The God-helmet (by Eystein Evensen.)

A researcher by the name of Michael Persinger  has apparently been able to create strong religious experiences and visions with a device he calls "the God-helmet." He claims that this proves that the experience of the presence of God and powerful life changing visions are no more than abnormal neural activities in the temporal lobes of the brain, which can now be completely accounted for scientifically.

What should we make of this?

The Christian understanding of the human nature is not a dualistic one. 
Off course the body and the brain will be affected when we have spiritual
experiences. After researching how the brain is affected (through 
observing people in meditation) it is only natural that similar experiences 
can be produced by artificially exposing the brain to the same kinds of 
effect. This is a good reason why Paul said we should test the spirits to 
see if they are from God.

Even if we in ten years time are able to simulate an entire virtual reality in 
the brain, this would not prove that what we usually sense, perceive and 
experience in the world are only products of the brain. Neither do these 
simulations prove that spiritual experiences are only products of the brain.

I also believe that consciousness itself must be primarily spiritual. The 
brain does not produce consciousness; it merely interprets it and 
communicates it with the rest of the body. Our spiritual experiences may 
be interpreted by the brain just as the information received by our 
physical senses is interpreted. Neuroscience can perhaps explain how 
neural activities affect consciousness, but it hardly can account for the 
existence of consciousness itself. 

Materialists believe that a deeper understanding of the brain  will 
explain how consciousness arose, and many are working on theories.
One is that consciousness resides in the action of neuropeptides. Others
hope quantum physics will provide the answer (thinking the minute 
microtubules found inside nerve cells could create some quantum effects
 that might somehow contribute to consciousness.) Some believe that 
consciousness emerges from the complexity of the brain's processing, 
but whatever idea is put forward--the real question remains unanswered: 

How can something as immaterial as consciousness ever arise from 
something as unconscious as matter? 

Perhaps the temporal lobes are the medium (or a sixth sense) between 
the spiritual world and the brain--but if Paul merely had a micro seizure 
on his way to Damascus, he would not have seen the glory of Christ 
judging him. If it was all in his mind, he would have seen Moses or Elijah 
praising him. 

There is overwhelming evidence that there were thousands of all kinds of 
people proclaiming the resurrection of Christ only years after his death 
and no evidence or suggestion that his body was discovered.

And if the disciples merely had spiritual visions of the risen Christ, why do 
the evangelists emphasize the tangible nature of his resurrection? 
He did not only appear to them in “visions” caused by stress, sorrow and 
lack of sleep, he ate with them, let them embrace him and touch his sores. 
These frequent meetings with the resurrected Christ can hardly be said to 
be created by collective abnormal neural activities. Skeptics can always 
say that these stories were invented by the writers, but what about the 
disappearance of Christ’s body? If it was removed by the disciples 
themselves as the early skeptics claimed, would they have let themselves be 
persecuted and martyred for something they knew was a lie? I don’t 
think so. When all is said and done it is a matter of faith, but it takes faith 
to deny God too.