Religion could be a brain condition

[crazyfingers]

God on the Brain

Controversial new research suggests that whether we believe in a God may not just be a matter of free will. Scientists now believe there may be physical differences in the brains of ardent believers.

Inspiration for this work has come from a group of patients who have a brain disorder called temporal lobe epilepsy. In a minority of patients, this condition induces bizarre religious hallucinations - something that patient Rudi Affolter has experienced vividly.

* Snip *

"We found to our amazement that every time they looked at religious words like God, they'd get a huge galvanic skin response."

This was the very first piece of clinical evidence revealing that the body's response to religious symbols was definitely linked to the temporal lobes of the brain.

"What we suggested was that there are certain circuits within the temporal lobes which have been selectively activated in these patients and somehow the activity of these specific neural circuits makes them more prone to religious belief."

* snip *

They believe what happens inside the minds of temporal lobe epileptic patients may just be an extreme case of what goes on inside all of our minds.

For everyone, whether they have the condition or not, it now appears the temporal lobes are key in experiencing religious and spiritual belief.

 

 

Interesting.  I'll be looking forward to seeing more research on this.

 

[lucaspa]

Today at 09:35 AM crazyfingers said this in Post #1

God on the Brain 



Interesting.  I'll be looking forward to seeing more research on this.

Be careful what you look for.  It should be obvious (but isn't to the researchers) that if a supernatural entity exists then it will have to communicate to our material brains by some material pathway in the brain.  Now, pathways can be stimulated by more than one stimulus.  The stimulus can be external or internal. For instance, you "see" and "hear" in dreams.  The pathways for vision and sound are being stimulated internally but that doesn't eliminate that they can also be stimulated externally.

Several years ago a friend named dormmamu hypothesized that individuals have a 'deity detecting device' in the brain.  The researchers may have found it.

That not all persons have such a device also supports one hypothesis to explain the lack of experience of deity by agnostics and atheists -- they don't have the module.

 

[Doubting Thomas II]

Either way, it's bad news for the fire-and-brimstone-repent-or-burn version of religion. Either there is something going on internally in the religious person that induces such experiences, or the unbeliever -- lacking the necessary "deity detecting device" -- can't justly be held accountable for his/her lack of belief. Salvation religion depends on free will for its coherence.

 

[crazyfingers]

Today at 09:48 AM lucaspa said this in Post #2

Be careful what you look for. 

You make it sound as if I have a vested interest in there not being a god of some kind.  I don't.  I'm interested in reality, whatever it might be.

Several years ago a friend named dormmamu hypothesized that individuals have a 'deity detecting device' in the brain.  The researchers may have found it.

That not all persons have such a device also supports one hypothesis to explain the lack of experience of deity by agnostics and atheists -- they don't have the module. 

Was this the God center that people were talking about where stimulating the brain in a specific center produced a religious experience?

There are credible evolutionary reasons why such a center could evolve on it's own. 

One proposed reason was to help early humans to deal emotionally with the fact of their morality.

Another was that religion, for better or worse, creates group cohesiveness and the tendency to band together tin tribes.  This would have been beneficial for early humans.

It could also explain why the nonreligious often are difficult to organize into an identity group.

 

[lucaspa]

Today at 09:55 AM Doubting Thomas II said this in Post #3

Either way, it's bad news for the fire-and-brimstone-repent-or-burn version of religion. Either there is something going on internally in the religious person that induces such experiences, or the unbeliever -- lacking the necessary "deity detecting device" -- can't justly be held accountable for his/her lack of belief. Salvation religion depends on free will for its coherence.

I'm not so sure this is accurate. First, yes, it is possible that the personal experiences a religious person has for convincing evidence may be due not to deity but crossed circuits. Of course, that has been claimed by atheists for centuries in different form, so it's nothing new.

