Hi: Did anyone read the recent Science paper looking at adherence to religious endorsements among two groups one faithful and the second athesist who first had to perform tasks ? The study did baseline endorsement assessments and found that religious people endorsed concepts like ‘my life could be influenced by supernatural forces’ and atheists did not. The two groups then had to do two sets of tasks before being reassessed on religious endorsements. The first set of tasks was mathmatical calculation. They had to multiply and divide, calculate speeds, do puzzles etc. The second set of tasks was to listen to music, chant and meditate, hear a motivtional speaker etc. Turns out that ALL subjects decreased their ‘supernatural’ endorsements after performing calculations and they ALL increased endorsements after listening to music, meditation etc. Turns out activating the frontal lobes inhibits our more cognitively ‘creative’ hindbrain. Thus we can explain the music, incense, chanting, preaching found in most religious settings.
You guys will never agree because both functions are legitimate, spatially separated in brain and to a certain extent they appear to be mutually exclusive. Likely some individuals release more dopamine in their nucleus acumbens than others when they chant or like me when they solve a math puzzle. That is why we have Mother Teresa and Steven Hawkings. God will never be gone because that valuable hindbrain cerebral real estate will be occupied with something in some people and little in others. Importantly the data imply that however we self identify, we are all susceptible to faith as well as reason under the right conditions.
Hi: Did anyone read the recent Science paper looking at adherence to religious endorsements among two groups one faithful and the second athesist who first had to perform tasks ? The study did baseline endorsement assessments and found that religious people endorsed concepts like ‘my life could be influenced by supernatural forces’ and atheists did not. The two groups then had to do two sets of tasks before being reassessed on religious endorsements. The first set of tasks was mathmatical calculation. They had to multiply and divide, calculate speeds, do puzzles etc. The second set of tasks was to listen to music, chant and meditate, hear a motivtional speaker etc. Turns out that ALL subjects decreased their ‘supernatural’ endorsements after performing calculations and they ALL increased endorsements after listening to music, meditation etc. Turns out activating the frontal lobes inhibits our more cognitively ‘creative’ hindbrain. Thus we can explain the music, incense, chanting, preaching found in most religious settings. You guys will never agree because both functions are legitimate, spatially separated in brain and to a certain extent they appear to be mutually exclusive. Likely some individuals release more dopamine in their nucleus acumbens than others when they chant or like me when they solve a math puzzle. That is why we have Mother Teresa and Steven Hawkings. God will never be gone because that valuable hindbrain cerebral real estate will be occupied with something in some people and little in others. Importantly the data imply that however we self identify, we are all susceptible to faith as well as reason under the right conditions.