Just for note, the Phineas Gage story about his personality change has been way overblown. As you say the brain is extremely adaptable, healthy parts of the brain will take over duties of a damage part, and it was the same in Gage's case.
regular comment: 1798 was when the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, which many consider an infringement on the First Amendment. If you reverse the middle two digits, you get 1978-the year the Protect the Children Act was enacted which is anti-map
@@matthewnardin7304 just like how anti-map think that the anti-map law was made before 1619 when it was made in 1978 . If you swtich the middle digits, you get 1798 which is when alien and sedition Acts were passed which was also unconstitutional.
I love it when you bring psychology in your videos. It is always well explained and you do a great job in pointing out the limits of the studies or theories. Especially this last part is often absent when people present psychology studies. So well done and I look forward to the other videos.
Every knowledge system, including science, faith, reason, whatever, they all have strengths and weaknesses. Science can only yield probable truth concerning things that are observable to others, but it's also self-correcting and available to anyone of any creed. Faith might be absolute to the faithful, bit it cannot be shared, only experienced or described. Reason is subject to human errors, and we don't know what we don't know. There are limits inherent to all knowledge systems. The system we turn to for the best results is different depending on which questions we're asking.
10:32 I wonder if that’s because having an illness that affects your quality of life and makes the future less predictable just makes you less likely to find delayed gratification actually worth it. I wonder how this would be different looking at people with a degenerative illness that doesn’t attack the brain.
@@LearningAndLiberating it reminds me of how some people who, rightly or otherwise, feel disenfranchised don’t really bother thinking about the future because they don’t think they have one.
Exactly. I wonder how/if they manager to control for psychological factors such as losing (or gaining) faith because of the psychological impact of getting sick.
I feel like the big problem with lesion studies in this context is that something as major as a brain surgery is probably going to influence your religious beliefs no matter what and since these studies are small it can be hard to control for an effect like that.
I had a stroke a year and a half ago. A chunck of mynbra8n is damaged/dead. My thoight process has changed to a more rational and logical approach. Also, I am no longer religious. The evidence that convinced me prior, I now consider anecdotal at best. I now realize people think differently not only because of personal experiences and history, but also how they are hardwired. I better understand and accept people now.
There's probably also a link between decreased religiosity after brain surgery to remove a tumor and a loss of immediate pressure, like there are people who get more religious as they grow older because they start worrying about the afterlife now that they're closer to death, the sense of relief from not needing to worry about that as immediately can really swing you in both ways.
This doesn’t take into account the fact that some people will relate surviving brain surgery/tumours to religious experience and a sign that the divine is in their lives.
I am only at the halfway point but I had to stop and thank you for making this video. I already enjoy your content and trust your statements and such but this video really highlights your overall aptitude and the ability to dole it out to us lay people. Very well done sir.
One of the best summaries I've seen on the neuroscience of religion. Thank you, and thank you for delving into the complexity of the topics. - so often in popular culture, we see neuroscience boiled down into bite sized soundibtes that grossly oversimplify the topics and come enormous assumptions about how to interpret the data!
What a fascinating topic! And a fascinating series planned. Your stepping outside the realm of pure religious studies demonstrates that you inherently are a scholar. I've appreciated how you have handled every topic you've investigated without prejudice (IMO) and with a commitment to "critical evaluation." What a body of work you've created! You have made your mark on the world. Thank you.
In understanding the relation between brain activity and any subjective experience at all, I find it useful to adopt an idealist ontology and consider our brains and bodies as physical projections of what's happening in a 'higher' mental dimension. Rather than trying to understand the brain as a complex of biological causal structures, consider it a complex projection of archetypal mentation. Then we can reverse the question: Which archetypal processes and complexes deny, suppress or are blind to their own spiritual nature? I am convinced these processes are reflected/projected, among other structures, in the default mode network, prefrontal cortex and in a left-brain dominance of sorts. What I suggest we would also see, is that these processes are largely inhibitory, rather than stimulatory.