However, the "repent-or-burn" people can still claim that someone lacking the detiy detecting device is still turning their back on "overwhelming" evidence -- the experience of others.  After all, the author(s) of the Gospel of John ended the gospel with the statement that they had given sufficient evidence to believe that Jesus was the son of God.  So, while those of us lacking the deity detecting device do not have our own personal experiences, the "repend-or-burn" crowd can still claim that we are being stubborn and unrepenetant in denying the experiences of others.  It's not a wholly valid claim, but it can be made.

 

[Quath]

I remember reading about the religious spot in our brain. Basically, it was found to be the part of the brain where we learn the difference in self and not-self. If this area gets turned off, you can have a mystical experience where you feel like you are one with the universe or floating. I think this can be found by sreaching for "neurotheology".

Scott (Quath)

 

[Doubting Thomas]

lucaspa: "However, the 'repent-or-burn' people can still claim that someone lacking the deity detecting device is still turning their back on 'overwhelming' evidence -- the experience of others. After all, the author(s) of the Gospel of John ended the gospel with the statement that they had given sufficient evidence to believe that Jesus was the son of God. So, while those of us lacking the deity detecting device do not have our own personal experiences, the 'repent-or-burn' crowd can still claim that we are being stubborn and unrepentant in denying the experiences of others. It's not a wholly valid claim, but it can be made."

Agreed. The claim can be made. However, from the point of view of the person lacking the deity detecting device, such claims are subject to the usual processes of evaluation and judgement. If I am somehow biologically incapable of directly experiencing deity, all I am left with are claims of evidence that may or may not be sufficient or that I may be in no position to directly assess, possibly spurious appeals to authority (John's Gospel being a case in point), and the problem of sifting through competing and sometimes mutually exclusive claims (why believe the Christians' revelation and not the Muslims' revelation?). For the believer to claim that I am being stubborn or unrepentant after he or she has played the "overwhelming" evidence card and come up, in my considered judgement, short is -- again, from the point of view of the deity-detector- deficient person -- perverse. I don't see where accountability comes into play.

Of course, you understand this, lucaspa. I'm not harping on you but am only trying to point out why the appeal to others' "religious" experiences doesn't provide a basis for condemnation of those who lack such experiences.

 

[coastie]

Alright, these people hallucinate about being in hell and giving birth to Jesus and they call these religious experiences.

I am a Christian and I think that they have a chemical imbalance in their brains.

Is this really what atheists think of Christians and our experiences?

 

[crazyfingers]

5th April 2003 at 08:33 AM coastie said this in Post #8

Alright, these people hallucinate about being in hell and giving birth to Jesus and they call these religious experiences.

I am a Christian and I think that they have a chemical imbalance in their brains.

Is this really what atheists think of Christians and our experiences?

I don't know.  But it is one possible explanation.  When I hear some Christian who claims to have certain knowedge of what god wants or even some on this board who claim that they communicate with god, the possibility strongly crosses my mind that they are hallucinating - or lying.

 

[Humanista]

I think this explains why most religions' followers have some sort of mystical experience.
This is a difficult point for some Christians---they say their feeling proves God, yet they cannot adequately explain the identical feelings of the Hindu, Buddhist or Muslim.

 

[MichaelFJF]

Of course it's a brain condition. He made the brain. If you believe.......He belongs EVERYWHERE.M

 

[lucaspa]

25th March 2003 at 09:59 AM crazyfingers said this in Post #4

You make it sound as if I have a vested interest in there not being a god of some kind.  I don't.  I'm interested in reality, whatever it might be.

All the more reason to be careful at what you look at. 

Was this the God center that people were talking about where stimulating the brain in a specific center produced a religious experience?

I don't think so.  Dormammu hypothesized it without knowing about Persinga's experiments.  Also, it wasn't a "religious" experience, but an "other person" experience.

There are credible evolutionary reasons why such a center could evolve on it's own. 

One proposed reason was to help early humans to deal emotionally with the fact of their morality.

Another was that religion, for better or worse, creates group cohesiveness and the tendency to band together tin tribes.  This would have been beneficial for early humans.

But another evolutionary reason is that, if deity exists, communicating with it offers definite advantages.  For instance, having deity tell you how to handle a drought or that a sabre-tooth tiger is hiding in the bushes is a big selective advantage.

