Medicating Religion? (Reaserch Help)

[Nathanial.Dread]

We know that serotonin receptor agonists can precipitate powerful religious experiences, but is there any evidence that serotonin receptor antagonists or reverse agonists could decrease someone's religiosity?

If an ordinary, run-of-the-mill person of faith where to start taking atypical antipsychotics, would it possibly have a side effect of causing them to loose interest in their usual spiritual life?

I posted a topic like this before, and no one responded, but I am really searching for information on this as part of my undergraduate work on the neuroscience of religion. I did some searching on the web myself, but all I found was some snarky extreme-athiest forums where people were somewhat mockingly suggesting medicating away spirituality as though it was some kind of mental illness

Blessings
~ND

 

[d-T-r]

I think the questions need to be nailed down a bit more to be honest. You can't really quantify things like religiosity and know the extent of spiritual understanding and 'maturity' someone possesses to gage whether their understanding would be enough to see them through anti-psychotics with the same views held in tact or not.

Some people base their religiosity or spirituality on belief, some on faith and some on direct experience so i guess it would vary.

Substituting religious with 'mystical' could lead to more avenues too as mystical would included religion but not be limited to it.

I don't really know enough about Neuroscience to recommend any thing specific....I'm pretty sure there may have been similar or related topics discussed at the recent Breaking Convention though. Maybe worth checking out the programme for it to see if any of the speakers are approaching things from a relevant angle.

 

[Creo]

I think the vast majority of people who follow a religion do so because of social and cultural reasons and neurobiology doesn't have much to do with it.

However, there's a small segment of the population whose religiosity is based on direct mystical experiences. Dr Robert Sapolsky gave a thought provoking lecture at Stanford on the biological underpinnings of such religiosity, linking it with schizotypal personality disorder and OCD. These are disorders which can ofcourse be treated with antipsychotic and/or antidepressant medication.

Lecture on Youtube:

Text of Lecture:

http://ffrf.org/legacy/fttoday/2003/april/index.php?ft=sapolsky