The God helmet

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Found this mentioned in that same book by Michio Kaku (Physics of the Impossible) that I talked about recently. Some Dr Michael Persinger found that there's a neural center in the right half of the brain which, when stimulated with electromagnetic waves, causes the subject to feel an alien presence.

"Persinger reports that at least 80 percent of his participants (working with the Koren Helmet) experience a presence beside them in the room, which ranges from a simple 'sensed presence' to 'God'."

Wikipedia - God Helmet

Here's the relevant excerpt from a documentary which deals with this discovery:

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Dr Persinger went on as far as to create the so-called "God helmet", a device which, when put on the subject's head, could stimulate said neural center and cause the subject to hallucinate, and feel that someone else was in the room with them. The scientist interprets this as some kind of "division" (or breaking of the symmetry) between the two halves of the brain, a disruption of the links between them and thus, each half starts to perceive the other as an "alien" entity. Ghost, poltergeist, angels, even God. Depending on the cultural background of the particular individual who's being examined.

Now, imagine that this is what happens to an individual in deep Antiquity. What if a select apprentice gifted with particular talent is trained in a Buddhist monastery by some yogi who have learned how to unlock this neural center through physical and mental exercises, then goes back to his country and starts preaching their wisdom and spreading a very topical (for the time) and socially relevant (for his society) message among his people, while using such yogi tricks on people? Would he possibly be perceived as an "enlightened" one, a Messiah, a person possessing divine powers and thus having the authority to speak on behalf of a divine boss? And how would that reflect on said society, and on the chances of establishing a new faith, with its institutions, adherents and all in all, of changing the course of history?

You know what? Fuck that. Let's strike off that part about the Messiah. You guys are right. I should've never had the audacity to even consider implying such a theory is right. You know what? It isn't. Let's say a guy went somewhere, met some people, they taught him some tricks, then he used them on the populace. Let's say his name was... well, let's say it was Muad-dib. OK?

Just curious: Does this hypothesis about the possible inception of religious systems sound too far-fetched, too Dan Brownish to you? Back to you, folks.

Comments

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

First, you have to convince me that any of Jesus's message that is congruent with Buddhism or Hinduism and not equally congruent with 1st century Judaism.

Good luck with that.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

I'd leave that to our resident theologians, thanks. I'd like to stick to the arbitrary hypothetical part. ;)

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Why would that be a requirement? Why would there necessarily be a message that's specifically congruent with those and not Judaism?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

How would you prove the theory otherwise? The implication is that Jesus undertook a decade long mission to India where he studied with yogi and Buddhist priests. Lacking archaeological or textual evidence to make this idea believable you need to find something in Jesus's message and say, "Aha! That can only be Buddhism!!" and I can't simply pull out my Bible and point to a direct analogy in the Old Testament. Jesus didn't need to travel to Uttar Pradesh to learn what could have easily been found in the local Nazareth synagogue.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

The issue is that such evidence might prove it true, but lack of such evidence doesn't prove it false. Know what I mean?

The reason its plausible is there is so much crossover in philosophy around the time. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greco-Buddhism

If one are to not assume the biblical narrative true, then its just as plausible that these new ideas came from the east as anywhere. I wouldn't call it proven by any means, but it's plausible.

A major issue is there's just not much evidence of jesus anyways.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Given that there is plenty of other evidence to the contrary, though, preferring the complicated "Indian Jesus" over the old fashioned "Jewish Jesus" isn't very logical. If you find a blue stone on the ground the first preference is to find a local pile of blue stones, not assume that a traveler from half way across the continent brought it there and lost it.

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

There isn't really plenty of other evidence to the contrary.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

Sure there is. There is 2,000 years of scholarship looking at the claims of Jesus from every conceivable angle and it is pretty straight forward conclusion. Whatever you think of his existence, or his divinity, or his validity of the ideas expressed in the Gospels and the rest of the New Testament. they are firmly rooted in 1st and 2nd century Judaism. No one seriously thinks there is evidence of Buddhist or Hindu influence. You can make conjectures all you want, it is a free country, but you might as well say the NT was influenced by Scandinavian or Mayan thought. Or Martian thought, for that matter.

