According to Breitbart.com, an Israeli psychology professor claims he has discovered what it was that Moses experienced on Mount Sinai. No, it wasn’t God. It was dope:
High on Mount Sinai, Moses was on psychedelic drugs when he heard God deliver the Ten Commandments, an Israeli researcher claimed in a study published this week.
Such mind-altering substances formed an integral part of the religious rites of Israelites in biblical times, Benny Shanon, a professor of cognitive psychology at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem wrote in the Time and Mind journal of philosophy.
How he knows this the article doesn’t say. I assume it’s because Shanon believes that, if there are drugs to be had, people use them. And since none of that supernatural stuff could have actually happened, it had to have been drugs. Simple reasoning, really. You don’t even need evidence for it.
“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.
Of course, Shanon is sure of this, because he has experience in, shall we say, field research.
Moses was probably also on drugs when he saw the “burning bush,” suggested Shanon, who said he himself has dabbled with such substances.
“The Bible says people see sounds, and that is a clasic [sic] phenomenon,” he said citing the example of religious ceremonies in the Amazon in which drugs are used that induce people to “see music.”
He mentioned his own experience when he used ayahuasca, a powerful psychotropic plant, during a religious ceremony in Brazil’s Amazon forest in 1991. “I experienced visions that had spiritual-religious connotations,” Shanon said.
He said the psychedelic effects of ayahuasca were comparable to those produced by concoctions based on bark of the acacia tree, that is frequently mentioned in the Bible.
OK, professor. Step away from the bong. Rehab is available even for cognitive psychologists.
(Hat tip: Steve Bryant.)
Posted by David Fischler 
