SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
The BBC reports on a small trial (12 patients) that used psilocybin to treat "moderate-to-severe, unipolar, treatment-resistant" depression:
A hallucinogenic chemical in magic mushrooms shows promise for people with untreatable depression, a short study on just 12 people hints. Eight patients were no longer depressed after the "mystical and spiritual" experience induced by the drug. The findings, in the Lancet Psychiatry [open, DOI: 10.1016/S2215-0366(16)30065-7], showed five of the patients were still depression-free after three months.
Experts cautiously welcomed the findings as "promising, but not completely compelling". There have now been calls for the drug to be tested in larger trials.
From the study:
Psilocybin's acute psychedelic effects typically became detectable 30–60 min after dosing, peaked 2–3 h after dosing, and subsided to negligible levels at least 6 h after dosing. Mean self-rated intensity (on a 0–1 scale) was 0·51 (SD 0·36) for the low-dose session and 0·75 (SD 0·27) for the high-dose session. Psilocybin was well tolerated by all of the patients, and no serious or unexpected adverse events occurred. The adverse reactions we noted were transient anxiety during drug onset (all patients), transient confusion or thought disorder (nine patients), mild and transient nausea (four patients), and transient headache (four patients). Relative to baseline, depressive symptoms were markedly reduced 1 week (mean QIDS difference −11·8, 95% CI −9·15 to −14·35, p=0·002, Hedges' g=3·1) and 3 months (−9·2, 95% CI −5·69 to −12·71, p=0·003, Hedges' g=2) after high-dose treatment. Marked and sustained improvements in anxiety and anhedonia were also noted.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 18 2016, @06:23PM
That is a terrible argument for there being a God, and I'm not an atheist and I'm saying this. It's a class of "I dunno lol therefore God" argument, i.e., argument from ignorance.
NDEs are very, very cultural; Americans tend to see Hippie Caucasian Jesus, Hindus very often see Lord Yama on his freaking celestial water buffalo, etc etc. The tunnel can be explained by oxygen deprivation. And the fact that naloxone terminates NDEs means there's an opoid system component to them.
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by devlux on Wednesday May 18 2016, @06:34PM
Well if you read what I wrote, you'll see that I'm not calling it out as being strong support for a God. Just that it's the only supporting evidence I can find, specifically that we are wired for religious experiences for whatever reason. Not just NDEs, but the whole "touched by god" feeling.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 18 2016, @07:38PM
But it's not supporting evidence at all, especially not if there is a personal, interacting God that can (and in Yahweh's case, DOES) screw with peoples' heads.
Something no apologist seems to get is that utter agnosticism about the truth of our propositions, logic, etc., is the BEST case scenario if this type of God exists; it's worst-case under metaphysical naturalism. Plantinga ought to put that in his pipe and smoke it, but he won't, because like all apologists he's dishonest and "motivated."
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by devlux on Wednesday May 18 2016, @08:17PM
This wasn't meant to spark some deep religious debate, just marveling at something which to me seems extraordinary.
Simply put, the only evidence for the divine which I find at all compelling is the fact that we are capable of perceiving / contemplating the divine and in so doing it changes us.
It appears to me that you take God in this context to mean any one of the numerous posited religious deities named or otherwise.
To me that is religion and religion needs no evidence, it is by definition a matter of personal belief which makes it a personal matter between you and said deity.
If any of those happen to exist then by definition, they know my cellphone number, if they want me to believe in them all they need do is call.
Otherwise I figure it's pretty safe to say they either don't exist or don't care whether I believe they exist.
What I am speaking of when I say God or Gods, is what I always mean by the term, i.e. "all of that which exists beyond our ken".
Just any sentience which is as profound to us, as we are to an ant, whether past, present or future.
The fact that we are the only creature we know of capable of contemplating something like this is just strange, isn't it?
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Wednesday May 18 2016, @08:35PM
Ah, okay. Well, I am a Deist (or that's the closest word to it) so I can understand where you're coming from, but 1) how do you know we're the only species that can do this? and 2) How do you know there's actually any ontic referent for these supposed feelings of divine connectedness?
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by devlux on Wednesday May 18 2016, @10:19PM
To answer your questions...
#1 This is just personal belief.
#2 I don't know, I merely suspect.
So that you can understand where I'm coming from, here is a bit of background.
I was raised as strong church going christian lad and it was instilled in me from my earliest years that we were God's elect, that our church was the one true church and in the year 2000 Jesus Christ himself would come down and whisk us all away while he purged the whole earth with 7 terrible afflictions, plague, fire, famine etc.
Now clearly that did not happen. But well in advance of that, I'd say around 1989, the "one true church" I was raised in began to fall apart and die.
This left me in a crisis of faith. The was no possibility that what I had been taught my whole life could be true. Yet according to every theology on earth, God is truth.
Ergo I came to the conclusion that truth is god, but that no religion could be correct. I decided to adopt the philsophy that should there be some supreme personage, i.e. a deity that should he be seeking for my attention, then he knows exactly how to contact me and at that point I decided to shut out anything which claims to be truth but which cannot be proven. In order that I could listen for only truth.
I divided my world into two buckets. That which is provably true, and that which is merely belief.
Because their are so many disparate and unprovable beliefs, I created a magic bucket to hold them all in, that has infinite capacity and renders anything in it completely weightless.
Whereas truth must bear it's own weight.
Nevertheless I cannot dispute that everyone I know who has had a spiritual experience has been changed by said experience.
