I’d ask you a few questions. You can answer by email or in the comments below. But I’d love to know the following:

1. Have you ever had a mystical experience?
2. If you had a mystical experience would you consider it religious (pertaining to God), or spiritual (more universal, not religious), or just a brain phenomenon at the time and after contemplation?
3. Did the mystical experience cause you to seek out a way to try to make it happen again? Did it make you try to be more religious or spiritual in some way?
4. If you have experienced something mystical, are you still spiritual or religious now? Is that in part because of your experience in any way?
5. If you had a mystical experience and you’re now an atheist, how did you reconcile that with being a nonbeliever now? Did it make it harder to lose your faith, do you think?
6. Are you like me? Have you never experienced anything like what I’ve described?
7. If you’ve never had a mystical experience, do you think that has made it easier for you to be a nonbeliever?
8. If you’ve never had a mystical experience and you’re religious or spiritual, how does that make you feel? Are you actively searching for this experience that others are having and you are not?
9. Do you have anything to add that I didn’t think of?

Thanks in advance to anyone who takes the time to answer these questions. I’m wondering if it’s just me who is devoid of the mystical, or if maybe there is a correlation to those of us who don’t believe in any gods.

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People Reject Popular Opinions If They Already Hold Opposing Views: A new study suggests people often grow more confident in some beliefs when they find out later that a majority of people disagree with them. “It may be that you feel proud because you were able to disprove, in your own mind, an opinion that most people have accepted. You actually become doubly sure you were right.”
Previous research has shown that majority opinion has the greatest influence on people when they consider issues that aren’t that important to them or issues they don’t want to spend much effort thinking about. Minority opinion does have influence sometimes, but mostly on issues which people are motivated to consider carefully. However, previous work had focused on situations in which people found out the majority opinion before they had given the issue much thought. “People may be thinking that ‘if I can find the flaws in a position that the majority of people believe, then my thoughts must really be good ones.’”
One key to this finding is that people have to think about the issue first, and develop their own ideas. Learning later that a majority of people hold a certain view, after you have already made up your mind, functions to help you validate what you already think about that issue.

To Make One Happy, Make One Busy: A new study found that people who have something to do, even something pointless, are happier than people who sit idly. …people like being busy, and they like being able to justify being busy — to benefit society.

~If you read the write-up, I’d love your opinion on how this conclusion was made. I basically agree with the conclusion that keeping busy leads to feeling happier than just being idle, but I question how the conclusion was made, at least from the write-up.

What You Say About Others Says a Lot About You: How positively you see others is linked to how happy, kind-hearted and emotionally stable you are. The researchers found a person’s tendency to describe others in positive terms is an important indicator of the positivity of the person’s own personality traits. They discovered particularly strong associations between positively judging others and how enthusiastic, happy, kind-hearted, courteous, emotionally stable and capable the person describes oneself and is described by others. The study also found that how positively you see other people shows how satisfied you are with your own life, and how much you are liked by others.
In contrast, negative perceptions of others are linked to higher levels of narcissism and antisocial behavior. “The simple tendency to see people negatively indicates a greater likelihood of depression and various personality disorders. Given that negative perceptions of others may underlie several personality disorders, finding techniques to get people to see others more positively could promote the cessation of behavior patterns associated with several different personality disorders simultaneously.” This research suggests that when you ask someone to rate the personality of a particular coworker or acquaintance, you may learn as much about the rater providing the personality description as the person they are describing. The level of negativity the rater uses in describing the other person may indeed indicate that the other person has negative characteristics, but may also be a tip off that the rater is unhappy, disagreeable, neurotic — or has other negative personality traits. …By evaluating the raters and how they evaluated their peers again one year later, Wood found compelling evidence that how positively we tend to perceive others in our social environment is a highly stable trait that does not change substantially over time.

