An interesting article going over many aspects of the brain and religion: right temporal lobe reactions and religion, the mind during prayer and meditation versus a tongues experience, the God helmet and Dawkins experience of it, and some anthropological advantages for having religious experiences.

The article is about 3 pages long:

Is the Brain Hardwired for Religion:
http://health.howstuffworks.com/ment...n-religion.htm

http://www.pnas.org/content/early/20...74106.abstract

Believers' estimates of God's beliefs are more egocentric than estimates of other people's beliefs

Abstract

People often reason egocentrically about others' beliefs, using their own beliefs as an inductive guide. Correlational, experimental, and neuroimaging evidence suggests that people may be even more egocentric when reasoning about a religious agent's beliefs (e.g., God). In both nationally representative and more local samples, people's own beliefs on important social and ethical issues were consistently correlated more strongly with estimates of God's beliefs than with estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 1–4). Manipulating people's beliefs similarly influenced estimates of God's beliefs but did not as consistently influence estimates of other people's beliefs (Studies 5 and 6). A final neuroimaging study demonstrated a clear convergence in neural activity when reasoning about one's own beliefs and God's beliefs, but clear divergences when reasoning about another person's beliefs (Study 7). In particular, reasoning about God's beliefs activated areas associated with self-referential thinkingmore so than did reasoning about another person's beliefs. Believers commonly use inferences about God's beliefs as a moral compass, but that compass appears especially dependent on one's own existing beliefs.

"No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means."

I can see by the speed of your post you didn't read the OP article.

That never stopped you....


Im sorry but it was there.

Lol...interesting how everybody wants to claim evolution is compelling but nobody wants to look at the brain...

The brain is fascinating. I started out with this article "Do men and women have different brains?": http://health.howstuffworks.com/huma...ent-brains.htm

and came across the religion one. The brain helmet is a hoot.

Im more interested in this question when it comes to judgment and salvation.

If the brains of believers have the ability to believe and the brains of non believers are impaired. It basically means Gods punishing the mentally handicap who have no control over there brains chemistry. That is if he doesn't factor that in and your in the must believe camp.

Did you get that from the article? If so, it must be a bad article. Many are looking at the brain, and in fact we trace the development of various parts of the brain through evolutionary history. So what are you talking about?

Do you think the brain being hardwired for religious belief increases or decreases the likelyhood of god being real?

Bonus points if you dont ignore "god wants us to have free will" argument and the way that evolution would make the genes of believers more likely to be passed down the generations than the genes of none believers, who were stoned to death or burned on a stake etc.

Only if you think there's an eternal hell.

God could be allowing us the experience of this world so we never want to experience it again.

Sort of like touching a hot stove once makes you respect a stove and hot things the rest of your life.

Besides he told us to go out and tell people. I always had the ability to spot people that were better than me and learn from them so why can't other non-believers do the same: fake it until understanding is achieved and it becomes second nature.

At the same time God needs to keep quality control down here. Just bad enough so we learn not to want to touch the hot stove any more yet not so bad we nuke each other into non-existence. Unlike this world's experience of the ends, God's ends are so out of proportion to the means that his means could be justified.

Can you expand more on what you mean by this:

I dont want to jump to conclusions.

It doesn't just go for hell it goes for any non acceptance.
But my brain is defective, i cant tell if its hot.
Because we are going under the assumption non believers brain are defective so it would not be possible.
Hey if its a testing ground and non believers brains fail, ok. But believes should have sympathy for humans who have bad brains that instead of judgment. You think God would too but...

I think it increases it. We also have a VMAT-2 gene. Genes aren't all controlling though.

I'm not going to argue anything on free will because for the longest time I couldn't make up my mind between Arminianism and Reformed views and I think its really a combination of both just like compatibilism is a combination of both divine providence and human will. Most likely its because it's a mixture of both that humans can't theologize with 100 percent accuracy. That makes the scriptural approach the best one but somehow that approach isn't fashionable today.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PFJPtVRlI64

Split brain with one half atheist, one half theist.

I love that one; I wish some Christian on this board would answer it seriously some day.
Things like this never seem to spark the reflection they logically should.

I watched the video but it didn't make sense to me really.

People do have prefrontal cortex integration problems at least that's what I've learned by reading the neuropsychiatrist Curt Thompson, M.D.

But I'm not an expert on the topic so I can only recommend reading his book for more details as I suspect it has some relation to the points being made in the video you posted.