I am interested in one particular effect in the brain, related to dreams. I noticed, that in a dream, I usually believe in what I see, no matter how unnatural it is. I can take a subway from London to Tokyo and it somehow makes sense, even though I have never been to either of these cities. Or I can transform into a wolf, because, you know, it's absolutely normal. I mean, all these things couldn't be true, and when I wake up and analyze what I've just seen, I'm only able to wonder, how I could believe this a second ago. How the same thing that makes no sense at all made perfect sense just a moment ago? Moreover, sometimes when I try reasoning in a dream, my mind can easily build a completely nonsensical "logical" structure which looks pretty solid, until I wake up and realize that my logical structure was something like "bread is made from sand so it is only natural they use it as a liquid fuel". What's really concerning here is how easy it is for our brain to make us believe absolutely anything no matter how illogical, contradictory, unnatural, or simply stupid it is. Despite, normally it only happens in dreams, but how can I be sure the more mild version of the same process doesn't work all the time, even when I'm awake?
Very interesting and well done. One problem you touched on but I think is more significant, is whether religious cognitions differ between religious traditions. The language used in measuring religious cognition is based in Western monotheistic understandings of religion. Increasingly people raised in Eastern religions are in the West, and westerners have embrased Eastern religions. It’s unclear whether “prayer” means the same thing experientially or neurally. Even using the term “god” rather than “the divine or sacred” indicates a western bias in spiritual experiences. Sin is a concept based in a commanding god, not a god of the natural world or a family of divine beings as in many polytheistic traditions. Bottom line, we’re just beginning to parse out all the many threads in the neuropsycho-spirituality of religion.
The origin of the word sin, and its translations, essentially refers to “missing the target”. Thus, the word sin can be applied to all religious traditions e.g. following the Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism, “Right View” etc.
@@ExerciseForLifePls How that does follow? The origin of a word has no bearing on how it's used today and Christianity definitely does not understand sin as merely falling short of a target, it's much more complex than that.
Here's another insight. I have tempotal lobe epilepsy and scientists studied TL and found that those with TL injury or epilepsy have a higher chance of forming eligoosity obsessoon. The same area may be responsible for spiritual swakenngs. Look up Geschwind syndrome.
Fascinating! It would be interesting to know if people who take psilocybin/D.M.T./psychedelics etc have the same areas light up in their brain, as many have an almost religious/spiritual experience…
The clickbaity title of the video had me scared, however, you were as scientifically rigorous as always. Great video, sorry for doubting you! Keep up the good work!
You're videos are always so damn interesting! I'm definitely down for a whole series. Also, if I got Parkinson's then I'd have a pretty hard time believing in a god too.
I don't know if there's a religious center in the brain. But, I've come to believe that some people are more predisposed to believe in religions than others. For some it's a necessity.
That is something I have been pondering. I was brought up Christian, left the church at age 18, spent 20 years as an Atheist, then sought out an individualistic religiosity. (I don't self-identify as "New Age", but something along those lines.) Thing is, when I got into my spirituality, I got the sense that I had always been spiritually inclined. There where certain things during my decades of Metaphysical Naturalism that seemed to indicate that. For example, I was the kind of person who could get a sense of almost spiritual reverence from Science.
Honestly, I think it has to do with brain types. Most people are just fearful followers. We would have evolved that way for a group necessity but now it's broken in society (Who denies evolution?) and the fearful who cannot distinguish reality are now in charge.
FWIW, I was raised in a Baptist church. But, I never bought into it. It never made sense to me. So I stopped going to church at 12. But, I was always interested in religion and why people believed in them. When I went to university I almost had enough classes in Religious Studies for a major. But, I always looked at it from an Anthropological view.
