Hearing voices

[mpok1519]

I dunno; the possibility of 'spiritual' life still lingers.

no reasons or speculation...

Hume I always loved for saying "[I dunno so I'm gonna drink more beer over a game of billiards]"

I cant remember the real quote. =P

 

[Braunwyn]

I hear my mother calling my name from time to time (she lives in another state). It was pretty frequent when I was younger but it's subsided over the years. oooh! TB, maybe she's engaging in astral projection or maybe a supernatural spirit/deity/whatever has taken up ventriloquism. Surely that must be it!

 

[Bombila]

Veritas21 described the physical/neurological cause of auditory hallucinations, and did a good job of it.

They are very common. Most often is that of hearing one's name called when in fact no one has called it. I've had that happen many times, sometimes while wide awake, more frequently at the edge of sleep.

It doesn't mean a person is mentally unstable, and it isn't ghosts. It is a brain glitch. When you consider how many little faults every body includes, warts, moles, bumps, lumps, small deformities, it is amazing there aren't more noticeable odd things happening in everyone's brains.

 

[GoSeminoles!]

My mother burst into my room this morning, very upset and emotional, she'd been reading the paper with breakfast and she heard a voice reportedly as clear as if the speaker had been standing a few feet behind her, call her name...

So what does science offer us by way of explanation? have any spiritually inclined experienced this Vs fierce skeptics?

Our brains and senses are not perfect. From time to time everyone experiences sights and sounds which are not really there.

 

[Veritas21]

We should also consider the apparent benefit of these so called "memory glitches" from an evolutionary perspective. Suppose we had the first of the species that exhibited some sort of mutation which caused these occassional incorrect associations. Would it be reasonable to suspect than any members of the species that jumped and ran away from anything that SEEMED like a snake or spider would have a higher rate of survival than those that didn't immediately flee such creatures? I am not familiar with the ecological factors and threats prevalent in the region where humans were though to have evolved, but it seems reasonable to me that such "glitches" in the brain may have actually been very beneficial to our ancestors.

 

[Bombila]

Isn't that similar to the suggested benefit of the common human experience of pareidolia, that being able to quickly recognize patterns that resemble a predator, even if it leads to frequent misidentifications, is overall likely to enhance survival?

 

[Veritas21]

Absolutely, this is exactly what I am referring to.

 

[paug]

Rather assume something to be a predator even though it's not than assume it's not a predator even though it is.