God is Just Another Person
Written by WTJ on March 10, 2009 – 8:34 am -
40 religious and non-religious people were asked to read phrase like “I believe God is with me throughout the day and watches over me”, “God is angry at human behaviour”, “There is no higher purpose”, etc. regardless they agreed or disagreed with the content they were reading. The team at National Institutes of Health, Bethesda, Maryland, then scan their brains with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). From the brain scan, the team found that human brain responds to God as just another person. There is no difference between the human brain subjects when God is mentioned regardless they are religious or non-religious. The same part in the brain that is being activated when God is mentioned associated with deciphering the emotions and intentions of others. The team suggested that religion may be a product of human evolution as human brain evolved, human became capable of handling complex social interactions, and religion is a social behaviour.
This study does not prove the existence of God. It just tells how God works in our brain. It just tells how god-belief or belief in god(s) works in our brain. The study will be published in the next issue of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, and the authors are Dimitrios Kapogiannis, Aron K. Barbey, Michael Su, Giovanna Zamboni, Frank Krueger, and Jordan Grafman.
Related posts:
Tags: Aron K. Barbey, brain, Dimitrios Kapogiannis, fMRI, Frank Krueger, functional magnetic resonance imaging, Giovanna Zamboni, God, human brain, Jordan Grafman, Michael Su, National Institutes of Health, precuneus, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences | 1 Comment »
March 17th, 2009 at 8:45 am
“It just tells how God works in our brain.”
The above sentence might be better articulate as:
“It just tells how god-belief or belief in god(s) works in our brain.”
There are over 3,000 gods found throughout different cultures and times, no matter how primitive the culture.