Brain

[Oldschool6]

Hello, I was raised a Catholic and I've always believed in God very strongly. I have always attributed most of my faith based on the spiritual experiences I have had. However, I read a website that asserted that the spiritual experience & God are nothing more than an evolutionary brain mechanism to cope with death. Do you think there is any basis on this assertion? I mean, research has discovered that no such “god part” of the brain exists. I do not see how this theory can be true being that not all of us believe in God or even care to believe in God. I would assume that if this were true we would all innately believe in God… I have since found many other compelling reasons to believe that God exists, but for some reason I cannot get this one off my mind being that I've always attributed the innate desire for transcendence and to live on as my strongest reason to believe.

[Silvertusk]

Hello, I was raised a Catholic and I've always believed in God very strongly. I have always attributed most of my faith based on the spiritual experiences I have had. However, I read a website that asserted that the spiritual experience & God are nothing more than an evolutionary brain mechanism to cope with death. Do you think there is any basis on this assertion? I mean, research has discovered that no such “god part” of the brain exists. I do not see how this theory can be true being that not all of us believe in God or even care to believe in God. I would assume that if this were true we would all innately believe in God… I have since found many other compelling reasons to believe that God exists, but for some reason I cannot get this one off my mind being that I've always attributed the innate desire for transcendence and to live on as my strongest reason to believe.

Hi Oldschool. Welcome to this board. I think you kinda answered your own question really - There are people who dont beleive in God. Does that mean they are more evolved than us or vice versa?

I think you might ask the question that why is there a yearning inside us that makes us ask the questions of why we are here. I think if God created us for a relationship with him then I think one of the things he would have put in us is that yearning so that we would search for him. The choice is still ours in the end however - but to me it sounds very much like a design decision.

God Bless

Silvertusk

[angel]

There are people with genetic illness which are inhereditated by mutations happened centuries ago.
The fact that they are still there does not prove that they did not evolve as we did.

The fact that some humans do not believe in god does not mean that faith has no evolutionary origin. Nor that it has of course.

[David Blacklock]

There have been in the last decade many studies done with fMRI - that is MRI studies done with dye or other markers - to measure differential blood flow in people when they are doing certain activities which elicit certain emotions. Certain religious activities are known to increase blood flow/activity in certain brain areas, but any attempt to use this as evidence for or against the existence of God is just speculation.

http://www.newscientist.com/channel/opi ... uture.html