Neurotheology
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As scientists continue to try and understand the origins of faith and religion in human beings, a new field has been created, “neurotheology.”
Certain areas of the brain have been identified as being active when people pray, meditate or have some other kind of spiritual experience. This influx of research is being promoted by both sides of the spectrum. Both religious groups and atheists say these studies defend their point of view. Religious groups claim it was part of the divine design, while atheists state that we were hard wired to be religious as a result of evolutionary survivalism.
A recent CNN article, Are humans hard-wired for faith?, discussed how religion has been beneficial to human beings:
To be sure, religion has the unparalleled power to bring people into groups. Religion has helped humans survive, adapt and evolve in groups over the ages. It’s also helped us learn to cope with death, identify danger and finding mating partners.
Today, scientific images can track our thoughts on God, but it would take a long leap of faith to identify why we think of God in the first place.
It will be interesting to watch this research proceed. What will the future of neurotheology hold? Will we find something extraordinarily supernatural, or will we find out that even our soul/being is simply a mesh of circuitry that can be saved, stored and placed into a new flesh sleeve† ?
† Read Altered Carbon