Breeding Is Changing Dog Brains: Scientists have shown that selective breeding of domestic dogs is not only dramatically changing the way animals look but is also driving major changes in the canine brain. The brains of many short-snouted dog breeds have rotated forward as much as 15 degrees, while the brain region controlling smell has fundamentally relocated. No other animal has enjoyed the level of human affection and companionship like the dog, nor undergone such a systemic and deliberate intervention in its biology through breeding, the authors note. The diversity suggests a unique level of plasticity in the canine genome. “Canines seem to be incredibly responsive to human intervention through breeding. It’s amazing that a dog’s brain can accommodate such large differences in skull shape through these kinds of changes — it’s something that hasn’t been documented in other species.” …”The next obvious step is to try to find out if these changes in brain organisation are also linked to systematic differences in dogs’ brain function.”

Synthetic Bone Graft Recruits Stem Cells for Faster Bone Healing: A new study shows how particles of a ceramic called calcium phosphate have the ability to stimulate promising bone regrowth by attracting stem cells and ‘growth factors’ to promote healing and the integration of the grafted tissue. “The rate of bone repair we see with these materials rivals that of traditional grafts using a patients’ own bone. And what sets it apart from other synthetic graft substitutes is its ability to attract stem cells and the body’s natural growth factors, which coincide to form new, strong, natural bone around an artificial graft.” …The study suggests that biomaterials-based bone grafts can manipulate cell behaviour in order to repair injury, and one day may be used to repair bone injuries in humans.

Latest ‘Green’ Packing Material? Mushrooms; Packing Foam Engineered from Mushrooms and Agricultural Waste: A new packing material that grows itself is now appearing in shipped products across the country. The composite of inedible agricultural waste and mushroom roots is called Mycobond™, and its manufacture requires just one eighth the energy and one tenth the carbon dioxide of traditional foam packing material. And unlike most foam substitutes, when no longer useful, it makes great compost in the garden.

Mining Bacterial Genomes Reveals Valuable ‘Hidden’ Drugs: Scientists successfully used a ‘genome mining’ approach to find and activate a group of genes in the bacterium Streptomyces coelicolor. This resulted in the production of a new antibacterial compound that was effective against several bacterial strains, including Escherichia coli. Streptomyces is a common soil bacterium that is well-known for its antibiotic-producing capabilities. In 2002, genomic sequencing of one Streptomyces species, S. coelicolor, revealed several groups of genes whose function was unknown. By digging deeper and removing a molecule that specifically inactivates one of the mystery gene groups, known as cpk, the researchers in this study were able to ‘awaken’ the genes, to find that they produced the new antibiotic, in addition to a bright yellow pigment. This is the first time a genome mining approach to drug discovery has been successfully used in Streptomyces. The same approach for ‘awakening’ new antibiotic production pathways could also be used to tap other micro-organisms, such as filamentous fungi, for sources of biologically active compounds. Aside from antibiotics, these compounds may include other antimicrobials or antitumour agents. “There are several thousand other uncharacterized groups of genes that have been found recently in microbial genome sequences. This opens up a rich treasure trove of new potential drugs for clinical use.”

One High-Fat Diet, Two Different Outcomes: The Path to Obesity Becomes Clearer: Why is it that two people can consume the same high fat, high-calorie Western diet and one becomes obese and prone to diabetes while the other maintains a slim frame? A study provides a simple explanation: weight is set before birth in the developing brain. The research team analyzed the question in specific groups of rats. …animals that become obese already had a significant difference in the feeding center of the brain. Neurons that are supposed to signal when you’ve eaten enough and when to burn calories, are much more sluggish in these animals because they are inhibited by other cells. In animals resistant to obesity, these satiety signaling neurons are much more active and ready to signal to the rest of the brain and peripheral tissues when enough food has been consumed. “These observations add to the argument that it is less about personal will that makes a difference in becoming obese, and, it is more related to the connections that emerge in our brain during development.”

