Neurotheology

[Syne]

The neuroscience argument that religion shaped the very structure of our brains

"Religion and neuroscience are not an obvious pairing. But earlier this week, a study published in Social Neuroscience demonstrated that spiritual feelings activate the neurological reward systems of devout Mormons.

...it’s part of a young and fast-growing new field that examines the relationship between our brains and religion, called neurotheology.

...“Religion has played an incredibly important role in human evolution. It’s funny, people want to separate the two but in fact they’re intertwined,” he says.

...“What makes religious studies interesting is they’re uniquely human traits and belief systems. If you do find a set of brain areas that are active during a religious task, by reverse inference you can make a judgment about what cognitive processes—social or emotional—underlie that particular activation that’s there in the religious task,” he says. If you ask people to think about God, for example, the brain areas that activate turn out to be the same as brain areas activated in empathetic tasks, like imagining a situation from someone else’s perspective."

[RainbowUnicorn]

The neuroscience argument that religion shaped the very structure of our brains

"Religion and neuroscience are not an obvious pairing. But earlier this week, a study published in Social Neuroscience demonstrated that spiritual feelings activate the neurological reward systems of devout Mormons.

...it’s part of a young and fast-growing new field that examines the relationship between our brains and religion, called neurotheology.

...“Religion has played an incredibly important role in human evolution. It’s funny, people want to separate the two but in fact they’re intertwined,” he says.

...“What makes religious studies interesting is they’re uniquely human traits and belief systems. If you do find a set of brain areas that are active during a religious task, by reverse inference you can make a judgment about what cognitive processes—social or emotional—underlie that particular activation that’s there in the religious task,” he says. If you ask people to think about God, for example, the brain areas that activate turn out to be the same as brain areas activated in empathetic tasks, like imagining a situation from someone else’s perspective."

Mormoms have a selective breeding system for generations that evicts the most liberal thinkers.
the process of indoctrination is done during puberty so the group socialisation behaviour paterns are directly programmed into the hormonal memory.

the data is practically useless.
they would need to look at interfaith communitys where generic secular law is dominant in the town centre and then get as many varied sample sizes as possible.
children are routinely thrown out of their homes & couples seperarted by the church leaders and expelled from the community.
this has been going on for generations.
the brain norrmalising that is going to have certain areas that produce dopamines as a response to certain triggers and even more likely to be easily brain washed and psychological triggers primed for pressing on a regular basis.

thats how most conservative religions work
they start the brain washing on their children as soon as they are born.

they need to frst prove that the area of the brain being activated is not th esame as drug addicts and is being done in people who are also secular and have not been brain washed from birth in a single religion closed community.
aside from running all the normal health tests to make sure they dont starve their followers of protiens or vitamins which triger specific response to make them more suggestable and or less resistant to control.

[C C]

[...] “No specific part of the brain is the religious self,” he says. “Many parts of the brain are part of our religious and spiritual practices. I think that makes sense because religious beliefs involves our thoughts, actions, and behaviors.” Studies suggest that the reward system activated in the Mormon study would also be activated whenever subject experience an equivalent secular experience: for example, when a subject reads an opinion—whether it’s political, scientific, legal, or any other field—with which they strongly agree. “We’ve seen it with political beliefs, donating to charities they believed in—after all, that’s why we repeat our behaviors,” says Grafman. [...]

Imparting "sacredness" to a suggested goal may have been essential in the early days for organizing masses of people to engage in a grand project -- for just bringing proto-civilization itself into existence. That seems the case for, say, the Mayan cities or complexes. Tribal leaders promising torture, or threatening to decapitate and rip out hearts of family members can only go so far in terms of motivation (not to mention its eventual payback of fermenting grudges and revenge). Among populations without reason and science around to suggest practical incentives for doing _X_ or upholding _X_ institution, a chieftain might have to be depend upon spiritual sponsorship in order to win / receive and retain that status of power to begin with.

[Syne]

Thinking about god produces the same brain activity as empathy. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story...=101617951

Since empathy is actually projective self involvement, most empathy can be expected to have at least a tertiary connection to reward systems.

[Zinjanthropos]

Can't see why evolution would favor religion unless having a legitimate blissful feeling for pillage, rape and murder is just as, if not more important than survival.

All I'm saying is that one less reason to attack one another is, I hope, a good thing.

[Syne]

The idea of a god was probably the first wholly objective perspective imagined. People probably needed to personify the objective perspective long before they could think of it in the abstract. And religion has always been a powerful organizing force in human civilization, especially considering its identical brain activity as empathy.

[Zinjanthropos]

The idea of a god was probably the first wholly objective perspective imagined. People probably needed to personify the objective perspective long before they could think of it in the abstract. And religion has always been a powerful organizing force in human civilization, especially considering its identical brain activity as empathy.

I thought a good empath understood the feelings of others. Most of us, and perhaps all, don't understand the brain. Why those two are on the same wavelength is kind of odd. Maybe the brain doesn't know what else to do with religion same way we don't know what to do with a wristwatch other than wear it and look at it periodically.

[Syne]

The idea of a god was probably the first wholly objective perspective imagined. People probably needed to personify the objective perspective long before they could think of it in the abstract. And religion has always been a powerful organizing force in human civilization, especially considering its identical brain activity as empathy.

I thought a good empath understood the feelings of others. Most of us, and perhaps all, don't understand the brain. Why those two are on the same wavelength is kind of odd. Maybe the brain doesn't know what else to do with religion same way we don't know what to do with a wristwatch other than wear it and look at it periodically.

Empathy elicits our own feelings (through mirror neurons), not directly feeling those of another. Similarly, thinking about god mirrors the assumed perspective of god, while not directly perceiving that perspective.

[Zinjanthropos]

Empathy:
 
Websters: 

the feeling that you understand and share another person's experiences and emotions : the ability to share someone else's feelings.

Apple(?):

the ability to understand and share the feelings of another.

One's a feeling and the other an ability. Either way I would think understanding has something to do with it

[Yazata]

"Religion and neuroscience are not an obvious pairing."

It's a trendy one though. There's been a flood of recent books on the subject.

“Religion has played an incredibly important role in human evolution. It’s funny, people want to separate the two but in fact they’re intertwined,” he says.

I don't think that one can necessarily conclude that religion confers evolutionary advantage on religious organisms. I'm more inclined to suspect that religiosity is generated more or less as an accidental consequence, by other cognitive abilities that do confer selective advantage.

“What makes religious studies interesting is they’re uniquely human traits and belief systems. If you do find a set of brain areas that are active during a religious task, by reverse inference you can make a judgment about what cognitive processes—social or emotional—underlie that particular activation that’s there in the religious task,” he says. If you ask people to think about God, for example, the brain areas that activate turn out to be the same as brain areas activated in empathetic tasks, like imagining a situation from someone else’s perspective."

Imagining God in personal terms implies that one assigns psychologistic predicates to 'God', that one tries to conceive of God as one conceives of human persons and thinks of God in terms of intentions, purposes, motivations, emotions and so on. So it stands to reason that our innate human 'theory of mind' would be activated.

I wonder if autistic people, who are said to have defects in this human ability (which may or may not be true) display any kind of identifiable religiosity.