Usually in powerful and positive ways.
The drug addict who collapses from an OD in the shower and pleads to god for one final chance to turn their life around, then gets "saved" and makes something positive of their life.
The drug dealer / gang banger who takes a gunshot running from the police, sees something on the operating table, then does his time and comes out of prison and runs a center for at risk youth.
If the examples were limited to the dregs of society I might be able to dismiss it, but that's not the case at all.
Look at Ramanujan nothing particularly rough about his life or upbringing, an entire life spent in devotion to a deity and he redefined mathematics with no formal training in the subject matter.
For a more mundane example look at Gary Busey who was dying from a mixture of drugs, alcohol and cancer despite having a successful acting career, then had a motorcycle accident and came back to become a motivational speaker.
Myself on the other hand. I drowned in a swimming pool. I remember it clearly because it was my 5th birthday. I was underwater nearly 30 minutes. Yet I don't remember a thing about the time I was "dead". Just the clock showing 1:30 (I was proud because I had just figured out how to read a clock the day before, which is what caused me to stop paddling for a minute) and then the number 5 indicating the depth rolling past as I sank to the bottom. I remember struggling for air then pitch black. The next thing I remember is people screaming and crying that I'm dead and then I coughed up a ton of water and asked what the fuss was all about, then I looked at the clock and it was 2:00. I was proud I could read the clock. A whole bunch of fingers and questions. Paramedics etc. I remember the whole incident but not a thing about being dead. For me dead was just dead.
So I'm left with the conclusion now looking back, either I suppressed some profound spiritual experience, or I did not have one.
I consider myself to be extremely open to spirituality and spiritual experience. I believe the divine to be plausibly real, but I am unable to state that there is a deity.
If anything I find as I grow older my view on divinity is beginning to sway into the idea that perhaps we are divinity. Little tiny threads of a much greater tapestry that is spun across all possible worlds at all possible times. Stitching and weaving existence itself into being. What we perceive ourselves to be in this world is sort of a middle point in the stitch. We are neither divine here, nor are we "not quite divine". We can look down and we can see the non-sentience and yet we can and do anthropomorphise them into at least a form a semi-sentience. For example when your computer "acts up" rather than "malfunctions". I don't think that's just a trick of the language.
Yet we can also look up and imagine a sentience much greater than ourselves.
I don't know what this means or that it even has a meaning, but to me at least it feel like there is a meaning.
Sorry if this isn't clear, it isn't always clear to me either, but it's the best words I have to describe what I see in my minds eye.
(Score: 2) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 19 2016, @09:11AM
So if someone whom you don't know calls you on your cell phone and says "hello, I'm god, believe me!" then you'll consider that sufficient evidence? Well, I'd rather take that as evidence that the caller is someone who at best makes fun of random people by calling them.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday May 19 2016, @02:46PM
So if someone whom you don't know calls you on your cell phone and says "hello, I'm god, believe me!" then you'll consider that sufficient evidence? Well, I'd rather take that as evidence that the caller is someone who at best makes fun of random people by calling them.
Brings to mind that Far Side strip:
Phone rings.
Ernie: Hello!
God: This is God. Is this 555-1234?
Ernie: No, This is 555-1235.
God: Oh sorry.
God hangs up. For the rest of his life Ernie told people he talked to God.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by maxwell demon on Thursday May 19 2016, @09:04AM
Indeed. Actually, it could only be used as argument for an evil or at least incompetent god, because just as we seem to be hardwired to religious feelings, we are obviously also hardwired to do evil things. Yes, every single of us would say "no, not me." But experiments (Milgram experiment, Stanford prison experiment) show quite unambiguously that if the circumstances are right, the vast majority of us is going to do evil things.
If being wired for religious experiences is assumed to be evidence for a god, it is implied that god made that wiring (because if the wiring just happened without godly intervention, it cannot be evidence for god). But if that god actively made or modified the wiring in our brain, then he could just as well have removed (or not made in the first place) the wiring for evil, and therefore not doing so would have been an intentional decision. And why would a god — who, by the premise, does not mind messing with our wiring otherwise — not remove those evil wirings? Well, the only two explanations I can see for this is that either the god wants the evil wires be in, which by definition would make him an evil god, or that the god didn't figure out how to remove them, in which case it was an incompetent god.
If you want a god that is neither evil nor incompetent, you must assume that this god has a good reason not to mess with our wiring. But then, that god cannot be responsible for the religious wiring either, and therefore the religious wiring cannot be evidence for that god.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
(Score: 2) by Azuma Hazuki on Thursday May 19 2016, @09:24PM
Wow, I hadn't thought of that. Interesting argument; too bad the kind of people who most need to hear it are the types who think William Lane Craig is a respectable philosopher :(
I am "that girl" your mother warned you about...
(Score: 2) by PocketSizeSUn on Saturday May 21 2016, @10:39PM
I prefer to simplify the it as ... we learned to lie to order to survive when resources are too limited to share equally through the entire social grouping.
My evidence is the result of this (old) study. [technologyreview.com]
... have found that robots equipped with artificial neural networks and programmed to find “food” eventually learned to conceal their visual signals from other robots to keep the food for themselves.
I believe that our need to believe in something beyond ourselves, a 'god' if you will, stems from the survivor's guilt induced by such a biological imperative. Making hard choices is significantly easier to justify when you pretend that there is some higher power guiding your hand.