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Brain -> RE: Define God (8/5/2009 8:51:50 PM)
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GOD DEFINED BY SAUL OR ST. PAUL
Is the brain hardwired for religion?
Religion is one of the three things you're never supposed to talk about if you don't want your dinner party to turn into a food fight. But what about looking at religion through the lens of science instead of faith? Is there a connection between our gray matters and our pray matters?
It started out as an ordinary day for Saul back in A.D. 36. He wanted to murder disciples of a man who claimed to be the Messiah, and he was on his way to Damascus to do so. Then, on the way to Damascus, a light flashed all around Saul. He fell to the ground and heard a voice that claimed to be Jesus Christ. The voice told him to continue to the town, a task likely made no easier by the blindness Saul experienced when he got up. Saul remained blind for three days, until a disciple named Ananias laid hands upon him. Saul's sight was restored, and he immediately became baptized. After his experience, Saul became a powerful preacher for Jesus; today, he's better known as St. Paul.
Paul's story is interesting not just to biblical scholars, but to neuro-scientists as well. Some scientists claim that the account of this conversion, found in the book of Acts, contains enough evidence to diagnose Paul with temporal lobe epilepsy. The flash of light, the voices and the fall to the ground are the evidence of a seizure, according to these neuroscientists, with the blindness a result of the postictal state that follows a seizure [source: Brorson, Brewer]. While most doctors agree that it's impossible to diagnose epilepsy definitively in someone who lived so long ago, Paul would join some other religious figures reputed to have brain disorders, including Moses and St. Teresa of Avila [sources: BBC, Begley].
http://health.howstuffworks.com/brain-religion.htm
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