@@danielpaulson8838 religion isn't just christianity or islam or whatever, you know that right? Pagan religions often escape the common modern preconceptions of religion atheists seem to employ when they use the word
Fascinating. I haven't heard much of neurological studies on religious belief. I wonder whether there is a link to aging as well? Just from personal experience I suspect that religiousity becomes more important when people enter their their later 50s or 60s. Brains change of course in that stage of life too, perhaps this might influence religious belief in older demographics too? Perhaps some of the pathways in the brain that are particularly associated with religious belief change somewhat significantly when we reach a certain age? Assuming that people more commonly become religious when they get older, no idea whether thats actually true
fMRI maps colorful pixelation on a brain scan as a function of task-related statistically significant differences in regional magnetization as a function of differences in blood oxygenation as a function of differences in regional brain perfusion as a function of neural activity. It's easy to fool yourself and/or others if you don't really know what you're working with - a profound problem, given fMRI's broad availability and "user-friendly" tool kits.. The fact that so many different studies find so many different brain areas might relate more to the individual task setup than to a rather vague concept as "religiosity" or "spirituality". Although only mentioned in passing in the video, there had been larger discussions linking religiosity to epilepsy (Dostoevsky being the posterchild here) and schizophrenia (with religious convictions being indistinguishable from psychotic ones). Thanks as always for an interesting video!
I’m so excited for this series. I hope you really get to dig into these questions. I’ve been trying really hard to find more work on this topic of how the mind interacts or has possibly evolved to be religious but have only found scattered results. I personally find this to be a HUGE question to be asking and testing for answers. I deconstructed from religious, spiritual and superstitious belief these last few years since the coof. It has led me down a path of inquiry as to whether or not we can so easily “turn off” the belief center of our brains. I’ve been seeing more and more evidence that even people can’t turn off these seemingly instinctual behaviors. Even atheists who scoff at religion and god just adopt other non-evidence based ideologies and tribal like defense mechanisms to those beliefs that mirror religious apologetics. I’ve been very interested in the idea of the religious/beliefs systems we fall into being a biological adaptation that we cannot just rationalize our way out of. I’m super excited to see what you have put together in this series. 🤗🤙🙏👍🥳😁😆
6:22 Statistician here. N=88 is NOT a small sample. Fewer than 20 is a small sample, but still big enough for most studies (depending on effect size). Twelve is a small sample. Eighty eight is really good, even though it's not in the thousands reported by Swedish epidemiology studies.
there are documented cases of individuals who have lived relatively normal lives despite having significant brain abnormalities, including one famous case often referred to as the "man with no brain." This case involves a French man who, in 2007, was found to have a condition called **hydrocephalus**, where cerebrospinal fluid builds up in the brain, causing the brain tissue to compress. In his case, the fluid had severely compressed his brain against the skull, leaving only a thin layer of brain tissue. Despite this, the man lived an ordinary life, had a family, and worked as a civil servant. Interestingly, he had an IQ of 75, which is below average but still functional. The case amazed neurologists and raised profound questions about the brain's ability to adapt and rewire itself, suggesting that human consciousness and cognitive function might not depend entirely on having a "full" brain. This story highlights the brain's **neuroplasticity**-its ability to adapt and reorganize itself under extreme circumstances. While rare, it demonstrates the resilience and mystery of human biology.
Fellow PhD here. Mine is in philosophy and I have a background in Descartes (I almost wrote my dissertation on the Meditations). I've loved your videos for years, but you couldn't be more wrong about his theory of mind. The soul (Or mind. They're synonymous for him) is a completely separate substance in his system, one which interacts with the body through the pineal gland, but is no way part of it. Think of the body like a drone. The operator controls it, but is in no way the drone itself. The soul is like the person controlling the drone and it's the pineal gland that receives the signal and makes the mechanism operate according to the instructions it receives. Of course the metaphor isn't exact because the body sends messages back to the soul (i.e. sensory data) as well. A human is a composite of the soul and body, but at death they separate. Thanks for all the great videos! I have an undergrad minor in religious studies, but have learned so much more from your work.
I'm inclined toward the pineal gland being the center of the individual's hallucination, each individual's experience being an interpretation of material reality
I am very interested in the idea of animals and religion, especially as a person in the orthodox faith. So many of our stories involve animals. And, there are plenty of examples of monks interacting with wild animals. Also, my dog loves to pray. If I forget to pray in the morning, he goes over to the icon corner and reminds me.
