Thought for Today: The ‘Road to Damascus’?

Greetings, dear reader. Warning: graphic description of bodily functions to come!

We are all exposed to feelings, aren’t we? But how real are they? Don’t they originate internally? We know that emotions can be self-generated—that’s how method acting works. Are some diagnosable mental conditions merely more extreme, subconscious versions of such brain creations? 

From the age of twelve, I have suffered from migraines. Migraines vary from person to person, but with me, in the past, an episode went through a sequence. It started with a visual effect, which was like a cross between an incandescent light bulb’s hot filament zig-zag and a rainbow. This began in the upper right corner of my vision and spread gradually to occupy the edges of my entire field of view. I could tell it wasn’t real because it was superimposed wherever I looked. It first happened when I was in grammar school and I must have looked very grey because they sat me outside in the empty playground. That was a very long time ago when few people had heard of migraines. (Thankfully, they are much better understood—that is, scientifically understood—now.)

In the case of my personal ‘complex neurological and neurovascular brain disorder’, the weird vision disappeared after a while and was replaced by a crushing headache. I’ve heard mothers who suffer from migraines say that the pain is worse than giving birth! I wouldn’t know…

The headache could last for hours—on one occasion, the doctor gave me suppositories that put me to sleep for two days. The third stage was violent vomiting; once, I upchucked green bile—which came all the way from the duodenum. That was some severe anti-peristalsis. (I hope you are not eating right now!) 

As you might expect, this left me feeling completely drained, after which I slept. I would wake up near to normal—just a bit washed out. Some of you, dear readers, may have had similar experiences. 

Fortunately, over the years, these episodes have become much milder. Maybe the part of my brain which generated those effects has died? Nowadays, I just get the occasional brief vision thing; a nostalgic reminder of times past. I’m lucky, really; some people have it far worse—psychotic episodes, epileptic fits, mania, strokes, morbid depression, and the like. 

Why am I telling you all this?

Because I think all feelings, not just medically diagnosed incidents, are neurological episodes, only ‘real’ to the individual: they are brain effects, subjective experiences. 

My point is, how can we tell when we are just having some sort of self-generated event and when we are observing the real world? It’s important to know, isn’t it?

Answer: we can’t. 

Not reliably, anyway. Not from our own position—the subject’s position. We’re inevitably biased towards believing our own brains. 

So what does this mean?

In particular, it means that feelings such as religious epiphanies cannot be considered to be reliable evidence for a god. The most likely explanation for such experiences is that they are transient happenings in our own heads. As someone who used to get serious migraines, I find that very easy to believe. I could have attributed my migraines to the devil, couldn’t I have? In fact, in the past, people had holes drilled in their skulls (trepanning) to ‘let the demon out’. That treatment has been abandoned because, as was often the case back then, the ‘cure’ was worse than the disease. Not to mention that all sorts of mental illness was once seen as being caused by demons (and still is by many).  Once again, scientific advances have dispelled the demonic; objectivity has usurped subjectivity, and we are all better for it.

So, where can we get reliable information from? 

Answer: Repeatable observations. The scientific method.

That source is so trustworthy, we have to believe it even when it seems illogical. 

What am I on about now?

Quantum mechanics. 

The conclusions of quantum experiments are completely bizarre—non-locality, superposition, and entanglement make no sense to us on an intuitive, subjective level. But the equations derived from those investigations give us a stunningly accurate model of how nature works at the subatomic level: it’s the best science that we have ever produced. 

It doesn’t matter that we can’t make sense of it; we must believe the data. It would be stupid not to—there is such a strong correlation between quantum models and observations. We must simply accept that we have no right to understanding, and that the universe has no obligation to be understandable to us. 

Data and objectivity reign, and ‘epiphanies’ are probably just mental illusions. 

We must Break FREE!

We have to Break FREE!

We’ve got to Break FREE!

Atheism UK (AUK) launched the BreakFREE! campaign at ‘Hitchmas’, which featured Sir Stephen Fry, Richard Dawkins, Douglas Murray, and Lawrence Krauss celebrating the life of their late friend Christopher Hitchens in the Royal Geographical Society’s hall on 14 December 2024. You can join AUK or make a donation and receive a BreakFREE! button badge at our website: atheismuk.com.

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