Monday, July 27, 2009

Dr Persinger and the God Helmet and God




That is a video of a church service. You can see mob think and mass hysteria at work here. If you get the right leadership, the right followers and the right experiences you can give people outrageous feelings.


I had already posted other videos that mentioned Dr. Persinger. Here is another quick and short video. Also at the bottom there will be small wiki article on him. He is the creator of the "God Helmet". There appears to be a slight controversy concerning his device and his research. But if you notice, the things he talks about and describes are very similar the other activities that bring about the same effects. Extreme stress, astronaut training, sleep deprivation, food deprivation, isolation chambers and all can bring about these mystical / alien experiences. In Dr. Persingers case he is proposing that electromagnetic fields can powerfully influence the most creative and suggestable people. Especially those with a tendency towards wishful thinking.






Early life

Persinger was born in Jacksonville, Florida and grew up primarily in Virginia, Maryland and Wisconsin. He attended Carroll College from 1963 to 1964, and graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1967. He then obtained an M.A. in physiological psychology from the University of Tennessee and a Ph.D. from the University of Manitoba in 1971.

[edit] Research and academic work

Persinger focuses much of his work on the commonalities that exist between the sciences, and aims to integrate fundamental concepts of various branches of science[citation needed]. He organized the Behavioral Neuroscience Program at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, which became one of the first to integrate chemistry, biology and psychology[citation needed].

During the 1980s Persinger stimulated people's temporal lobes artificially with a weak magnetic field to see if he could induce a religious state (see God helmet). He claimed that the field could produce the sensation of "an ethereal presence in the room".

Susan Blackmore, a former academic psychologist and parapsychology researcher: "When I went to Persinger's lab and underwent his procedures I had the most extraordinary experiences I've ever had." "I'll be surprised if it turns out to be a placebo effect." [1]

Michael Persinger has also contributed to research into the Miracle of the sun at Fatima and other Marian apparitions. He theorized that the stimulation of the cerebral-temporal lobe may have been the actual cause of the Marian apparition phenomenon. He believes the religious content of the experiences many have been a result of their obsession with religious themes and their lack of education. He has contributed to 2 papers about The Fatima UFO Hypothesis. [2]




The last video is probably the best of all. It offers testimonies of the test subjects.

2 comments:

GreenSudbury said...

Nice roundup of Dr. Persingers work. I linked to your godblog post at http://greensudbury.ca

somebody121 said...

I appreciate it, but sadly I couldn't find it. I have done more investigations about Dr. Persingers work, and have become increasingly skeptical. No one has been able to properly replicate his findings. I found out about him through Michael Shermer and Richard Dawkins. Interesting ideas and hypothesis none the less.