How many times in history have people claimed God to be on their side? A recent study by Nicholas Epley at the university of Chicago might explain why. He asked Christian volunteers their views on a series of controversial topics, such as the death penalty and abortion. They were then asked what they thought the views were of average Americans, public figures like Bill Gates, and God. The volunteers own views most resembled those of God.
The next stage was a clever twist. Another group of volunteers were given tasks designed to soften their views, such as playing devils advocate and defending the death penalty when they were actually in favour of it. The result was that the views attributed to other people remained the same, but those of God shifted in accordance with their own.
Finally the team used a brain scanner which showed that the same brain areas became active when contemplating their own views as those of God, but an area used for inferring other people’s mental states lit up when thinking about other American’s views.
Interesting isn’t it? As an atheist my conclusion is going to be different from people of faith, and I’d be genuinely interested to hear their thoughts – and anyone elses, obviously.
an interesting question would be to ask whether the same brain area lights up on the scan (as when thinking about own views as those of God) when they are praying or when mindfulness in meditation is occurring.
How interesting – you’ve definitely have me thinking about this. Though I don’t have much time right now to respond – it would surely be a very interesting and enjoyable conversation at some point in the future.
I have no idea how the brain stores and access information and like I said, I have not thought these ideas through but my initial ideas and questions include:
• Because God is not a real person, one needs to create an internal representation of what God is and therefore links it to oneself
• God is a metaphoric representation for our spiritual source – and many would say things like we are part of God (e.g. God is within me, I am within God, God and I are one), so God could therefore be represented in our brains as being part of ourselves
• I wonder if other metaphorical ideas would have the same response – would the results be the same for people of different faiths?
• What about those belief systems with multiple deities – would the same thing occur with each deity?
• I would be curious to learn if other metaphorical representations were also tested? Like Saints, Angles, the Devil, or even Santa.
I agree with Daniel in that people create internal representations of God but my experience, having been there myself, is that many Christians go further than that an almost loose a sense of self and somehow God within me means there is no me. God tells me what to do…”what would God do in this situation?” etc. etc. I know so many Christians that wait for God to ‘tell them’ something, what next to do with their life etc. Almost as if they are waiting for God to tell them it is OK to do what deep down they want to do. They are scared of being punished for doing the wrong thing. For me my theology has changed over the years. I think God has given us a brain, emotions etc. to work it out for ourselves. He wants us to be us….as he created us..our unique selves…following out talents and passions – which he gave us. It removes personal responsibility.
This is just a brain dump sorry, but I think somewhere in my thinking is that Christians fuse themselves/God as being one…losing the sense of self which I think links in to that research. In a nutshell, I don’t think they are truly thinking about their own view but what they think God’s view is which ‘should’ be their view. The established church has made it too ‘scary’ for people to think on their own.
That’s fascinating and on initial inspection seemed to contradict other recent studies I am aware of which attempt to explain gods place in people’s psyche.
Religion and god seem to operate on cognitive mechanisms which are co-opted for their own purpose, but have a different predominant function.
The first is your ability to conduct conversations with unseen others in your head.
It is quite a complicated process to be able to conduct conversations with friends in your head and imagine their responses when they are not there.
It is a very small leap to begin talking to dead relatives (ancestor worship) and even supernatural entities like god.
When you believe though that this is not merely an imagined conversation in your head, but one that god is actually hearing and responding to then it gains that extra level of detatchment from experience, and becomes a far more persausive stimulus than conversations with those who could later return in the real world and contradict something you previously imagined.
The fact that the religious belief that you can converse with god in this way seems to co-opt this mechanism seems to be contradicted to some extent when you consider that the brain scans indicate god has a different place in the brain to other humans.
However god seems to work on the desire we all have for a ‘caretaker’ figure in our lives. We all need people who we believe will take care of us in times of need, and who likely love us unconditionally. For those of us without god though our caretakers are our friends and relatives who, unfortunately will one day die. From bitter experience we might also believe that they might one day disagree with us, or leave us behind.
God however will not. God is the ultimate caretaker who will look after us, long after our parents are dead. Not only that, but god is always there to help us whenever, and loves us without reservation. Far better than any mere mortal caretaker figure.
This aspect of our psyche seems to come from early in our childhood and operates on our childhood credulity. After all, god is the ‘father.’
At those young, formative years of lives we have trouble understanding ourselves as a distinct entity and more importantly the opinions of our parental figures are our opinions. Before we develop the desire to question our parents and their beliefs then anything they say, is our belief which we accept without question.
Perhaps it is this state of our brains that is being operated on when we consider what god thinks of things. After all while we have other people to ground our thoughts about what they believe with experience, we do not have anything to base our thoughts on the beliefs of god, other than our own beliefs.
Cheers
Nick