"God" is Just a Chemical Reaction in the Brain (souls, myth)
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Leaving the different religious etc. aside for a moment…
The argument that God must not exist because the same chemicals released in the brain while ‘receiving’ the Holy Spirit/Ghost are the same as those released by drugs or sex etc., does not quite work for disproving the existence of God.
Why? What you are describing is a reaction by the brain to something.
If I feel all warm and fuzzy inside after looking at my cute kittens, that part of my brain may light up. It doesn’t mean the kittens don’t exist though— just that that was my physiological reaction to the kittens.
Now if I’m hallucinating that I saw kittens, my brain will still likely light up. However, I know what kittens are, have had experience with kittens— kittens do exist. I’m reacting to something real.
I’m not trying to prove or disprove the existence of God in this post—- just analyzing the argument
While correct, it does not disprove gods, the brain activity we know does exist works as an explanation for why people believe in gods, and explains why there are different religions and god beliefs.
Your kitten analogy fails because we know kittens exist. If people want to argue the brain activity is a reaction to some god, then they need to provide evidence for that god.
Okay, this is going to digress quite a bit--but you did ask. So
For purposes of this forum I talk as if God is a real entity. I mean I have to in order to be able to converse. But away from the forum I'm ambivalent about him. Whether he exists or not plays no part in my life like it did prior to my declaration as an atheist. Frankly for myself I couldn't care less about him.
But I AM bitter about all the decades I threw away believing in him. I could have been doing something much more productive with that time than worshiping something I don't believe exists. The absolute truth is:
I don't want the young kids who come in here reading these threads and looking for guidance about whether or not they should join Christianity--I don't want them making the same mistake I did--throwing their lives away on a belief system that has proven itself a thousand times over being a morally corrupt, dishonest nefarious religion.
These kids have a chance to make something of their lives--go into a good occupation, make good money, get married, have a beautiful home with a loving wife and kids. They don't need the Jesus millstone around their necks with this rubbish of becoming a slave for Jesus and selling their lives away to him that crackpot televangelists like John Piper are trying to persuade them to do--and probably all just for roping another gullible schnook into tithing to his multi-million dollar bank account. I will point out to them that are lurking in R&S every single lie I can uncover about Christianity so that they can at least make an informed decision about whether or not they should throw their lives away on a fantasyland man god that history says never existed. I want to warn them not to believe the lies that you and I and a dozen other active members in here KNOW that Christians are telling them when they say, "Oh yes, God answers every single prayer I pray to him. He's never failed me once!" We skeptics and atheists know from personal experience that those Christians are lying through their teeth. We know that study after study proves they are lying, but unfortunately the lurkers in here don't know that unless I and others tell them so.
As God if he really exists is my witness, that is the only reason I post threads like this, MQ.
Now let's get back to the topic:
You're starting sound like Mink now--going off into an area that has nothing to do with the topic. Whether there are other chemicals going off is not the focus of the study. Doesn't matter, The medical personnel didn't think that aspect a danger to their findings that they had to make a disclaimer about it, so why ask?
Try to stick to what the study focused on:
'The Brain Treats God Like Drugs or Sex
Spiritual fulfillment provides a "hit" of neural dopamine like other, more worldly pleasures, says lead author Michael Ferguson, a post-doctoral associate in the Department of Human Development at Cornell University."
One person did try to answer this issue. He said, "Why shoudn't God light up sex and drug reward centers of the brain? He's God, he can do anything." Which I thought was an incredibly inane response. I asked, "Why not look at it from the point of view of what the article is implying--that praying to God and feeling the Holy Spirit is just a neurochemical reaction in the brain that produces "reward" chemicals that makes a person feel good. In other words, God is just a drug.
If God was real wouldn't the Holy Spirit indwelling, being a spiritual experience, not light up any regions of the brain at all? Doesn't that make infinitely more sense for an all-powerful God to do who wants us to believe in him??????
