Religious experience indicate serious brain disorder – scientists..

Having a religious experience of any kind can be attributed to a serious neurological disorder — epilepsy.

The disease is marked by sudden recurrent episodes of sensory disturbance, loss of consciousness, or convulsions, associated with abnormal electrical activity in the brain. An Israeli team of researchers at Hadassah Hebrew University report a rare case that detected a correlation between having a a religious experience and epilepsy.

The medics treated an atheist man for temporal lobe epilepsy, they carried out a series of tests as well as measured his brain activity. At one point during testing the man froze and stared at the ceiling for several minutes, saying he felt like ‘God was approaching him’.

Convinced he was talking to God and he is the chosen one he removed the wires from his head and marched around the hospital trying to recruit followers.

Moments before the incident, the doctors measured a spike in activity in the patient’s left prefrontal cortex — the brain region responsible for personality expression, decision making, and moderating social behavior and has been previously linked to religious and mystical experiences.

The doctors believe the patient suffered the visions as a result of a psychotic episode following a seizure. Interestingly, an experienced neuroscientist compared the man’s experience of seeing and being chosen by God to key religious stories involving Moses, Jesus or Mohammed.