Are Group Visions Possible?

I have received a number of interesting responses to my claim in yesterday’s post that it is possible for groups of people to have the same non-veridical vision (that is, hallucinations).  I used the phenomenon of the Blessed Virgin Mary: she seems to appear a good deal, to groups of people – sometimes large groups.  In this post I thought I would respond to two of the highly intelligent demurrals.

 

DEMURRAL:

As a former evangelical Protestant we believed that Roman Catholics who ...

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13
MAR
2017
84

Public Forum, Reader’s Questions, Reflections and Ruminations

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Are “Group Hallucinations” Possible? The Case of Mary.

Several people have asked me about my claim that “group hallucinations” are possible – that is, that a “vision” can be seen by many people at once.  It seems counter-intuitive: aren’t hallucinations by definition the inner workings of a person’s mind?  How can more than one person have the same hallucination at the same time?

Well, I’m not sure how that works, psychologically.  My guess is that there is a strong sociological component as well – i.e., that something weird is ...

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9
FEB
2016
39

Historical Jesus, Public Forum, Reader’s Questions

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Weekly Readers’ Mailbag: February 7, 2016

Time for my weekly mailbag.   Before dealing with two rather more direct questions that have come to me – one about eyewitness testimony and the other about whether I hope to get on Fresh Air and Colbert with the new book – I thought I would include an item that did not come to me from the blog, but on my Facebook page.  It’s a brief exchange I had with some anonymous figure.  I seem to have a lot of ...

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7
FEB
2016
41

Memory Studies, Paul and His Letters, Reader’s Questions

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Why I (Actually) Discuss Hallucinations

In this post I continue with my response to Larry Hurtado’s critique of How Jesus Became God.  In the previous posts I dealt with factual errors – where he assigned views to me that I do not state and do not have.  As I have pointed out, Larry was generous to retract these critiques in a subsequent post on his blog.   In this post I want to deal not with a factual mistake but with an assertion he ...

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6
JUN
2014
67

Bart's Critics, Book Discussions, Historical Jesus, Memory Studies, Public Forum

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