Obesity Prevention Begins Before Birth: Excess Maternal Weight Gain Increases Birth Weight After Controlling for Genetic Factors: Expectant mothers who gain large amounts of weight tend to give birth to heavier infants who are at higher risk for obesity later in life. But it’s never been proven that this tendency results from the weight gain itself, rather than genetic or other factors that mother and baby share. “Since high birth weight, in turn, increases risk for obesity and diseases such as cancer and asthma later in life, these findings have important implications to general public health.”
…Animal studies suggest that excess maternal weight or excess weight gain during pregnancy affects the uterine environment, producing changes in the hypothalamus, pancreatic islet cells, fat tissue and other systems that regulate body weight. “Hormones and metabolic pathways, and even the structure of tissues and organs that play a role in body weight maintenance are affected.”

Gum Inflammation Linked to Alzheimer’s Disease: The study offers fresh evidence that gum inflammation may contribute to brain inflammation, neurodegeneration, and Alzheimer’s disease.

Brain Study Shows That Thinking About God Reduces Distress, But Only for Believers: Thinking about God may make you less upset about making errors, according to a new study. The researchers measured brain waves for a particular kind of distress-response while participants made mistakes on a test. Those who had been prepared with religious thoughts had a less prominent response to mistakes than those who hadn’t. The researchers showed that when people think about religion and God, their brains respond differently, in a way that lets them take setbacks in stride and react with less distress to anxiety-provoking mistakes. The results showed that when people were primed to think about religion and God, either consciously or unconsciously, brain activity decreases in areas consistent with the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), an area associated with a number of things, including regulating bodily states of arousal and serving an alerting function when things are going wrong, including when we make mistakes.
Interestingly, atheists reacted differently; when they were unconsciously primed with God-related ideas, their ACC increased its activity. The researchers suggest that for religious people, thinking about God may provide a way of ordering the world and explaining apparently random events and thus reduce their feelings of distress. In contrast, for atheists, thoughts of God may contradict the meaning systems they embrace and thus cause them more distress.
“Thinking about religion makes you calm under fire. It makes you less distressed when you’ve made an error. We think this can help us understand some of the really interesting findings about people who are religious. Although not unequivocal, there is some evidence that religious people live longer and they tend to be happier and healthier.” Atheists shouldn’t despair, though. “We think this can occur with any meaning system that provides structure and helps people understand their world.” Maybe atheists would do better if they were primed to think about their own beliefs, he says.

~My initial thoughts on this: Of course atheists were more agitated after reading the god related ideas! What did they expect? That the atheists would suddenly find comfort in that insanity? I think the conclusions for atheists is offensively patronizing. Maybe I’m just irritated by how the study was conducted. It would suggest to me that religious people can easily make mistakes and their religious thoughts make them more accepting of their mistakes. This doesn’t seem like a positive reaction. When you screw up you should have a reaction, in my opinion.

Also, is it true that religious people live longer and are happier? Is there evidence for that? Most atheists I know are quite happy, and more importantly, not delusional. Then again, in support of the study’s conclusions, the atheists I know who are relatively happy all have very strong value systems that give their lives meaning. I can also speak for myself that this is the case. Atheism only starts with a lack of belief in god. It doesn’t mean we don’t have strong values in the real world that give our lives meaning in other areas away from anything supernatural.

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The Newsletter is funny too. I recommend it.

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To start out, the definition I am using for god is any given being that can supposedly create matter out of nothing, is omnipotent, and is unbound by physical spatial traits. Furthermore I derive that an omnipotent god constitutes as an unstoppable force or can be the causation of such. The existence of such a god forms my hypothesis (which I will regard as true for this proof); therefore the following mainly concerns itself with monotheistic brands of gods.

Using the above traits, the god from my hypothesis could create an object of infinite size and maximum density. This theoretical object would literally fill the entirety of the universe, with every small speck of space filled with matter. This rock constitutes as an immovable object as there is nowhere left to move the rock and thus it is incapable of movement. As an aside it happens that god can create an object so large that he cannot move it.

However the existence of an immovable object by definition means that an unstoppable force cannot also exist. Since that is a part of the definition of god outlined above, I therefore must reject the hypothesis and assert that such a god cannot and does not exist. In particular a god that can create matter unrestrained cannot also be omnipotent in all regards.

