Searching for God in the Brain

Searching for God in the Brain


www.sciam.com...

Such efforts to reveal the neural correlates of the divine—a new discipline with the warring titles “neurotheology” and “spiritual neuroscience”—not only might reconcile religion and science but also might help point to ways of eliciting pleasurable otherworldly feelings in people who do not have them or who cannot summon them at will. Because of the positive effect of such experiences on those who have them, some researchers speculate that the ability to induce them artificially could transform people’s lives by making them happier, healthier and better able to concentrate. Ultimately, however, neuroscientists study this question because they want to better understand the neural basis of a phenomenon that plays a central role in the lives of so many. “These experiences have existed since the dawn of humanity. They have been reported across all cultures,” Beauregard says. “It is as important to study the neural basis of [religious] experience as it is to investigate the neural basis of emotion, memory or language.”

Were we made to need a god?

Or how did it develope as we evolved?

There was a difference betwen the brain activity in buddhists monks then in Nuns, wow ,now thats interesting.

six regions that were invigorated only during the nuns’ recall of communion with God. The spiritual memory was accompanied by, for example, increased activity in the caudate nucleus, a small central brain region to which scientists have ascribed a role in learning, memory and, recently, falling in love; the neuroscientists surmise that its involvement may reflect the nuns’ reported feeling of unconditional love. Another hot spot was the insula, a prune-size chunk of tissue tucked within the brain’s outermost layers that monitors body sensations and governs social emotions. Neural sparks there could be related to the visceral pleasurable feelings associated with connections to the divine.

Falling in love now that doesn't surprise me,

"I Am my beloved and my beloved is mine."
Song of Solomon

There is no single God spot, localized uniquely in the temporal lobe of the human brain,” Beauregard concludes. “These states are mediated by a neural network that is well distributed throughout the brain.”

“If you are an atheist and you live a certain kind of experience, you will relate it to the magnificence of the universe. If you are a Christian, you will associate it with God. Who knows? Perhaps they are the same,” Beauregard muses.

[edit on 093131p://bFriday2007 by Stormdancer777]

I think the research is relevant, although there is some tenuous inferences out of the literature by the likes of Beauregard.

It doesn't tell us anything about the real-world existence of this stuff any more than it tells us about the real-world existence of an auditory hallucination in a schizophrenic. Just the neural basis.

I tend to think religious belief has had positives in numerous ways in our evolutionary past, from simple social group cohesion to making sense of the natural beyond our control. But it was likely a consequence of our pattern recognition, tendency to apply agency to objects/processes, magical thinking, and associative conditioning.

Even pigeons show what can be considered superstitious behaviour by making illusory correlations between actions and events. Thus, Skinner showed that give pigeons unpredictable reward, they will start performing all kinds of weird behaviours due to illusory correlation between action and reward.

But if you want to believe loving the internal thought of the divine is the same as loving an external real-world divine thing, that's cool.

Bie-engineer the human mind to receive spiritual experience. Cool toy of the serpent. Spiritual drugs... one more thing to cloud the mirror of the truth until it reflect only what we want it to. The old snake is constricting around this earth.l

reply to post by melatonin



Hi mel, I love to read your posts, they are so thought provoking.

I also wonder if the evolution of god belief was necessary for the survival of the tribe.

We could apply that to anything from religion, to politics, to atheism.

Originally posted by depth om
Bie-engineer the human mind to receive spiritual experience. Cool toy of the serpent. Spiritual drugs... one more thing to cloud the mirror of the truth until it reflect only what we want it to. The old snake is constricting around this earth.l

depth, that thought did cross my mind.

i can't remember where i saw this, or read this but

it seems that MICHELANELO may have thought that we created GOD in our own head's(kinda like a figment of our imagination) to answer some tough questions.

if you look at his painting the creation in the siseten chapel

God is resting in some brown/purple thing, which looks alot like a cross section of the brain. or in the brain. He also neglects to show contact between God and Adam, as if to show that the moment of creation never happend. that spark is missing.

just showing the pics ignore content.

pic of Creation
www.clt.astate.edu...
pic of brain
members.aol.com...

so it could be true.

reply to post by ferrabi


That is interesting, ferrabi.