Documentary Description
Rudi Affolter and Gwen Tighe have both experienced strong religious
visions. He is an atheist; she a Christian. He thought he had died; she
thought she had given birth to Jesus. Both have temporal lobe epilepsy.
Like
other forms of epilepsy, the condition causes fitting but it is also
associated with religious hallucinations. Research into why people like
Rudi and Gwen saw what they did has opened up a whole field of brain
science: neurotheology.
The connection between the
temporal lobes of the brain and religious feeling has led one Canadian
scientist to try stimulating them. (They are near your ears.) 80% of Dr
Michael Persinger's experimental subjects report that an artificial
magnetic field focused on those brain areas gives them a feeling of
'not being alone'. Some of them describe it as a religious sensation.
His
work raises the prospect that we are programmed to believe in god, that
faith is a mental ability humans have developed or been given. And
temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) could help unlock the mystery.
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