Andrew Newberg: Is The Human Brain Hardwired for God? | Big Think

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The question as to whether or not we are hardwired for religion and spirituality is an important one, says pioneering neuroscientist Andrew Newberg. “When we look at how the brain works, we see it’s able to very easily engage in religious and spiritual practices, ideas and experiences.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Dr. Andrew Newberg :

Dr. Andrew Newberg is the director of research at the Jefferson Myrna Brind Center of Integrative Medicine and a physician at Jefferson University Hospital. He is board certified in internal medicine and nuclear medicine. Andrew has been asking questions about reality, truth, and God since he was very young, and he has long been fascinated by the human mind and its complex workings. While a medical student, he met Dr. Eugene d’Aquili, who was studying religious experiences. Combining their interests with Andrew’s background in neuroscience and brain imaging, they were able to break new theoretical and empirical ground on the relationship between the brain and religion.

Andrew’s research now largely focuses on how brain function is associated with various mental states—in particular, religious and mystical experiences. His research has included brain scans of people in prayer, meditation, rituals, and trance states, as well as surveys of people's spiritual experiences and attitudes. He has also evaluated the relationship between religious or spiritual phenomena and health, and the effect of meditation on memory. He believes that it is important to keep science rigorous and religion religious. Andrew has also used neuroimaging research projects to study aging and dementia, Parkinson's disease, epilepsy, depression, and other neurological and psychiatric disorders.

Dr. Newberg has published over 100 research articles, essays and book chapters, and is the co-author of the best selling books, Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (Ballantine, 2001) and How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist (Ballantine, 2009). He has presented his research throughout the world in both scientific and public forums. He appeared on Nightline, 20/20, Good Morning America, ABC's World News Tonight, National Public Radio, London Talk Radio and over fifteen nationally syndicated radio programs. His work has been featured in Time, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other newspapers and magazines.

His newest work is How Enlightenment Changes Your Brain: The New Science of Transformation.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIPT:

Andrew Newberg: The question as to whether or not we are hardwired for religion and spirituality, I think, is a very important one. When we look at how the brain works, it looks like the brain is able to very easily engage in religious and spiritual practices, ideas and experiences. All the brain scan studies that we've done show that there are multiple parts of the brain that seem to get involved. So it really does look like the brain is so easily capable of having these experiences. Now exactly how that ability got into the brain is, of course, a much more complex and both philosophical and scientific question. The scientists would say, well, maybe it was through millions of years of evolution, that because being religious or spiritual was an adaptive process it got incorporated into the biological mechanisms of the brain. And there are certainly a lot of reasons to support that.

And, of course, if you're a religious individual it also makes sense that if there is a God up there and we're down here that we would have a brain that's capable of communicating to God, praying to God, doing the things that God needs us to do. Otherwise there would be this kind of fundamentally silly disconnect. We wouldn't be able to have any kind of interaction with God. So it does look like the brain, no matter how it got there, does have this profound ability to engage in religious and spiritual experiences, and that's part of why we've seen religion and spirituality be a part of human history since the very dawn of civilization.

One of the things that we find to be such an important element of many of the rituals and practices that people do as part of their religious traditions is the repetition of it. The more that you come back to a particular idea, the more you focus on it, the more you say a phrase or a prayer, those are the ideas and beliefs that become written into the neural connections of the brain.

[TheBoxysolution]

"The only true visdom is in knowing you know nothing."
- Socrates

[Gufberg]

I like that he is actually open to both a religious and scientific interpretation - in my opinion both interpretation are likely correct (anybody read Teilhard de Chardin?)
Too many atheists deny the concept of divinity catagorically while too many religious people deny the abscence of god categorically

[toshtao]

This guy went from Scientist to Yogi in less than 5 minutes.

[prole]

The question is, if you raised a child with no religious exposure, would most of them just spontaneously develop religious beliefs and ideas? I don't think so. I believe that religion is much more of a cultural and societal phenomenon than a biological one

[PathologicallySane]

It's easy for the brain because it makes people feel good. Whether it's a load a crap or not, it helps some people cope with reality.

[CatcherInTheFry]

lol about all of you argueing about religeon. you know what i got from this video?

the human brain is fucking awesome.

[passthebreadsauce]

No. I'll put it like this: the brain is not a receiver--it's function is not to receive signals and energies floating around in the air. The brain is a processing unit. Our brain is designed to take in the world, compute it so that it fits our experiences, and then relay it to our consciousness. What I'm saying is, all that you experience is a direct result of your brain and nothing else. You can ask philosophical questions about phenomenon, but unless you understandWHY they happen, it'suseless.

[LifeNotRules]

I completely agree with you, but can we just forget that for five minutes and open our minds to his idea, wether we agree or not?

[pbtube]

Newberg makes a mistake of jumping immediately to the question “Are we hardwired for God?” The real question is “Are we hardwired, due to non-religious needs, for certain abilities, which then make us prone to believing in God?”

[bonnyhutchins]

The more you study the Bible is how you become better at meditation it's not something that you have to practice you have to practice reading the Bible not all these religious books that copy cats are making billions of dirty money from...🌞

[SirNegator]

What i learned: Work out and Meditate. NOW!

[jahazielutube]

Thank you for sharing. This is a great unbiased explanation and way of looking at an option for people to find peace through meditation and prayer.

[ndmoldenhauer]

Actually a few months ago they debunked this because too many parts of a the brain were working during religion that pointed to the fact that there is no specific part of the brain "designed" for religion.

[gravityvertigo]

Hahahaha very bold choice, presenting the religious explanation as equivalent to the scientific one.

Also, meditation; defragging for your brain? I can dig it.

[adamwallace]

religion is a conscious person's cure for anxiety

[douggolden]

I think it's more likely that we're hardwired to find explanations for things we don't understand. The easier the explanation, the more palatable it is to a wider range of people. True understanding of what is happening, in a scientific sense, is more like studying. And who wants to do that? Or has the time?

If the simplest explanation is constantly reinforced within a community, god becomes their "science."

[jessicastrat]

He seems to miss what to me appears to be the conclusion of most evolutionary biologists and evo psychologists - that belief in god is not an adaptation, but a byproduct of other useful adaptations and cognitive biases, like the theory of mind, and the leaning towards type 1 errors, and ‘patterniserty’

[Mastocat]

Satin is nice but I don't see why a fabric would have that many likes.

[Willbail]

We are only hardwired to look for answers, it is only recently that we can finally answer the big questions with god.

[TheKnightWho]

I hate how so many people are disliking this video because they're misinterpreting this as an argument in favour of a god. He's not saying that at all, merely that our brains are hardwired to naturally seek out a god!