highdro69

Brain Differences Found Between Believers In God And Non-believers

Interesting stuff. Check out the article.

__________________
"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

braisler

I'll resist being droll... What stood out to me from the article was this:

Mistakes like believing in a god when there is no rational proof that one exists. Mistakes like praying for things to get better when you should actually be doing something to make things better.

Also the article claims that they 'controlled for personality and cognitive ability'. I didn't go far enough to look up the journal article that this Science Daily article was based on, but I would make the legitimate criticism of the work that it may not be possible to control for cognitive ability between believers and non-believers. Believers have that unknowable quantity they refer to as 'faith' which allows them to ignore the rational world and remain ignorant, perhaps blissfully so, as to the workings of the world.

Baraka_Guru

I think this is a bit of a misunderstanding as to the function of faith and prayer. It's a common belief of non-believers to view them as a crutch, when in many cases they're used as guidance (ie. "What should I do?" or "Give me the strength for what I must do."). There are core teachings to all religions, and prayer is meant as a way to abide by them and to reassert the belief in them. I won't go into detail about the differences between literal and metaphoric approaches, but what I refer to is not the kind of religious faith where people use it as a crutch or excuse.

Having religious faith does not automatically make one ignorant to the world around them. In many ways it heightens their sense of it.

That said, one doesn't need anxiety to know they've made a mistake or to know they need to correct something. I think those of faith have a lesser ACC response because they are more tuned in to a moral code, which would suggest they don't necessarily need an anxiety-ridden behavioural response so much as a confident evaluation of the situation (i.e. how should one change their behaviour, if necessary).

And did I read that right? The stronger the belief, the fewer errors?

__________________
Knowing that death is certain and that the time of death is uncertain, what's the most important thing?
—Bhikkhuni Pema Chödrön

Humankind cannot bear very much reality.
—From "Burnt Norton," Four Quartets (1936), T. S. Eliot

braisler

I can buy that the stronger the belief, the lower the ACC response. They believe that they are right, because they believe that they are right. It is same way that faith-healing parents believe that they are doing the right thing by withholding insulin from their diabetic child. Or the belief of the radical terrorist that he is doing god's work. I'm sure that those individuals would also have low ACC levels, but you'd have a difficult time time convincing me that their closely held, and passionately felt beliefs are anything but utter non-sense. Believers believe!

And yes, before you jump on those examples, I realize that they are 'extreme'. I'm just of the opinion that moderate religious belief, and our 'tolerance' of it, is what makes it possible for the extremes to arise... to the detriment of all mankind.

An interesting control for the study above would be to recruit other delusional personalities, say people who believe that SkyNet is real and therefore what decisions they make today (on some psychological test) are unimportant. Would they also have lower ACC levels and lower anxiety?

No misunderstanding here. There are a lot of religious people who certainly do use prayer as a crutch and an excuse for not doing something. Ex-President Bush's response to the questions of what he was going to do about Katrina and countless other real-world problems... prayer. The way that you are phrasing 'prayer' as a reflective function is no different from what a rational non-believer would do when they think things through for themselves and come to an honest conclusion about what needs to be done. I would say that the secular method of decision making just removes a god as a middleman.

Willravel

This seems more inflammatory than informative. As an atheist who, in the past, denigrated people of faith simply because of their beliefs (instead of what should be denigrated: destructive and/or intolerant words and actions), I find that regardless of the validity, it's simply not the way to go. There's no shortage of scientific or rational evidence to counter the absolute and certain belief in god already. Add this to the very big pile.

braisler

I'm not sure that I see your point, Willravel. The last sentence of your post seems to indicate that you find this study to the counter of absolute and certain belief in god. It is quite the opposite. The tone of the article suggests that people of faith have lower anxiety about making decisions that that this benefit is arrive at through their faith.

On the original article, I wish that I knew more about the kind of testing they were doing. As BG pointed out, they do seem to reach the conclusion that people of faith actually did better on the test, fewer errors, in addition to having lower ACC levels, less anxiety. I guess I'll have to go RTFA... or is that RTFJA in this case.