What a fascinating series. Reminded me how the purpose/use of religious practices relates to the therapeutic understanding of the mind as a physical, neurological structure. Perhaps the way religion shows up neurologically depends on the way the brain happens to use religion/how it has learned to use religion in a specific situation etc. Whether it’s used to generate mindful, meditative mental-states via prayer or meditation etc., or if it’s used an “inner drill sergeant” of sorts or otherwise used to elicit mental-states related to shame and “I am bad” - type of thoughts, emotions, and inner conflicts.
Observation does not change the state of matter; instead it would be more accurate to say measurement, which imparts energy to the system, is what changes the outcome of particles i.e. photons.
A thought about those who reported a decrease: Is it possible that recognizing a sudden change in their own personality affected their sense of self, and this change led to questioning everything they believed up until then?
The nigro-striatal circuit (wich is malfonctioning in parkinson's desease) is a different circuit from those mesolimbique circuits system. The only comm point is that they both use dopamine but the later is not particularely damaged in parkinson's desease
Interesting discussion. Yeah, debates over "brain centers" have changed. No doubt particular areas exist that are linked with particular functions, but the ideas and evidence of parallel processing as well as neuroplasticity have shown how other areas of the brain can be involved in/ replace other functions. While definitely a cultural construct, religion also seems to involve unique states of consciousness like feelings. Recall reading about sleep paralysis, and found a book over the topic by a Freudian, Ernst Jones, in a bibliography. Jones' book is titled "On the Nightmare". While much of his ideas about the cause of the nightmare, or sleep paralysis ( the term nightmare, while currently referring to bad dreams in general, used to refer to a specific bad dream. A dream in which one encountered the "mare" and was paralyzed, overcome by fear and terror), are dated, some of the ideas in the book still have some life. One of the big claims he makes is that the nightmare (SP) is 'the origin of all religion'. Reports over SP include experiences that feel "supernatural". It has a quality that has been categorized as "numinous". In fact one author, JA Cheyne, has written an article over SP titled "The Ominous Numinous". Here, he outlines a neurological model of SP that could be viewed as not just a model of supernatural experiences, but also a model of important religious feeling--the numinous. The concept was originally developed by the German theologian Rudolf Otto in his book "The Idea of the Holy", which characterizes encounters with the "big other" (to borrow a phrase) as invoking an emotion that surpasses every day terror, fear, and dread into something like awe. Otto called this feeling the numinous. Sorry to go overboard, but I offer this as a way to say that it might be worth including a discussion over sleep paralysis in this series. See the book by Sharpless et. al "Sleep Paralysis: Historical and Medical perspectives".
There are brain image studies that show the same brain areas light up during prayer and meditation. Arguably, it could be because they are similar processes. However, it's interesting to note.
Religious experiences seem to be associated with a reduction in activity across the "default mode network" (DMN). A reduction in activity in this region is associated with ego-death/disillusionment and psychedelic-type experiences(which can occur naturally, although, typically without the visual aspect) The feeling of, "all is one" or "divine connection" can be repeatedly and predictably produced, with various methods of suppressing the DMN. I used to suppress mine about once a day(or more) through neuro-chemical means.... and i started to think i had a connection with god/the "all-mind".... But the entities i witnessed, never gave me any information or insights that could not be inferred through the information contained in my memories and experience, implying that they only had access to the information contained inside of my brain.... which would (seemingly) not be the case, if they were objectively real... so i stopped thinking they were real. Rather, they're probably - projections of spontaneous neural re -configurations, which are so foreign to the constructs that constitute my sense of identity.... that the only way to process it, is to project it as a separate entity within the experience.. That's just part of the picture though ^~^
I believe at most charitable, it could be an interesting way to experience one's own subconscious, or even repressed emotions. But even then it is clouded and nebulous, kind of like induced dreaming.
