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#151 – Awe, and the religious/spiritual experience
After a quick primer on this uniquely human phenomenon, we’ll hear from someone who had a profound, life-changing experience during a solar eclipse, and then relate all of this to religious/spiritual experiences. Humans seem to be unique among all other species on Earth when it comes to the emotion of awe. Whether it’s experienced while…
Keep reading#152 – Awe and spiritual experience, pt 2
An experimental psychologist and a theologian with a PhD in psychology give us their perspectives on the emotion of awe and its role in the spiritual/religious experience. Last week, we explained why we decided to look more closely at the emotion of awe and its role in the spiritual / religious experience, as well as…
Keep reading#41 – Scratching the itch
It’s a common phenomenon: people who say they’ve left the faith, but they just keep coming back to pick at it. It left a nasty wound, which has since scabbed over, but they keep lifting the edges We looked at the demographics behind this … not just in America, but also in Canada, the UK,…
Keep reading#42 – “Personal relationship”
Many Christians insist that this is the main thing that distinguishes Christianity from all other religions: “we have a personal relationship with the Divine”. I certainly heard this many times during the first few decades of my spiritual journey. The problem for me was, I just didn’t seem to ever experience what they claimed. The…
Keep reading#147 – The “personal relationship” with the divine
A social anthropologist, with decades of scholarship on people striving to connect to another dimension, gives us her perspective on the Evangelical version of this phenomenon. “It’s not a religion … it’s a relationship!” Many Christians claim this is what separates their faith from all others. There was a time when I myself made this…
Keep reading#43 – Neurobiology of spiritual experience – part 1
At this point in our mini-series looking at spiritual/religious experiences, we thought it would be good to understand how we perceive the rest of the world around us, including our relationships with other people, or our pets. This is still one of the biggest questions in science: one that is still entirely unresolved. And it…
Keep reading#44 – Neurobiology of spiritual experience – part 2
Having described the neurobiological mechanisms behind our relationships with other people, Dr. Smith then addressed our original question: “how do we humans relate to God?” Her answer: “in exactly the same way.” Some might be surprised that I even had to ask. They might shrug their shoulders or flip their hands and say: “Of course…
Keep reading#45 – Neurobiology of spiritual experience – part 3
The neurobiology of the spiritual relationship is such a big topic, we thought it would be good to hear from a second scholar who comes at this from a completely different angle. Dr. Sarah Lane Ritchie obtained her graduate degree in Theology and Science studying consciousness, neuroplasticity and religious belief … we couldn’t have found a…
Keep reading#46 – Religious trauma (pt 1)
In the past few episodes, we’ve learned about the important role that other people play in one’s spiritual experience: we see, feel, and hear from God in part through our encounters with other people. This makes sense if the church is “the body of Christ.” Unfortunately, there’s a dark side to this fact: many people…
Keep reading#47 – Religious trauma (pt 2)
In this second half of our look at religious trauma, we talk to Dr. Marlene Winell (PhD, Psychology), who literally wrote the book on this topic … Leaving the fold: A Guide for Former Fundamentalists and Others Leaving Their Religion … and is now the director of a large counseling service for those dealing with…
Keep reading#145 – Grieving the loss of faith
David Morris, with a PhD in psychology and theology, tells us about the psychology behind forming a spiritual/religious worldview, and then rejecting that worldview, and the mourning process that follows. In this episode, we talk to Dr. David Morris, who holds a PhD in psychology and in theology, worked for one of the largest publishers…
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Reaching into Plato's Cave 