Karl Marx had it right when he said God is just an opiate. He didn't need a 10-million dollar study to determine that. He knew that 150 years before this study came along just from observing religious people with his own eyes.
OK, sorry to go off topic, but then I've really got nothing to add, since I'm not here to defend Christianity in the first place.
Thanks for the explanation of why this is so important to you. I still don't quite buy that you have altruistic motives to save young people from years of distress, but I'm a cynical sort. Carry on.
Test results that are negative to Christians usually deliberately get muddied because Christians can't stand evidence that shows their god is as phony as a 3-dollar bill. So let's look at the conclusions of the study one more time:
Religion lights up the 'same brain area as DRUGS and SEX'
FEELING God's spirit lights up the same areas of the brain as the more earthly desires of drugs, music, gambling and sex, scientists have revealed.
I have no idea how a sensible mind is going to arrive at a different conclusion than the bald truth those headlines speak:
"Religious and spiritual experiences activate the brain reward circuits in much the same way as love, sex, gambling, drugs and music, report researchers at the University of Utah School of Medicine. The findings will be published Nov. 29 in the journal Social Neuroscience."
from your link: "Specifically, the investigators set out to determine which brain networks are involved in representing spiritual feelings in one group, devout Mormons, "
Where in the study does it conclude that the criteria/results apply to all Christians?
from your link: "Specifically, the investigators set out to determine which brain networks are involved in representing spiritual feelings in one group, devout Mormons, "
Where in the study does it conclude that the criteria/results apply to all Christians? :rolleyes:
You caught that too, ay CCC?
The "study" was using only 19 Mormon teens, who were former missionaries...AND the "study" was conducted for ONE hour...
That's HARDLY a fair representative control group for ALL of the 2+ billion Christians!
from your link: "Specifically, the investigators set out to determine which brain networks are involved in representing spiritual feelings in one group, devout Mormons, "
Where in the study does it conclude that the criteria/results apply to all Christians?
Perhaps because it is a reasonable conclusion based on what neuroscience has discovered about how the brain works.
Perhaps because it is a reasonable conclusion based on what neuroscience has discovered about how the brain works.
But what if not all of Christianity bases it's spirituality on feelings/emotions - a signification proportion of which was not subject of the study?
What can science show us of how Spirituality works?
But what if not all of Christianity bases it's spirituality on feelings/emotions - a signification proportion of which was not subject of the study?
As for me, I base none of it on feelings and emotions. And no one else I know is that way either. That's where the OP is so flat dead wrong, assuming that feelings / emotions play a huge or all-encompassing role. For those that I know, spirituality is mostly thinking, as an approach to life and the world, and connecting with others (unless they like to act in repulsion, as the hardcore people religious/atheistic do).
OK, sorry to go off topic, but then I've really got nothing to add, since I'm not here to defend Christianity in the first place.
Thanks for the explanation of why this is so important to you. I still don't quite buy that you have altruistic motives to save young people from years of distress, but I'm a cynical sort. Carry on.
Posters like Thrill do help people who are in that "something isn't right stage" of leaving certain groups.
Hi thrill, I don't really have a problem with this: "God is nothing more than a neurochemical reaction in the brain.''
I think it's nice you think he is even that much ...chemicals in the brain.
And man, are they nice chemicals!!
That 'nothing more' part I think is wrong...'I'd say, He' is that and a bag of chips.
I'm glad you have a pretty liberal view of the findings, Miss Hepburn.
However, it's not "what I think". What I think is what the study's findings were. I don't say God is a brain chemical because that's what I concluded. I say it because that's what the study concluded and I just accepted their findings as making a hell of a lot of sense.
But what if not all of Christianity bases it's spirituality on feelings/emotions - a signification proportion of which was not subject of the study?
What can science show us of how Spirituality works?
Science always strives to make tangible the intangible.
They don't like what they can't measure.
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