In my opinion, the spirit or life force interfaces with the physical world, in part, through living bodies - including the human nervous system. However, materialistic reductionism (which reduces spirituality to material phenomena) is insufficient to fully explain the life force and religious mysteries and their impact on our lives. It's like reducing a complex and subjectively meaningful phenomenon like "love" to nothing more than a chemical reaction in the brain. People with materialistic cultural biases (including many scientists) often tend to read their own preconceptions into scientific data on physically observable phenomena (such as brain activity during religious experiences) that, in reality, neither confirms nor denies their prejudices about things that are very difficult to directly observe with the physical senses.
Slight point of contention about Phineas Gage - most of the story about around him is foundational myth. We have very few sources (just 4 documents from 2 people) that could be considered primary sources and the most important one was written 8 years after Gage's death by the doctor who treated him for his injuries. This document uses only 200 words to describe the injuries to his skull and the changes in his demeanor noted by his mother. This is nowhere near as stark a difference in his pre-accident versus post-accident personality that is described later by early scientists who found the story and were trying to prove that certain parts of the brain were related to specific elements of cognition. They happened to be correct of course but they had a vested interest in proving their point and created much of the information that later went on to become part of the Phineas gage myth about his dramatic changes after the accident. Essentially, Gage's story was likely not as dramatic as many people believe. He no doubt had some long term complications of the accident (Indeed he started having epileptic seizures and died of a seizure) but how many personality changes he why through as a direct result of the traumatic injury is very unclear and likely overemphasised.
Way to go! This is just what I have wanted to know about. So not surprised about the prefrontal cortex on cognitive flexibility. So how do you explain “all the knocks in the head”, we have overall become a nation promoting inflexibility.
You need to check Andy Thomson's Why we believe in god(s), which makes a summary of many studies and theories of why we evolved to have religious ideas. It's great!
As an atheist with ADHD, that statistic about damage to the prefrontal cortex leading to increased reports of religious experiences really caught my attention. ADHD is a neurological condition that affects the PFC and impairs executive function. I wonder if there's a link between it and religious experiences and I just happen to be an outlier.
Yeah That’s why I depend on logic and reasoning when it comes to choosing religion rather than depending on my emotions and religious experiences because that is faulty at it’s finest, that’s why I ended up choosing islam
@@UzairSayyid237 Logic and reason don't factor into religion at all. there is absolutely no empirical, testable, falsifiable evidence for anything supernatural, so it doesn't make logical sense to believe in any of it.
@@Colddirector because I observed that it says things which could not have been from any human Specially a human from 1,400 years ago, I get that it has some rules which seem outdated to Modern people but that’s the whole issue, Because of the rulings people seem to overlook the amount of evidence it has So I told myself that I’m going to put my emotions aside, Gonna throw away my modern morality for a minute and Try to genuinly see if it has any evidence and it has tons, For example Muhammad was an illiterate man 1,400 years ago and the Book he gave us says That mountains look like they’re standing but they are actually moving, It takes like millions of years for Mountain movements to make any physical noticable Changes and prophet Muhammad who lived For around 63 years couldn’t have possibly known that they are moving unless he was some Top tier scientist which he couldn’t have been because he did not even have acces to devices let alone electricity, He also said Arabia used to be green before it became a sandy desert and Now we are discovering that he was correct so his source was non human who was giving him knowledge no one other than the creator himself knew that’s why I started accepting some islamic rulings even tho yes sometimes We get mocked on for accepting them (like polygomy etc,) But it is illogical to Ignore all the evidence just because it has some rulings which don’t exactly fit the current society’s standards
@@UzairSayyid237 If you were to use reason and logic you would choose either atheism or agnosticism since there is no credible evidence for the existence of any god or any credible logical reason why there would be a god. Judging by your name, you likely chose Mohammedanism because you were culturally conditioned to do so.
