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The God Notion a Brain Matter Only by Hagur



In the opinions of most people these days god is almost certainly an invention of the human mind rather then a true being in any traditional sense. Over the course of human history there have been thousands of different religions and different figures worshiped as gods. Since then a lot of these have fallen into abandonment in terms of being worshiped and people considering them to be the truth. With the world now consisting of only a few of the many religions that there once was it seems likely that this pattern will eventually come around again and that all religions will eventually falter and fade away.



Belief in God has long been held to be a superstition by the scientific community as the existence of such a higher power cannot be demonstrated through objective observation. While science is unable to prove whether or not God is real, the field of neurotheology has instead posed a new question that we can find answers to: is there activity in the brain specific to religious experience? Can science in fact shed light on Thoreau's question?



Rather, religion makes use of existing brain structures and their functions, and it appears that religious beliefs match up exceedingly well with those functions.

However, it is difficult to determine which of the functions related to religion ultimately provided the adaptive advantage that led religion to thrive throughout human history. Simply finding a relationship does not necessarily imply causality, and whether these findings ultimately imply that religion is nothing more than a brain-based phenomenon is another matter. The findings we are discussing link religion and the brain, but the brain may be receptive to religious experiences rather than creating them. Whether the brain generates religious belief or serves as a conduit for it remains a complicated question.



Ideas of spirituality were generated prior to neurobiology and gained immediate legitimacy as there was no knowledge of brains or the necessity of a brain to generate purposeful behavior. The current debate suffers from defining religion in terms of what western culture sees as a religious experience, or religious belief. The anthropology of religion needs to be recognized in order to separate magic, speculative explanations, and social meaning before deciding what neurological basis is active. At a time when religious beliefs stimulate some to blow themselves up, it is difficult to accept that religious beliefs are by nature adaptive.



It is also reasonable to speculate that, in an evolutionary time scale, gradual evolution of a range of brain functions enabled the emergence and adoption of myriad religious beliefs. Even modern biblical scholars and many religious practitioners would admit that there is little objective evidence that God has completely scripted the requirements of religious belief. The hypothesis to challenge here should be that religious belief emerged out of the cognitive and social capabilities of humans and that those abilities depended upon the structure and function of the human brain.



© March 2012 by Hagur, Ghent, Belgium.