the GOD part of the brain....

“Excellent” Edward O. Wilson, Pulitzer Prize Winner; Author of Sociobiology and Consilience "Alper uses a Socratic technique to brilliantly and flawlessly argue that our concepts of spirit and God are derived from the mechanics of our brain...enormously important...full of scientific and philosophical truths." Mark Waldman, senior editor, Transpersonal Review "Hauntingly Logical..Fascinating" Art Bell, "Coast to Coast am”

I have found this topic to be extremely interesting. I tend to be a seeker. I am eclectic in that way....I never tire of learning as much as I can about as many different things as I can. I seek truth above all things.....I am a stickler for that. In my dealings with the religious world I have unfortunately been shaken awake to find out I have been lied to many times over.......we all have......and that bothers me. SO I continue to seek out information......hopefully uncover more truth than fiction.

I have heard this topic about the "God spot" talked about on radio talk shows......and read many interesting articles about it...it has been discussed in the quantum physics articles I have read which fascinates me too......

I have a friend who was extremely religious and believed in God prior to suffering a head injury. He fell 30 feet and landed basically head-first and has not been quite the same since as far as his feelings regarding GOD or even A god. It was almost as if his belief in God....his knowledge of any feelings spiritually, etc......had been snuffed out after that portion of his brain had been damaged. This is not to say that portion cannot be healed or rejuvenated.... but what I found interesting was how what his injury did to his belief corresponded to what this book and others have said about their being a specific portion of the brain set aside for this.

I have found some extremely interesting articles over time pertaining to this. If I copy and paste them all here now there would be nothing but pages of it to sift through. Not everyone is interested in it.....and my blog is not solely about it.....so......Here is a link that lists many of the articles.

http://atheistempire.com/reference/brain/main.html


I also found today this which was of huge interest to me:

ALTRUISM, one of the most difficult human behaviours to define, can be detected in brain scans, US researchers claim.

They found that activity in a specific area of the brain could predict altruistic behaviour — and people's own reports of how selfish or giving they are.

Although understanding the function of this brain region may not necessarily identify what drives people like Mother Teresa, it may give clues to the origins of important social behaviours like altruism," said Scott Huettel, a neuroscientist at Duke University, North Carolina, who led the study.

The researchers set up an experiment in which they put 45 students into a functional magnetic resonance imaging scanner, which takes images of brain activity.

They gave the students various games to play, and told them that winning earned cash for either themselves or a charity. The students had chosen the charities beforehand from a list, the researchers report in Nature Neuroscience.

The students reacted differently depending on whether they won for themselves or for charity, with the ones who described themselves as altruistic responding more strongly.

The task was simple, and the students did not give up payments to themselves to give to the charities. But it took enough effort that Dr Huettel believes it did represent altruistic intent.

The researchers were surprised by their findings. Some other studies had predicted that giving would activate the reward systems in the brain. In fact, another centre was activated when the students won money for charity or watched the computer win money for charity.

"This area we saw was the posterior superior temporal cortex," Dr Huettel said. "It's part of the parietal lobe. What this brain area seems to be involved in is extracting meaning from things you see."

Dr Huettel's team asked the students how altruistic they were, and found the test strongly correlated with their own reports of unselfish activity.


hum......wonder what they will be able to tell next from scanning our brains? One would think they would be able then to tell us how often one thinks of other specific things like sex, eating, etc.....or if it reveals more just from "intent".....wow.....this is all amazing....but also a bit worrisome......as I would be slightly apprehensive that in the future someone might try to use this knowledge to decide how someone's brain should be or not be......and they might begin to feel they have the right to decide what is correct and acceptable and anything not acceptable well....they just eliminate..change......or destroy altogether.

guess my paranoia is acting up again