This was fascinating and I am very much looking forward to the next episodes! I still think that your episode on Wicca is one of the best representations by non-Wiccans out there, and much more accessible and comprehensible than pretty much everything by Wiccans. I really appreciate the curious-neutral tone and the complete absence of judgment :)
I am SO EXCITED for this series!! I grew up evangelical. Graduated Bible college, focused in theology, apologetics, etc. and spent a decade in ministry. In the last few years, out of my love for science, I recently started learning about evolution and the fossil record. Human evolution is incredibly fascinating. But, heartbreakingly, I realized there was no need for the church to juxtapose itself against evolution the way they have. Even with ultra-literal interpretations of our conventionally accepted Biblical canon, there are almost no contradictions. Things align SO WELL. I look forward to more in this series!
The Catholic Church does not oppose evolution. The human body most likely might have evolved from pre-existing material, the soul is directly created by God and cannot arise through natural processes.
Big life events (like developing a life threatening medical condition) can shift one’s religious perspective. Have there been any studies that control for this-for example, by including individuals with both brain tumors and life threatening tumors in other parts of the body?
Register for our lecture Quantum Mysticism: When Quantum Physics Meets Spirituality: religionforbreakfast.eventbrite.com/
Just for note, the Phineas Gage story about his personality change has been way overblown. As you say the brain is extremely adaptable, healthy parts of the brain will take over duties of a damage part, and it was the same in Gage's case.
The lecture sounds interesting, but i'm not available at that time. If I buy a ticket can I watch it whenever or do I have to watch it live?
I'm bummed out, I'll have to miss because of the time.
regular comment: 1798 was when the Alien and Sedition Acts were passed, which many consider an infringement on the First Amendment. If you reverse the middle two digits, you get 1978-the year the Protect the Children Act was enacted which is anti-map
you are not qualified in that field mate. obviously.
2:18 "if you dig beneath the headlines"
That's a nice way to say "if you actually read the article"
@@matthewnardin7304 just like how anti-map think that the anti-map law was made before 1619 when it was made in 1978 . If you swtich the middle digits, you get 1798 which is when alien and sedition Acts were passed which was also unconstitutional.
@@menjolno take meds
"actually"
@@LoudWaffle why is mapping bad?
😁
Before now, if someone asked me where the "God spot" was, I would have pointed to a very different place indeed.
You rascal!!!
OH MY !!!
🎉😮😅
Oh God!
@@milosminion nice 😆
I love it when you bring psychology in your videos. It is always well explained and you do a great job in pointing out the limits of the studies or theories. Especially this last part is often absent when people present psychology studies. So well done and I look forward to the other videos.
Every knowledge system, including science, faith, reason, whatever, they all have strengths and weaknesses. Science can only yield probable truth concerning things that are observable to others, but it's also self-correcting and available to anyone of any creed. Faith might be absolute to the faithful, bit it cannot be shared, only experienced or described. Reason is subject to human errors, and we don't know what we don't know. There are limits inherent to all knowledge systems. The system we turn to for the best results is different depending on which questions we're asking.
10:32 I wonder if that’s because having an illness that affects your quality of life and makes the future less predictable just makes you less likely to find delayed gratification actually worth it. I wonder how this would be different looking at people with a degenerative illness that doesn’t attack the brain.
@@LearningAndLiberating it reminds me of how some people who, rightly or otherwise, feel disenfranchised don’t really bother thinking about the future because they don’t think they have one.
Both good points that merit study. That said, these mechanisms have been shown to play a role in such decision making in many other contexts too.
Exactly. I wonder how/if they manager to control for psychological factors such as losing (or gaining) faith because of the psychological impact of getting sick.
I feel like the big problem with lesion studies in this context is that something as major as a brain surgery is probably going to influence your religious beliefs no matter what and since these studies are small it can be hard to control for an effect like that.
I had a stroke a year and a half ago. A chunck of mynbra8n is damaged/dead.
My thoight process has changed to a more rational and logical approach. Also, I am no longer religious. The evidence that convinced me prior, I now consider anecdotal at best.
I now realize people think differently not only because of personal experiences and history, but also how they are hardwired. I better understand and accept people now.
Thanks for including science in your study of religion.
Oh damn this is gonna be a series!? Excellent!