[prog-expat.livejournal.com]

The NT is clearly influenced by the great philosopher J'onn J'onzz!

[the-rukh.livejournal.com]

Give me evidence. Not the bible.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I didn't give you "the Bible." I gave you the breadth of scholarship over centuries concerning the Bible. Textual studies, archaeology, paleography, manuscript studies, comparative literature, anthropology, etc., etc. Studies done by believers, disbelievers, skeptics from all different walks of life and thought, all of which seems to boil down to this, these works are a product of the Jewish culture around Palestine at about the beginning of the Common Era.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

What's your problem with hypotheses? If I had poised a hypothesis like "Let's say the Universe has been expanding exponentially for the last 13.7 billion years" and then asked "Where do you think it would end up", would you still demand me to provide "proof that it *is* expanding"? Wouldn't that render the very point of hypotheticals useless?

What if I said "imagine that you have a cat locked in a box", would you still respond with "but, but, PROVE that there's a cat in there!" ?

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

You could start small, like, proving that a small teapot is NOT orbiting the Sun somewhere within the Asteroid Belt.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

It could be. :)

However the initial hypothesis mentioned in the OP does rest on some points seen in popular documentaries, i.e. it's not something entirely pulled out of my sleeve while I was high on mushrooms.

Granted, I'm hardly the one with the expertise to try prove any of that wrong or right, but my point is, it is based on previously presented hypotheses (with some amount of alleged "evidence"), so I was somehow hoping that we'd focus on the implications from said hypothesis rather than the veracity of the hypothesis itself.

Surely, someone who doesn't feel like delving deeper into those implications could easily try to defeat the very hypothesis itself by stopping at the point of "Wait, first prove that this happened or I refuse to go on any further!", but I think that would be more like an attempt to torpedo the discourse in its infancy rather than trying to achieve anything constructive.

So which of those rhetorical tactics is your preference?

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

It's curious to watch how hard you're trying to get this thing back on-topic while almost everyone else is trying to derail it. It's either an uncomfortable thing to talk about, or people are just too bored to even bother doing the exercise.

And the fair answer is...

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

Fair enough (http://talk-politics.livejournal.com/1073398.html?thread=85743606#t85743606). You could've just said that you're not interested in exploring the above hypothesis that you deem unsubstantiated enough for your standards of discussion.

Moving on to the rape thread if you prefer so.

Re: The clever answer is...

[luvdovz.livejournal.com]

We could use this for starters,

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DXCZFRsyl8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T340DUSq9SY
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8cy8M4VzU-Y

, then proceed with the actual topic of the OP.

Or we could forever argue if that story is true or not and if the evidence is real or not etc etc et cetera. But that still wouldn't have touched the actual topic of the OP. At all. Your choice.

[htpcl.livejournal.com]

Your ideas seem interesting and I'd like to subscribe to your cookbook.

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

There is nothing wrong with hypotheses. But a hypotheses exists only to be proved or disproved by evidence. In the absence of any corroborating evidence a hypotheses is just... moot.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

hy·poth·e·sis (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/hypothesis)

1.
a proposition, or set of propositions, set forth as an explanation for the occurrence of some specified group of phenomena, either asserted merely as a provisional conjecture to guide investigation (working hypothesis) or accepted as highly probable in the light of established facts.

2.
a proposition assumed as a premise in an argument.

Now, care to address my working hypothesis, or shall we remain eternally stuck into semantic quibbles?

[policraticus.livejournal.com]

I did address it. I said the hypotheses did not sufficiently explain what about Jesus's message was peculiarly Buddhist, or Hindu and could not be otherwise understood as part of 1st Century Jewish thought. Ockham's Razor suggests that we shouldn't all go trooping off to the Hindu Kush for answers if there is a satisfactory explanation in Galilee.

[ddstory.livejournal.com]

See edit of post. Frankly, I'm a bit tired of defending a tangent.