NEUROTHEOLOGY-I'M A WALKING ARGUMENT

I joined an on-line community entitled "Neurotheology". I was curious. It is basically a community that discusses/debates the God "experience". I put the word "experience" in quotation marks because there is one side, the "neuro" side that claims that those who experience God have brains that are more hard-wired for it, particulary in the temporal lobes, particularly the LEFT temporal lobe, and those MOST prone to God experiences are those with temporal lobe epilepsy of the left side (TLE), of which I was recently diagnosed. So, this is the dilemma, once again, that I get to face. I keep discovering these sacred little episodes that I have had since childhood were, in fact, "numinous" episodes-if I listen to the scientists....episodes such as breaking into tears when I looked up into the night sky and stared at the stars. I was only a very young child and this would happen to me. And good luck explaining this to anyone in virtually any house in suburban 1960s America. There was no dialogue for such things. So! Here's the rub. Granted, some of my experiences could be chemically related....sitting in a mall where every single person looks excrutiatingly beautiful, granted, that may be a chemical cocktail blasting through the left-side of my brain...but my faith, in general?...the thing that carries me through my day?...that helped me raise my children?...that continues to renew me?...and more importantly, appears to be the same experience for countless others that I share my faith with each week and who REPORT on their faith experiences without the benefit (?) of a diagnosis of TLE...I refuse to believe that THOSE experiences can be coldly dismissed as random neural firings or chemically induced mental experiences. I do not know what the future holds for me and my brain. It has become a separate entity at this point. We are roommates, sharing a body. I need it, for multiple reasons, but frankly, it annoys the snot out of me. I am a walking argument...science versus faith...should make that Master of Science degree a walk in the park....not...I'm relative certain there will be further postings on this delicate subject, and possibly they will not be pretty. I've only recently discovered that my brain and I don't actually get on well. It's just after 52 years, I'm relatively tired of messing with it, or it messing with me. I can't figure it out. I can be hot AND cold. Hungry AND full. Angry AND mellow. And, this is an entirely different post....me out.