Simple, short, and sweet… but the devil is in the details (ha ha). Any god with boundaries and limitations obviously escapes the above, but from my experience that’s the last thing any monotheist will even begin to contemplate (god being the biggest baddest supernatural being that ever was—who also happened to create everything—just isn’t enough, seemingly god must also have limitless power and ability). So please qualify objections to the below considerations.

1)      Can god create an object so large even he cannot move it?

The answer given above is yes. To disagree, please provide what way the following proof is inaccurate and give an alternative:

a)      Definition: god is omnipotent (omnipresent as well).
b)      Definition: god can create matter anywhere out of nothing.
c)       Action: god creates matter everywhere he exists / in all space.
d)      Analysis: there is nowhere left to move the object, thus…
e)      Conclusion: god can create an object so large that he cannot move it.

It is a very logical progression given omnipotence that does not limit god in any way. Please refrain from self-defeating arguments, god cannot create space no matter how capable he is as space is nothing. I literally mean nothing, it doesn’t exist—it is the default before anything is created or exists there. Furthermore adding a step between c and d is self-defeating as well (such as removing a portion of the object to create space to move it) as it implies that before god does something to it the object is immovable.

2)      Infinity and Gravity

The first thing to note is that the matter in the object from the proof is countable infinity and the force is not. Infinity in mathematics doesn’t actually exist either, so any mathematical attempts should have both these considerations explained with it. I’d also like to add here that a theoretically infinite object is at equilibrium and has no center, so that should take care of gravity qualms.

3)      Hilbert’s Hotel Paradox

Hilbert’s Hotel paradox refers to a hotel with infinite rooms each filled with a guest (so full). However the hotel can accommodate infinitely more guests by putting a new guest in room 1 by having the guest in room 1 move to room 2, the guest in room 2 to room 3, and so on for each new guest. The conceptual flaw to this problem is that the hotel isn’t actually accommodating more guests; it’s just that there are now guests infinitely transitioning rooms. In other words the number of guests in rooms did not increase. This paradox cannot apply to the infinite object due to the incapability of having a transitional progression.

4)      Beyond Reason

Please refrain from trying to tell me god is not understandable by human reason. Realize that there would be no correct religion if that was the case as no religion understands god, and there would be no assertions that god exists because it would be beyond reasoning. Besides religions often like to claim we were created in the image of god, thus cannot be outside of our reasoning. I’m going to make an assertion that anybody who asserts such doesn’t actually believe it… By saying god is beyond reason, nobody could then assert that anything above is wrong since it would be beyond their reasoning as well.

There we go, I think that covers all the rift-raft arguments. Let the fun begin!

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I know not all of you like to listen to podcasts. So I went through it and transcribed a good chunk of what Luke said in his lecture, the parts that I thought were most important. I have a few thoughts afterward. By the way, I missed the beginning for reasons I can’t remember (this took me a couple of days to make it all make sense) but this is a lecture about Dr. Ernest Becker and Terror Management Theory.

Partial transcript:

…This is where we get neurotic about death. It’s the ultimate inferiority complex. Our lifespan is limited. We realize we must die but in striving to overcome that, it creates more problems. We put a lot of energy into denying death.

One way to summarize Becker’s theory: It’s good to have a brain that can plan for the future and be self-aware, but the problem is that when we become scared of our own mortality it sets up a defense against that. Part of the defense involves symbols. We think symbolically and so our symbols set up a barrier. These symbols can be religious, political, symbols of our mastery over the world, symbols of making money, etc.

What Becker thought was that culture itself is a buffer against these threats to our self esteem. We set up our belief in culture and human culture really is an attempt to deal with threats to our own mortality and our self esteem. So first, what is self esteem?