---------- Post added at 02:17 PM ---------- Previous post was at 01:40 PM ----------

Ok, I've read the article. It is an interesting read even though it is well outside my field. The Stroop test they are referring to in the article is something I encountered playing Brain Age on my wife's Nintendo DS. Seriously! A word for a color is presented in either the same color as it actually is, like this: red, or other than what the word actually is, like this: green. The test is to see whether you can correctly name the color of the word rather than just reading the word. A further explanation and an example test can be found here Stroop Test

Having read the article, I now understand better what the authors were referring to when they discussed an improved score on the test being positively correlated with religious belief. The believers tended to answer more slowly, and more correctly than the non-believers. Likely to be a side-effect of the lower anxiety. The test interval was timed, and all participants answered within the required amount of time. Believers just tended to answer more slowly within that time frame than non-believers.

The authors of the paper also held forth that, "Strong convictions of all kinds, then, may lower anxiety and uncertainty and their attendant brain activity." So my earlier allusion to belief in SkyNet, which was meant as an offhand jest, might not be so far off the mark either.

Willravel

Based on the understanding that as one is more depressed, one is likely to be more objective and have a more correct impression of the world (I'm trying to find the link for this, I think it was on reddit recently), the assertion would be that the alleviation of anxiety associated with religion here comes with an incorrect or imbalanced view of reality.

Sorry, I kinda put my cart before my horse with my last post. I read the article as being a scathing negative about believers—that their ignorance can be blamed for their bliss—and that kind of thing has already been said a million times.

Zeraph

What it seems to boil down to is the old debate of "ignorance is bliss" You're either faithful, and ignorant, or informed and stressed. Not quite that black and white, but my point is it's going to be a never ending debate on which side is greener. One we couldn't hope to even scratch the surface of here.

little_tippler

so, where do I sign up for the pill so I can 'believe in God'? Life would be easier, I'm sure. But once you've gone down the road of doubt, there is really no turning back. I prefer to question than to be spoon fed the answers. If when I ask the question, the answer is not satisfying, then what I can do but continue to question. I like to be curious. I like to be creative. It makes sense that there would be differences in the brains of believers and non-believers.

__________________
Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.

Fernando Pessoa, 1918

ratbastid

Guys, hang on. The article notes a correlation, NOT a causation.

Everybody (including, I think, the journalist who wrote the piece) seems to be reading this like religious belief RESULTS in lower AAC response. Bu it could well be that people with low AAC response express that neurochemical fact through increased incidence of religious behavior. I'd be SHOCKED if the scientists concluded that religious belief as a practice results in brain chemistry changes.

Ourcrazymodern?

The ism I assert isn't not humanism. I'm convinced IJUHP and that individual differences far outweigh any based elsewise, so I'm gonna take this quasi-research, throw it on the compost pile, and see if it reappears as a fruitful thing.

__________________
BE JUST AND FEAR NOT

Master_Shake

So does quitting work, fucking hookers, and shooting heroin. So I should be allowed to use those things too, yes?

__________________
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You know something, I don't think the sun even... exists... in this place. 'Cause I've been up for hours, and hours, and hours, and the night never ends here.

YamiYasha

Quite true. I second.
For example, there was once a study where they called teens and asked them if they ate dinner at home and how "bad" they were (activities that I cannot quite recall at the moment). Obviously, there was a correlation. They concluded that eating dinner together reducing teens' risky behavior. But this study was flawed. Assuming they all told the truth, maybe it's b/c they're risky teens that they don't eat home, or b/c they're "good" kids that they do eat at home.

Cynosure

So does masturbation. You forgot to include that one.

Actually, quitting your job only blocks anxiety and minimizes stress for a very short time. Unless you've won the lottery or something, your bills will still be there waiting to be paid, the day after you quit. Unemployment is very degrading and depressing, and causes lots of anxiety and stress.

As for screwing hookers and shooting heroin: those eventually bring on far more anxiety and stress than they initially help relieve.

---------- Post added at 07:32 AM ---------- Previous post was at 07:30 AM ----------

That it does. It's a "fluff" science article. I question myself for even being here, talking about it.