from abc's primetime nightline: beyond belief - the miracle mysteries (7/13/11)
"well, we certianly know that there are differences in the brain between people who are religious and those who are not. and that implies that there are people who are more likely to be predisposed to having religious beliefs or spiritual beliefs compared to those people who don't." (as said by dr andrew newberg, author of how god changes your brain)
two things. 1. is your brain already that way so you're predisposed to believe in religion (as he says), or do your religious belief change your brain (as is the title of his book)?
2. i'm a big believer in evolution, so this is interesting since there are so many more spiritual people than not. assuming that it's mostly not people killing people because they're not religious, and instead religious people really do just breed better or whatever, it adds a whole new dimension to pascal's wager.
2 comments:
Fascinating read. I kind of had an idea of where it was going after skipping straight to the tables and glancing over them. It was fun to read the specific arguments.
If we're talking about evolution, we have to assume predisposition for spirituality (or not) is a mutation. Might not really be a way to find out which is the "original". What's not mentioned here is what the brains are like in people who become religious when their parents were not, or in people who are raised religious but decide to renounce it later (and how that looks over time).
hm, good points!
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