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The Science of Religious Experience
Both long-practiced rituals and recent experiments show that the brain plays a key role in religious experience.
The use of peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus, is a traditional religious practice among Indigenous peoples of the Southern Plains. Its chemical compounds interact with the brain and may encourage spiritual experience. Scientists have found similar results when using technology to experiment on the brain. When volunteers donned a helmet that stimulated their brains with magnetic pulses, some reported perceiving an outside presence, which they believed to be God. |