Self esteem is not just a product of you, individually. What Becker thought was that self esteem was something you get a sense of only through other people. So you think of yourself as a valued person who has powers, who can act upon the world, but that is socially validated by parents, siblings, peers, a gradually expanding group of people. This gets more abstract and symbolic as the child grows up. So as a young adult you might latch onto ideologies. For many people this is religion. You join a church and get a sense of what you need to do to be good or bad from those groups too. The good thing is that these groups give you clear guidelines to derive your self esteem.

This can be positive or negative. So if you don’t get positive reinforcement, you’ll look for self esteem and validation in other ways. So this is why people join cults and gangs, etc.

Hero Striving System: whatever you use to seek pride and superiority. Everyone does this in different ways. The system is different for different people but it all boils down to wanting to feel worthwhile.

So cultural symbols can provide a buffer against our mortality fear. How can I transcend death? This is Immortality Striving. It all boils down to “the end is not the end.” This could also be more abstract. Your cultural striving could be symbolic striving against death. You believe your genes and your legacy will pass down even after you die through your children. You create something that will last after your death, like a pyramid, or a lot of money, etc. You’re saying, “I was here, I mattered.” This maintains your self esteem.

Here’s where the problem comes in. If you are so invested in these strivings, in these worldviews to drive your self esteem, that means any threat to those worldviews, to that symbolic system, if they are poked at, is not trivial. This will poke at your self esteem. This person is challenging my worldview. And someone doesn’t even have to be mean to threaten you, because there are different worldviews. Every time you encounter a different person, a different culture, you see the standards of normal differ.

What Becker thought was that being presented with a different worldview is inherently threatening. Because if that guy’s right, he has a different worldview, he seems perfectly happy with his system, and it’s contradictory to my system, there’s a problem for my system.

So a lot of war, strife and prejudice was really about more than just “you’re different, I don’t like you, you have funny gods”, but it’s a threat to our self esteem. So if he’s right, I’m not going to heaven, or there isn’t a heaven.

So an atheist’s world view is very different and therefore very threatening.

People, when confronted with different worldviews have to find a way to deal with it. You can denigrate people (call them stupid); try to convert them to your worldview (proselytize or missionary work) – which validates your worldview and your self esteem; assimilate people – neutralizes the threat by getting them to give up part of it (Native Americans, etc);  accommodation – declaw the other worldview by incorporating some of their elements into ours (like blue jeans, hippy symbols, etc) in a very sterilized sort of way; or annihilate the other worldview – genocide, stamping out everything about the American Indians, even their buffalo, don’t let them speak their own language, etc.

Here’s where Terror Management Theory comes in, with empirical testing. There are 2 main predictions to test:

1. If we threaten someone with mortality thoughts, if we remind them of death, that should result in compensatory response to bolster their worldview.

Mortality Salience Hypothesis (around the 30 minute mark)

2. If we poke at someone’s worldview and suggest that they may not be correct, we should see an increase in their death anxiety. They might become more fearful of their own mortality if their worldviews are challenged in some way.

From the clip of the video, Life and Death: Flight From Death: The Quest for Immortality (video on demand), Flight From Death – The Quest for Immortality (dvd)

The first component of TMT states that individuals need to sustain faith in a meaningful worldview.  The second component states that individuals need to feel as though they are value protected members, objects of significance within this worldview. This is self esteem.

Talk of politics and what kinds of leaders people will choose when their mortality feels threatened: (39 minute mark). (there is a polarizing effect)

There is a reciprocal relationship between threats and my own mortality and worldview.

49:00 – more religious studies: Here’s an interesting one. A group of high fundamentalists (believing in biblical literalism) were confronted with contradictions in the bible, they unconsciously thought about their own mortality more.

What does that mean? What’s at stake? It goes a bit deeper than they just want the bible to be perfect and literal, or that they want to preserve a belief in doctrine. When people are defending religious concepts, their worldview is at stake. When someone pokes at their belief and says your belief isn’t true, or here is evidence against your views, it’s more than just a contradiction of these facts, it’s an emotional reaction the person is going to have because that is their ticket to immortality. It raises fears of their own death when those are challenged.