I've always found the group cohesiveness particularly weak.  Group cohesiveness can be gained by any number of mechanisms other than deity. The strongest is facing group dangers and challenges.  Early groups would have that in abundance, including looking on other tribes as aliens.

It could also explain why the nonreligious often are difficult to organize into an identity group.

And yet they typically do. Like any persecuted group, atheists thru the centuries have organized into groups. 

 

[lucaspa]

5th April 2003 at 09:39 AM crazyfingers said this in Post #9

I don't know.  But it is one possible explanation.  When I hear some Christian who claims to have certain knowedge of what god wants or even some on this board who claim that they communicate with god, the possibility strongly crosses my mind that they are hallucinating - or lying.

This is where you get into a gray area of intellectual honesty.  Yes, when someone presents you with a laundry list of specifics that deity wants, you can test that against other specific lists.

However, for just experience of deity, you run into a different set of problems.  Kitty Ferguson summed them up:


"Where have we arrived at the end of seven chapters?  Joseph Ford has said:  'More than most, [scientists] are content to live with unanswered questions.' (3).  One of the questions science hasn't answered and may never be able to answer - let none of us assume otherwise - is whether there is a God.  We have not been able to say that it requires double-think or other intellectual dishonesty to have great faith in science as we know it at the end of the twentieth century and also to believe in God - even a personal and intervening God.

But why should anyone think such a combination of faiths might be necessary, or indispensable on a quest for fundamental truth?  There are two reasons for thinking it might be.  One would be to have first-hand, experiential evidence of God which was personally convincing.  The second is because to dismiss belief in God summarily is to pass premature and unwarranted judgement on the sanity, honesty, and intelligence of a vast number of our fellow human beings who claim to have such experiential evidence, many of them the same persons we do trust implicitly when it comes to other matters.  It ill becomes any of us to take the attitude that all evidence for God is false evidence, beneath consideration, simply by virtue of its being evidence for God, or even by virtue of its being outside the purview of science.  Such attitudes are taken, sometimes in the name of science, but in truth this sort of attitude is intellectual dishonesty.  Our most reputable scientists, whatever sins of arrogance that may occasionally commit, do not really declare that what they don't know isn't knowledge or that what they haven't experienced isn't experience."
Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations, pp. 281-282.

 

[lucaspa]

25th March 2003 at 11:12 AM Doubting Thomas said this in Post #7

Agreed. The claim can be made. However, from the point of view of the person lacking the deity detecting device, such claims are subject to the usual processes of evaluation and judgement. If I am somehow biologically incapable of directly experiencing deity, all I am left with are claims of evidence that may or may not be sufficient or that I may be in no position to directly assess, possibly spurious appeals to authority (John's Gospel being a case in point), and the problem of sifting through competing and sometimes mutually exclusive claims (why believe the Christians' revelation and not the Muslims' revelation?). For the believer to claim that I am being stubborn or unrepentant after he or she has played the "overwhelming" evidence card and come up, in my considered judgement, short is -- again, from the point of view of the deity-detector- deficient person -- perverse. I don't see where accountability comes into play.

I agree that the "overwheling" card isn't completely valid.  But not for the reasons you give.  Let's take this out of the realm of theology in order to test it. History provides a good testing ground.

Since none of us were there in the past, none of us have direct experience.  Let's look at one instance: George McClellan believed he was badly outnumbered by Lee's army.  This is a statement about the mental state of a historical figure.  Not the actual numbers, but what McClellan believed.

First, we can look at Pinkerton's intelligence estimates of the size of the Confederate army.  They are larger than McClellan's forces. Always.  Then we can look at McClellan's letters home, to Lincoln, and to his colleagues.  All state that he is badly outnumbered.  Together, they constitute overwhelming evidence of what McClellan believed and you would be stubborn to refuse to accept it.

Now, the first issue is whether this is appeal to "authority".  If it is not, then you are going to have trouble defending your accusation of the Gospel of John as an appeal to authority.

