Is This Scientist Proving God Doesn’t Exist?

I watched the pilot episode of the Morgan Freeman hosted Through the Wormhole last night. The show covered various means that science is addressing life after death. Some scientists offer proof that an afterlife is all in our heads. Others left science and turned to priesthood. What is proof? Merriam-Webster defines it as evidence that compels acceptance by fact. This got my noggin-wheels turning. If facts prove a theory, then who says which facts are relevant? 

Michael Perisinger, a scientist at Laurentian University in Ontario, Canada, has spent most of his career working with the brain. He has found that by stimulating the right temporal lobe people see or feel apparitions, unusual or unexpected sights. Throughout history nearly all cultures have a version of an afterlife entity. Dr. Perisinger says that all of them are stem from within our minds. He proves his theory by activating controlled instances of “God encounter” moments. Here’s how he does it.

 A helmet is placed on a subject that sits alone in a dark room for an hour. The helmet sends a signal that causes the right temporal lobe to stimulate. After the hour is up the subject is asked to explain their experience. In the case of the girl on the episode last night, she explained that she felt several beings in the room with her and could point out where they were. The scientist was happy and went on to share a victory chuckle in the next room with his lab partner. The segment ends with his conclusion that religious beliefs are founded upon stimulating the brain and that he wants to one day find what causes the stimuli.

It seems that Dr. Perisinger has proven his theory with facts. Facts prove theories. That seems easy enough, or is it? Let’s take it a step further without addressing whether there is or isn’t life after death. If I were in the same room as Dr. Perisinger during his experiments I would like to pose him a question regarding the facts he is using to prove his theory. Quite simply, do the facts correlate to the theory?

Loosely used as an example, some stroke victims smell burnt toast during a stroke. The victim’s brain becomes stimulated during the tragic experience and results in the smelling of burning toast when there isn’t any. Using Dr. Perisinger’s methods, this information is enough to conclude that because there is no burning toast when the victim smells that burning toast does not exist. The stroke victim smells something that isn’t there which means that it is contained within their mind.

The smell of toast does exist. We can prove it. We can confidently say that the smell exists by using technology such as the awesomely named Nasal Ranger or Scentometer. Now, without bringing the brain into the argument, we can identify that toast has a smell. So, we can prove that burnt toast does have a smell even though the mind conjures up false instances of it, however we don’t have that luxury with the generations of paranormal, spirituality, and religious encounters on record. Bummer.

Science is working to measure the “God experience” with technology but it looks like we will have to turn to other methods for now. There are thousands of studies all over the world that show science has become heavily intertwined with explaining life after death, however relying just on our brain as the basis for proving our facts, especially when it seems to have a mind of its own, probably isn’t going to provide the facts for the proof that they are looking for.