The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat
Ars Technica has opened its Soap Box bulliten boards until the end of the month. One thread I am participating in concerns God and the reasons for his (non) Existence.
In responding to a comment suggesting that religious experiences occur when emotional neurological pathways are excited, I brought up autism and Oliver Sacks.
I highly recommended familiarizin yourself with the psychologist Oliver Sacks, especially his book The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat. It is a hysterical read. The title comes from a man who was otherwise normally functioning with the exception of an inability to distinguish between inanimate objects and people, hence grabbing his wifes head which he thought was his hat on a coat rack.
Anyway, the related story deals with two Autistic twins/brothers who were unable to speak except in the language of mathematics. They would communicate by vocalizing very large primes off the top of their head and then pausing to revel in its beauty. Within mere minutes they were able to outwit Sacks who was armed with a book of all the largest known primes at the time.
Relating this to religious experience, there is no reason to assume that a man inflicted with seizures effecting the emotional response portions of his brain is not thereby able to experience a higher truth in the same way Austistic children can. Furthermore, just because religious experiences and feelings of emotional significance coincide, one cannot assume that emotional attachment causes religion any more than we can assume that religion causes emotional attachment.