Moses Was A Hippie

Benny Shanon, an Israeli professor of cognitive psychology says that the biblical Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments.  “Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times,” Shanon says.  His research was recently published in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.

“As far Moses on Mount Sinai is concerned, it was either a supernatural cosmic event, which I don’t believe, or a legend, which I don’t believe either, or finally, and this is very probable, an event that joined Moses and the people of Israel under the effect of narcotics,” Shanon told Israeli public radio on Tuesday.  He also suggests that Moses was also on drugs when he saw the “burning bush”.

He said concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree that is frequently mentioned in the Bible would cause very similar psychedelic effects.

Scottish philosopher David Hume did quite a bit of thinking about these kinds of religious miracles a few centuries ago.  He concluded that miracles (including prophesy) are the only possible support that would conceivable allow for theistic religion, as the world’s existence alone is not sufficient proof of a higher being.

Hume doesn’t discount the possibility for miracles to occur and be reported, he offers various arguments against them, mostly rooted in human nature:

• People often lie, and they have good reasons to lie about miracles occurring either because they believe they are doing so for the benefit of their religion or because of the fame that results.
• People by nature enjoy relating miracles they have heard without caring for their veracity and thus miracles are easily transmitted even where false.
• Hume noted that miracles seem to occur mostly in “ignorant” and “barbarous” nations and times, and the reason they don’t occur in the “civilized” societies is such societies aren’t awed by what they know to be natural events.

Perhaps Hume has come up with some good reasoning about why we should question these religious miracles, he doesn’t go as far as disproving them individually.  Do you believe in miracles, or is every improbability explainable in the end?

Moses was high on drugs: Israeli researcher

Wikipedia: David Hume: The problem of miracles