Consider epilepsy. If an epileptic seizure is focused in a particular sweet spot in the temporal lobe, a person won’t have motor seizure, but instead something more subtle. The effect is something like a cognitive seizure, marked by changes of personality, hyper religiosity (an obsession with religion and a feeling of religious certainty) hypergraphia (extensive writing on a subject, usually about religion), the false sense of an external presence, and, often, the hearing of voices that are attributed to god. Consider history’s prophets, martyrs, and leaders appear to have temporal lobe epilepsy.
Consider Joan of Arc, the sixteen-year-old-girl who managed to turn the tide of the Hundred Years War because she believed ( and convinced the French soldiers) that she was hearing the voices of Saint Michael the archangel, Saint Catherine of Alexandria, Saint Margaret , and Saint Gabriel. As she described her experience, “When I was thirteen, I had a voice from God to help me to govern myself. The first time, I was terrified. The voice came to me about noon: it was summer, and I was in my father’s garden.” Later she reported, “Since God had commanded me to go, I must do it. And since God had commanded it, had I had a hundred fathers and a hundred mothers, and had I been a king’s daughter, I would have gone.” Although it’s impossible to retrospectively diagnose with certainty, her typical reports, increasing religiosity, and ongoing voices are certainly consistent with temporal lobe epilepsy.
---David Eagleman, Incognito
Consider Noah, Abraham, Paul.
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