How woo, magic, and religion are simply glimpses into non-ordinary neurology. It’s all right here.
It is religion that drives certain men and women to ask real questions and find real answers to how the world operates. Thank you religion. Science has challenged the millennia long status quo—that what is occasionally seen by mystics is merely how the world would look when you mess with the wires.
Those who grew tired of being watched by a persistent deity that had no bearing on life, decided to answer a few questions on their own without postulating a god—but to find out how things actually work.
We have evolved with a certain brain configuration and perceive the world through a specific shaped eye and tactile senses. Alter these receptors any way you want and you can see the spirit world, which is this world in a non-ordinary, alternate perception of reality. This is the religious experience—attempting to maintain that different reality than what evolution has normalized as our current, best chance at survival.
Change the shape of the eye, we all may look like Jabba the Hut, but we’d still be here, and that would be normal. Mess with the optic nerve and flip the left and right lobes and voilet! Things certainly wouldn’t be like they seem now.
Understanding this, that a minor change in physiology and nothing would seem the same. I’m sure the octopus who is born knowing how to hunt and strategize it’s prey, has a completely different perception and hereditary underpinning than a human—but the octopus is still here, just a different set of lenses, and a different reality.
Enter the traumatic event or addiction.
Carry yourself deep into the difficult side of human existence, to the brink of losing family or life itself, or just play around with a little peyote? Activate those adrenals and delve into the hypoxia of a NDE and you can see god. Feel god. Feel your brain reach it’s outer limits to grasp at survival. Those unlucky enough just don’t have enough trauma in their lives, or indoctrination? It is up to them to move the planet beyond belief mode.
TheCommonAtheist 