My sensus divinitatus is broke.
Jesus and Mo have discovered Al Plantinga and the results are, as usual, hysterical. Maybe, like Richard Dawkins, my temporal lobe is just not sensitive enough to the magnetic vibrations of the Almighty?
My Newberry Library course began this past Thursday and I have a phenomenal group of 18 people who signed up to slog through William James and read Andrew Newberg and the ideas of religious mystics in their own words.
I’m trying to compile a decent introductory bibliography to the topic of religious mysticism and neuroscience as I go, to hand out to the students at the end. I’ll also post it here when it’s complete.
I intentionally chose the selections from James and the topic–mysticism–because I thought it would grab people’s attention and fit into a lot of current news. However, I am wishing that we had time to look at the rest of James’ Varieties, which focuses on the distinction between the healthy-minded and sick-souled religion, and the process of conversion. Even though I poke fun at Plantinga (and I disagree with him), it isn’t fair to reduce his understanding of sensus divinitatus to magnetic vibrations in the temporal lobe.
I think it’s more of an interpretive stance towards reality, which means that theists view events as having inherent meaning and being causally connected to god. So while mystical experiences may prod some individuals into theistic belief, it’s usually the other way around, that there is a propensity to interpret experiences as causally bound to god’s agency, and that leads the way to seek after union with him, etc.
Of course, there are the seemingly “ex nihilo” experiences to contend with which falsify this theory. That’s why James struggled with how radical religious events seemed to transcend their momentary impact and influence the individual’s lives from that point on. Would a mere physical cause, like epilepsy, have this kind of meaning accompanying it, especially if the person doesn’t already have a belief in god or religious views?
Some controversial experiments using psychedelic drugs seem to suggest they might (that is, if we take the assumption that god is not using the opportunity to work through the drugs in these studies).