There's probably also a link between decreased religiosity after brain surgery to remove a tumor and a loss of immediate pressure, like there are people who get more religious as they grow older because they start worrying about the afterlife now that they're closer to death, the sense of relief from not needing to worry about that as immediately can really swing you in both ways.
This doesn’t take into account the fact that some people will relate surviving brain surgery/tumours to religious experience and a sign that the divine is in their lives.
I am only at the halfway point but I had to stop and thank you for making this video. I already enjoy your content and trust your statements and such but this video really highlights your overall aptitude and the ability to dole it out to us lay people. Very well done sir.
The first episode of Morgan freeman's into the wormhole talked about Neurotheology and it literally changed my life, thanks for researching about this
I'm looking forward for the lecture. Thank you so much for you work!
So proud of you🎉 I've watched your RFB channel since it's start & your info. just keeps getting better & better. KUDOS! Keep up the good work darlin!
I have temporal lobe epilepsy, and I was hyper-religious until I figured out it was just my brain playing tricks on me.
One of the best summaries I've seen on the neuroscience of religion. Thank you, and thank you for delving into the complexity of the topics. - so often in popular culture, we see neuroscience boiled down into bite sized soundibtes that grossly oversimplify the topics and come enormous assumptions about how to interpret the data!
I had a brain amoeba once, poor fella died of hungry
why are youtube comments section no longer funny
@@tunistick8044 maybe say something funny instead of whining about it
@@tunistick8044 fix the problem by saying something funny
@@tunistick8044 got a smile n chuckle outta me
@@tunistick8044 When so many people are posting jokes, 90 % of them suck. They must be seeking a dopamine rush via likes.
What a fascinating topic! And a fascinating series planned. Your stepping outside the realm of pure religious studies demonstrates that you inherently are a scholar. I've appreciated how you have handled every topic you've investigated without prejudice (IMO) and with a commitment to "critical evaluation." What a body of work you've created! You have made your mark on the world. Thank you.
This is fantastic! I am so happy to see the extent to which science is helping to elucidate and quantify matters of religion. Wow!
Very excited about your new religion and science series!
In understanding the relation between brain activity and any subjective experience at all, I find it useful to adopt an idealist ontology and consider our brains and bodies as physical projections of what's happening in a 'higher' mental dimension. Rather than trying to understand the brain as a complex of biological causal structures, consider it a complex projection of archetypal mentation. Then we can reverse the question: Which archetypal processes and complexes deny, suppress or are blind to their own spiritual nature? I am convinced these processes are reflected/projected, among other structures, in the default mode network, prefrontal cortex and in a left-brain dominance of sorts. What I suggest we would also see, is that these processes are largely inhibitory, rather than stimulatory.
This is great, and really look forward to the series! Kudos to both you and Templeton Foundation, a great way to do science education...
Damn, last time I was this early, Christianity was still called the Jesus movement
U deserve recognitionnif its original
It was originally called the Way, or the Nazarenes
@@DaffroDuckjust a note: the word cult had very different connotations back then
@@livrowland171 sounded like the chinese
And they didn't believe in some man-god hybrid either.
Yes!!! The topics you mention are all so interesting!! Especially the question about religion and evolution
Andrew is looking extra fancy today.
Fr he looks delightful
Both fancy AND schmancy! The grad student I started watching all those years ago has grown up
I am interested in one particular effect in the brain, related to dreams. I noticed, that in a dream, I usually believe in what I see, no matter how unnatural it is. I can take a subway from London to Tokyo and it somehow makes sense, even though I have never been to either of these cities. Or I can transform into a wolf, because, you know, it's absolutely normal. I mean, all these things couldn't be true, and when I wake up and analyze what I've just seen, I'm only able to wonder, how I could believe this a second ago. How the same thing that makes no sense at all made perfect sense just a moment ago? Moreover, sometimes when I try reasoning in a dream, my mind can easily build a completely nonsensical "logical" structure which looks pretty solid, until I wake up and realize that my logical structure was something like "bread is made from sand so it is only natural they use it as a liquid fuel".
