Rant: Doc: The Brain

The Brain During Religious Experiences
Because of the work connecting temporal lobe epilepsy and spiritual experiences,
scientists previously believed that the temporal lobe was the only part of the brain
involved in religious feelings. Recent imaging studies, however, have shown that
many parts of the brain are activated during a religious experience.
At the forefront of these imaging studies is Andrew Newberg, a doctor at the
University of Pennsylvania. Newberg used single photon emission computed
tomography, or SPECT, imaging to take pictures of the brain during religious
activity. SPECT provides a picture of blood flow in the brain at a given moment, so
more blood flow indicates more activity.
One of Newberg's studies examined the brains of Tibetan Buddhist monks as they
meditated. The monks indicated to Newberg that they were beginning to enter a
meditative state by pulling on a piece of string. At that moment, Newberg injected
radioactive dye via an intravenous line and imaged the brain. Newberg found
increased activity in the frontal lobe, which deals with concentration; the monks
obviously were concentrating on the activity [source: Vedantam].
Meditating monks
But Newberg also found an immense decrease of activity in the parietal lobe. The
parietal lobe, among other things, orients a person in a three-dimensional space.
This lobe helps you look around to determine that you're 15 feet (4.6 meters) away
from a bathroom, 6 feet (1.8 meters) away from a door and so on. Newberg
hypothesizes that the decreased activity in the brains of the meditating monks
indicates that they lose their ability to differentiate where they end and something
else begins [source: Paulson]. In other words, they become at one with the
universe, a state often described in a moment of transcendence.
And it seems to matter little to whom or what that religious activity is directed
toward, for Newberg found similar brain activity in the brains of praying nuns.
Though the nuns were praying to God, rather than meditating like the monks, they
showed increased activity in the frontal lobe as they began focusing their minds.
There was also a decrease of activity in the parietal lobe, seemingly indicating that
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the nuns lost their sense of self in relation to the real world and were able to
achieve communion with God [source: Paulson].
While Newberg's work has been supported by other scientists conducting imaging
studies, some have a problem with the basis of the experiment. Critics of
Newberg's work argue that you can't reduce all religious behaviors to just
meditating or praying [source: PBS]. Religion encompasses more than that. What,
for example, might happen in the brain of someone doing charity work for the poor?
What happens when someone makes a moral choice based on his or her belief
system? Newberg's work as of yet is focused on individual, private experiences, as
opposed to the relationships and experiences that happen between other people
[source: Peters].
--Others are more concerned with the implications of the study. If religion is just an
activation of certain parts of the brain, does that mean God or any higher power is
just in our heads? That's not necessarily what scientists are trying to prove or
disprove. After all, if we are wired to believe in God, then it's not a far leap to
believe that God is the one who wired humans that way.
But is there any advantage to being genetically open to God? Scientists are trying
to discern if there's an evolutionary reason for why our brains are so receptive to
religious experiences. Religion might be a side effect of a developing brain; our
brains needed ways to explain the world around us, so they may have created a
belief system that could serve as kind of default place to turn in the case of
questions. Religion could serve that purpose to early man, with its somewhat
supernatural stories to explain cause-and-effect. But now, religion is an expensive
trait to carry forward; it involves time and sacrifice, such as fasting. And now, there
are scientific methods to explaining the world. Shouldn't religion have died by now?
Atheists may, of course, say yes, but as one anthropologist points out, even some
atheists cross their fingers when a plane experiences turbulence. This may indicate
that our brain will always seek out some sort of transcendental hope or otherworldly
protection, even if it's not called God [source: Henig]. And some evolutionary
biologists argue that there are important individual and collective benefits to a mind
hardwired for religion [source: The Economist]. Individually, people who believe that
someone bigger than themselves is watching them may make better choices in
terms of their evolutionary fitness; they may be less likely to drink or engage in
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other dangerous behaviors if they feel something or someone higher than them
may disapprove. But the real benefit may come down to a facet of Darwinism that
doesn't get much attention anymore: survival of entire groups.
One study evaluated the success of various communes in 19th-century America.
The communes with a secular ideology were four times as likely to disband in any
given year [source: The Economist]. But in religious communes, such as modernday
kibbutzim in Israel, those subject to the strongest religious rules have been
shown to be the most altruistic and cooperative of the bunch. In tests that examine
an individual's generosity when the entire group is at stake, those living in these
types of communities of faith are more likely to pool resources, which promotes the
survival of the collective [source: The Economist]. Religion in that sense is a way
for people to work together, to have an interest in an entire group's survival due to
shared beliefs.
Comment by doc
Meditation or prayer is the exact opposite to daydreaming. It is not being lost in
thought, but in seeing those thoughts as things that come and go. Nor does it
necessarily involve sitting or kneeling, it involves paying attention even when
walking. It is being alive to everything.
When prayer or meditation removes the delusion of the self being separate from the
rest of the universe, it shows the truth that science has been trying to tell us, “all
things are inter related”. Try being separated from air for 5 minutes and you will
see.
Further, egocentricity ( in the form of selfishness) produces enormous harm to the
individual and to the whole planet. It is a delusion that we can well afford to
abandon.

B :-) doc