Challenges from Science

• What are the four significant challenges to religious experiences from science?

  • Freud: Wish Fulfillment
  • Temporal Lobe Epilepsy
  • support for TLE from neuroscience
  • drug use
• Who came up with wish fulfillment?

  Freud
• When was freud alive?

  1856-1939
• What were Freud's views on religion?

  Scathing
• According to Freud, what is religion?

  Wish Fulfilment: controls the fear of the unknown and death
• What does Freud say fears of the unknown and death are?

  infantile and neurotic
• Responses to freud

  • wish fulfilment= a hypothesis
  • doesn't prove that experiences are false
• Temporal Lobe Epilepsy


  • prone to religious experience
  • some say saint paul had TLE
• What indicated that Saint Paul had TLE?

  saw a bright light, fell on the floor and heard a voice
• Response to TLE

  If God wants people to have religious experiences, they must be processed somewhere
• How does the God Helmet criticise religious experiences?

  • it causes mystical states and visions
  • purely through stimulating the temporal lobe via magnetic coils
• who invented the God Helmet?

  Michael Persinger
• Responses to science

  • the mind can generate religious experiences and interact with God
  • most christians hold that God is personal and relates to people in many ways
• What did William James say about the universe?

  "The universe is not composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living presence"