NPR says that praying and meditating cause one's Parietal Lobe ("the sense of self" part) to go dark. Thoughts?

I have been listening to this every day now on OPB (Oregon Public Broadcasting) on their series on spirituality. Just because a bunch of neuroscientists can simulate spiritual effects, doesn't mean that God does not exist. In fact, all they are doing is proving that spirituality has dimensions they do not understand, but all they can do, as scientists, is to attribute it to a physical cause. When they cause the sensations and experiences to occur,.it may well be, that they are actually undergoing a real spiritual experience because it opened them up to that experieince through stimulation. In other words, the stimulation gave them an open door to experience what they were experieincing. So what they are doing isn't any kind of physical proof at all. It doesn't prove anything except in fact, that by stimulating certain parts of the brain, they are actually opening up the brain to experience what is REAL..not the other way around.

The atheists are using one side of the coin, so assume that because of these experiments, this proves there is no God or no spirituality, and its all just a hallucination or product of the brain as a physical object. The OTHER side of the argument is, that stimulating the brain OPENS UP THE DOOR to a real experience at the time it is being done and so all they are doing is massaging the brain, not creating the experience.

The article didn't say that shutting down the parietal lobe from meditating or praying is responsible for feeling God and one with the rest of life. What they meant is that part of the brain shuts down as a result of transcending their minds. That's why when people meditate long enough, they're brain changes it's shape and structure. That's because it's the brain that is responding to meditation or prayer, not the other way around.

We also know that when praying or listening to scripture from CT scans that that the area of the brain most active - is exactly the same area of the brain that deals with humour and deciding what is funny. (yes thats actually true!)

Religion and Humour the same thing? Well it'd explain a lot!

Fascinating article. A lot of the "answers" suggest that they either didn't read it all or they didn't understand it. But it certainly lends credibility to how many people describe their spiritual experiences.

Thanks for contributing something useful to this forum. (And by the way, I'm a Christian who prays. I'm also a semi-retired scientist.)

That's cuz Prayer and Meditation are similar practices. Each religion has a prayer ritual. Take the Whirling Dervishes. They spin around and around as their form of meditation and what not.

And yet studies on subjects who are charismatic nuns showed that the area of the brain responsible for healthy feelings about oneself, peace and joy all light up when the subjects used their prayer language, speaking in tongues.

It is the absence of ego and the connection to the universe. You can't be thinking, "I'm so great, " when you are surrendering yourself.

Dear sweet Samian how do you expect us to take you seriously when you dangle sweet deserts before our eyes?

I meditate and i don't connect spiritually with anything at all

Proof at last that God is imaginary.