<snip>
>There has been a lot of study on the reliability of human memory
>and observation, you could use to study it.
<lotsa snip>
An excellant general book on such things and more is
ANOMALISTIC PSYCHOLOGY: A STUDY OF EXTRAORDINARY PHENOMENA OF BEHAVIOR AND ESPERIENCE
by Leonard Zusne and Warren H. Jones, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 1982, ISBN 0-89859-068-X
Some of the chapter titles:
2 &3. Anomalistic Psychophysiology
4. Perception and the Paranormal
5. Anomalous Imagery and Hallicinations
6. Psychology of Anomalous Memory
7. The Psychology of Extraordinary Beliefs
8. Personality in Occultism: Determinants and Dynamics
9. Personality in Occultism: Mind Externalized
10. Psychopathology and Magic
11. The Social Psychology of the Extraordinary
etc. I reccomend it highly if it is still available. I bought it some years ago through the Prometheus cataloge.
The authors of the book never outright use religion as an example of an anomalistic belief system, although they do use several religious examples in
the chapters on hallucinations.
But the parralles are quite obvious. One can speculate on several reasons why the authors might have avoided a frontal assault on established religion, but the applicability is clear to any but the brain dead. Chapters 4 through 7 essentially demolish biblical miralcles. The "resurrection" becomes a particularly good example of hallucinations + expectation + faulty memory + group dynamics. One could say it becomes trivially easy to explain the biblcal account.
RH & Sam too if he's still out there, need to read the book, and then try and distinguish why their beliefs do not fit nicely within the realm of anomalistic psychology.
ttfn