I’ve seen many videos of people in many churches in many different religions start shaking around in church as if having a seizure or as if being present at a heavy metal concert (maybe your’ve seen this video - YouTube). Regardless, on physiological level, how and why do people sometimes say that “I feel God inside me”? Is it because of propaganda since childhood and peer pressure/influence? I’d really like to hear some ideas. :dubious:
What exactly are you skeptical of? There are all sorts of altered mental states that can make people feel like they are having religious/spiritual experiences that have nothing to do with the supernatural. I remember watching a show on the Science Channel where researchers were using brain stimulation to induce just such a feeling, and their data seemed to indicate that it works.
People can become deeply and emotionally involved in ritual during religious ceremonies, and I think that (scientifically) accounts for the ‘Feeling God’s Presence’ feelings that folks get. The mind is a really powerful tool, and our bodies have all sorts of really good drugs for this sort of thing built right in. And that doesn’t even get into external intoxicants, which, based on some of the Southern Revival type things I’ve been too, shouldn’t be automatically discounted, despite prohibitions to the contrary. 
-XT
The closest I’ve ever felt god was when I was put on percocets for a particularly bad kidney stone.
Of course the shaking and convulsions were from the agony of renal colic, but I swear god was hugging my soul while riding a unicorn.
Otherwise, what xtisme said combined with social/peer pressure, herd mentality, and if they’re not entirely putting on a show, I believe if you can bring yourself to a point of being completely uninhibited, with a strong desire to just completely “let loose”, all sorts of weird shit can manifest itself. And with a slobbering preacher laying hands on you screaming “Glory to GAWD!” it has a tendency to really goad certain people on to an extreme degree. Whether these people really believe it’s actually god or not is another matter.
“Deep emotional involvement,” “altered mental states”, pretty much sums it up. That sort of behavior was common in the so-called “Holiness” church that I was raised in. People would engage in some astonishing, sometimes downright laughable behavior but I guess it made them feel good. It’s all well and good to single out the religious nuts, but I’ve seen the same kind of nuttery at college football games, horse races, even political rallies. Not to mention the legions of fans that used to piss their pants at Beatles concerts…
SS
But, how do you know that has nothing to do with the supernatural?
I think for some people the desire or need to feel as if they felt God’s presence is so strong they convince themsleves. I used to run sound in a church where people were getting smacked in the head and falling down while the preacher and his wife babbled in tongues. It never felt like the presence of God to me.
OTOH , I have moments of profound peace, understanding , forgiveness, insight, and love, that certainly felt like connecting to something more than myself. I wouldn’t swear it was God, but I can understand people feeling that it is.
I think the point is not that, because a phenomenon can be explained scientifically, it cannot possibly have a supernatural explanation. I think the point is that supernatural explanations are unnecessary and kind of silly when natural explanations will do.
While I’d be hard-pressed to conclusively demonstrate that light bulbs don’t occasionally glow because of God’s glory rather than a more pedestrian explanation like the bulk movement of electrons heating a filament, one explanation is so much better than the other that I feel good about saying, “electric lighting has nothing to do with the supernatural.”
What does God need with a unicorn ?
He likes to be “flashy”.
Well, the scientists don’t actually know what is going on inside the subject’s brain, do they, when they use brain stimulation to “induce the feeling” of a religious experience? It may be that what they’re doing is forcing-open the part of the brain that perceives objectively existent spiritual forces/beings.
Not that I believe that, I’m as skeptical as you are, and your explanation is the more parsimonius and Occam’s-razored; I’m just playing the angel’s advocate for the sake of argument here.
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton]
But, how do you know that has nothing to do with the supernatural?
[/QUOTE]
Because the word ‘supernatural’ implies it’s outside of nature, and natural laws. If I can stimulate your brain (while you weren’t pigging out) in the same way and get the same results enough times that it takes chance out of the equation (and if I could do it in a double blind study with multiple other groups being able to replicate my results) then it’s, by definition, NOT ‘supernatural’. It’s a natural part of the brain(glutton). Now, it COULD be that stimulating your brain in a specific, repeatable way opens up a radio link directly to God or the gods or whatever, but that would have to be a hypothesis that is put forth and then tested separately, and to me (who has only a limited understanding of how the brain works), it would be the equivalent of saying that when you flip on a light switch that the little people run along the wires to light the bulb. 
[QUOTE=trabajábamos]
I think the point is not that, because a phenomenon can be explained scientifically, it cannot possibly have a supernatural explanation. I think the point is that supernatural explanations are unnecessary and kind of silly when natural explanations will do.
[/QUOTE]
Exactly.
-XT
I felt god’s presence after ingesting some mushrooms. But I recognized the experience for what it was, and remain an atheist.
That’s why they’re called entheogens.
Indeed. It’s good to see healthy skepticism used the other way; in that, as you put it, “playing the angel’s advocate” helps to think deeper about what we do and don’t know about the brain and it’s manifestations.
Anecdote Warning:
Years ago, my favorite (and particularly hilarious) uncle was discussing his recent visit with his sister-in-law. She’s been plagued with schizophrenia her whole life, and mentioned that she believed something totally absurd (I forget what it was exactly), Something like she could read the mind of her cat.
It was disheartening to hear, but being a laid back, facetious type, he quipped, “Yeh, crazy… but hey, maybe she can read her cat’s mind… I dunno.”
/Anecdote
Okay, maybe you had to be there… but Occam’s Razor reasoning aside, there’s some merit to his comment (even though he was clearly joking). That when it comes to our minds, and how we’re wired, what makes us all tick, and in so many different and profound ways, how we percieve reality and ultimately how it manifests in our behaviors, lies a very deep and twisted rabbit’s hole.
And that’s why you are BrainGlutton?
Oh, I got that. And while I enjoy navel-gazing as much as anyone, it seems to me that ultimately people must either prune the Bush Of Possibilities with an eye to deliciously rational ThoughtBerries or stand back and watch that thing spiral into an unworkable thicket of confusion.
He’s horny.
Sometimes I wonder if the religious can figure this one out as it applies to people of other religions. That is… many people base their faith on a subjective feeling of a presence of god in their life.
But there are people from completely different, contradictory religious who just as sincerely claim to feel the presence of god in their life.
So I wonder if they actually have the critical tools of thinking “well, their god isn’t real obviously, but they’re not lying about their faith, so they must’ve twisted their mind into believing something that isn’t real”, but then exclude themselves from the same analysis by thinking “well of course my god is real”.
He thinks they can get him a starship.
Well, Jack Chick would explain that any spiritual experience that is not of God, is of Satan, and just as real. (And, of course, any spiritual experience/belief/practice outside the limits of Jack Chick’s idiosyncratic form of Protestant Christianity is not of God, and is of Satan. That includes Freemasonry, Dungeons & Dragons, and rock ‘n’ roll music.)