The second problem is dismissing all evidence for deity for the circular reason that it is evidence for deity.  Which is where you get your "appeal to authority" for the GofJ. 

Now, the valid response is that each of us takes his personal experience as more reliable than anyone else's.  Our "lack of experience" is really a positive experience of no experience.  Therefore you can say that you place your experience above the experience of the theist. And that is what the theist is doing: placing his experience above yours.  Since you are both using the same reasoning, that is defendable.

The price is, of course, putting your views on the same epistemological level of the theists. 

 

[crazyfingers]

5th April 2003 at 07:51 PM lucaspa said this in Post #12

 

All the more reason to be careful at what you look at. 

Not sure what you are trying to say.

Was this the God center that people were talking about where stimulating the brain in a specific center produced a religious experience?

I don't think so.  Dormammu hypothesized it without knowing about Persinga's experiments.  Also, it wasn't a "religious" experience, but an "other person" experience.

The report that I heard certainly described the sensation as a religious experience.  They tested religious and nonreligious people.  Religious people reported having a religious experience.  Perhaps they are different experiments.

But another evolutionary reason is that, if deity exists, communicating with it offers definite advantages.  For instance, having deity tell you how to handle a drought or that a sabre-tooth tiger is hiding in the bushes is a big selective advantage.

It could. But if that was the case then you'd expect that there would be some significant difference between the religious and the nonreligious.  It does not appear that religious people get along any better than nonreligious.

Further, you'd expect that if the religious were all getting their messages from a deity, that there would be some commonality in the messages.  But it appears to me that religious people disagree with each other on matters of religion at least as much as they do with the nonreligious.

 

I've always found the group cohesiveness particularly weak.  Group cohesiveness can be gained by any number of mechanisms other than deity. The strongest is facing group dangers and challenges.  Early groups would have that in abundance, including looking on other tribes as aliens.

It could also explain why the nonreligious often are difficult to organize into an identity group.

And yet they typically do. Like any persecuted group, atheists thru the centuries have organized into groups. 

I don't believe that in general atheists are quite the joiners that the religious are.  I believe that about 45% of US Christians go to church regularly.  The nonreligious do not join nontheism groups at rates anywhere near that. 

5th April 2003 at 07:56 PM lucaspa said this in Post #13

 

This is where you get into a gray area of intellectual honesty. 

I don't think so.  At least not for what I have said.

Yes, when someone presents you with a laundry list of specifics that deity wants, you can test that against other specific lists.

And it is pretty clear that many lists do contradict each other.   

However, for just experience of deity, you run into a different set of problems. 

That's not what I'm talking about though.

Kitty Ferguson summed them up:


"Where have we arrived at the end of seven chapters?  Joseph Ford has said:  'More than most, [scientists] are content to live with unanswered questions.' (3).  One of the questions science hasn't answered and may never be able to answer - let none of us assume otherwise - is whether there is a God.  We have not been able to say that it requires double-think or other intellectual dishonesty to have great faith in science as we know it at the end of the twentieth century and also to believe in God - even a personal and intervening God.

But why should anyone think such a combination of faiths might be necessary, or indispensable on a quest for fundamental truth?  There are two reasons for thinking it might be.  One would be to have first-hand, experiential evidence of God which was personally convincing.  The second is because to dismiss belief in God summarily is to pass premature and unwarranted judgement on the sanity, honesty, and intelligence of a vast number of our fellow human beings who claim to have such experiential evidence, many of them the same persons we do trust implicitly when it comes to other matters.  It ill becomes any of us to take the attitude that all evidence for God is false evidence, beneath consideration, simply by virtue of its being evidence for God, or even by virtue of its being outside the purview of science.  Such attitudes are taken, sometimes in the name of science, but in truth this sort of attitude is intellectual dishonesty.  Our most reputable scientists, whatever sins of arrogance that may occasionally commit, do not really declare that what they don't know isn't knowledge or that what they haven't experienced isn't experience."
Kitty Ferguson, The Fire in the Equations, pp. 281-282.

That person should learn how to make a point more clearly.