52:30 – creation and evolution worldview studied with similar results. Creationists who had their worldview threatened had higher unconscious death fears.

Implications: why won’t people accept data on evolution? This study would imply that it’s not simple bullheadedness or dogmatism, it cuts deeper than that. From a TMT perspective, these people are defending their worldview. This is what keeps mortality fears in check. If someone comes along and pokes at that worldview it’s not just a matter of intellectual debate anymore, this is an actual threat to their sense of symbolic immortality.

55:00 Dual nature to mortality salience. Studies show that if you show the positive aspects of a religion, for example, then expose them to mortality salience, the people end up defending a worldview that is more accepting. So religion and politics might contain mixed positive and negative messages. If the positive ones are primed and made more active, the person when under threat defends those more too.

So mortality salience isn’t all about doom and gloom and threats. What this would imply is that, it depends on what message is accentuated.

57:20 What about atheists, who don’t have a worldview of literal immortality? Does that mean that we’re immune from the effects of death threats because we’re not expecting to live for the resurrection, or be reincarnated? That is, we are probably not using that as a security blanket. Essentially Becker says it  doesn’t matter – “It doesn’t matter whether their cultural hero system is frankly magical, religious and primitive, or secular, scientific and civilized. It’s still a mythical hero system in which people serve in order to earn a feeling of primary value, of unshakable meaning. Civilized society is a hopeful belief and a protest that science, money and goods make man count for more than any other animal. In this sense, everything that man does is religious.” So there are just as many non-theistic, nonreligious worldviews that can be defended as religious worldviews. For example, the cult of Stalinism and Mao. Or other things people value like human rights, humanism, science: these things are also worldviews that are defended because they give our life meaning.

Somebody might not say, “I’m going to go to heaven, that’s the only thing that would matter to me”, but they might say that they support these values. That’s their ticket to immortality. So this has the same effect. If anyone pokes at the Bill of Rights, messes with Jefferson, or says that science doesn’t matter, to many people who have a naturalistic worldview that would be just as threatening as people who have religious worldviews. So these theories don’t just apply to people who have supernatural or religious worldviews.

1:00:00 What should people do with this information? The denial of death in our culture is particularly strong. So one way to deal with that is to learn to have a worldview that acknowledges mortality on a regular basis. Live more consciously with those reminders everyday, not in a negative or morbid sense, but in a sense that this is part of life. “This is going to happen to me, and I’m going to make life count now, instead of saying I can transcend and cheat death.”

Also, choose ideologies that don’t rely upon the strident defense of “that guy is threatening my worldview, I’m going to wipe him out”. Ideologies don’t have to be threatening to other people. Make the unconscious conscious. Recognize that this is a bulwark to my worldviews, to recognize when you see a commercial, a political package, or a doctrine that this is really more than what it says. It’s actually a worldview defense. If we make that conscious, we can recognize what it is that we’re doing when we do it. So then we can take a step back and say, “I’m going too far. I’m defending myself against my own sense of insignificance by doing this action.”

1:02:13 There are ways you can strive for immortality in a nondestructive way. It doesn’t necessarily mean you have to strive against other peoples’ worldviews. Find positive ways to find meaning for your lives through positive ways to defend your worldview; charity, supporting other people, etc.

~

If you’ve made it through the transcript and are still with me, congratulations. This isn’t the most fun topic, and this post is really long. But it does have huge implications and can really help us in understanding our own motivations as well as how other people are dealing with their own fears and thoughts.

I have a followup, also by Dr. Luke Galen and the rest of the Reasonable Doubts crew, that will give us some very practical advice in dealing with people and their dogmatic beliefs. But this post was plenty long enough, so I thought I’d save it for later.

I welcome your thoughts.

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Very funny stuff! If you’re new to Mr. Deity, I recommend starting at the beginning at Season 1. Go to MrDeity.com and watch them all.

Also, there’s a Newsletter you can get now.

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God:

~ Found Here.

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