What's really concerning here is how easy it is for our brain to make us believe absolutely anything no matter how illogical, contradictory, unnatural, or simply stupid it is. Despite, normally it only happens in dreams, but how can I be sure the more mild version of the same process doesn't work all the time, even when I'm awake?
Very excited for this new series, religionforbteakfast meets neuroscience 😁
1) loved this video!!
2) when appropriate, can you please make a video on the religious and spiritual significance of fire throughout time?
an old but good book in the realm of the topic is "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes, 1976
Very interesting and well done. One problem you touched on but I think is more significant, is whether religious cognitions differ between religious traditions. The language used in measuring religious cognition is based in Western monotheistic understandings of religion. Increasingly people raised in Eastern religions are in the West, and westerners have embrased Eastern religions. It’s unclear whether “prayer” means the same thing experientially or neurally. Even using the term “god” rather than “the divine or sacred” indicates a western bias in spiritual experiences. Sin is a concept based in a commanding god, not a god of the natural world or a family of divine beings as in many polytheistic traditions. Bottom line, we’re just beginning to parse out all the many threads in the neuropsycho-spirituality of religion.
This is a very good point.
The origin of the word sin, and its translations, essentially refers to “missing the target”. Thus, the word sin can be applied to all religious traditions e.g. following the Noble Eightfold Path in Buddhism, “Right View” etc.
Religion is something created by humans to serve complex social and psychological needs.
@@ExerciseForLifePls How that does follow? The origin of a word has no bearing on how it's used today and Christianity definitely does not understand sin as merely falling short of a target, it's much more complex than that.
Well they don't exist either.
Here's another insight. I have tempotal lobe epilepsy and scientists studied TL and found that those with TL injury or epilepsy have a higher chance of forming eligoosity obsessoon. The same area may be responsible for spiritual swakenngs. Look up Geschwind syndrome.
Totally captivated. Can't wait for more. Great work!
I listened intently. It was like being on a sail boat.
Belief is so complex if you start to think about it just a little you know you can’t even put it into one place
bro i love your channel so much.
Fascinating! It would be interesting to know if people who take psilocybin/D.M.T./psychedelics etc have the same areas light up in their brain, as many have an almost religious/spiritual experience…
The clickbaity title of the video had me scared, however, you were as scientifically rigorous as always. Great video, sorry for doubting you! Keep up the good work!
Looking forward to this series!
This is a very interesting video. I look forward to future videos in this series!
You're videos are always so damn interesting! I'm definitely down for a whole series. Also, if I got Parkinson's then I'd have a pretty hard time believing in a god too.
I don't know if there's a religious center in the brain. But, I've come to believe that some people are more predisposed to believe in religions than others. For some it's a necessity.
I totally agree
That is something I have been pondering.
I was brought up Christian, left the church at age 18, spent 20 years as an Atheist, then sought out an individualistic religiosity. (I don't self-identify as "New Age", but something along those lines.)
Thing is, when I got into my spirituality, I got the sense that I had always been spiritually inclined. There where certain things during my decades of Metaphysical Naturalism that seemed to indicate that. For example, I was the kind of person who could get a sense of almost spiritual reverence from Science.
Honestly, I think it has to do with brain types. Most people are just fearful followers. We would have evolved that way for a group necessity but now it's broken in society (Who denies evolution?) and the fearful who cannot distinguish reality are now in charge.
FWIW, I was raised in a Baptist church. But, I never bought into it. It never made sense to me. So I stopped going to church at 12. But, I was always interested in religion and why people believed in them. When I went to university I almost had enough classes in Religious Studies for a major. But, I always looked at it from an Anthropological view.
@@danielpaulson8838 religion isn't just christianity or islam or whatever, you know that right? Pagan religions often escape the common modern preconceptions of religion atheists seem to employ when they use the word
Love this new section of the channel. Definitely interested in this concepts. Keep going!
Good job, neuroscience can be confusing, but you explained it very well, even the pronunciation was on point
Love this! Can’t wait for the series!!!
Fascinating. I haven't heard much of neurological studies on religious belief.
I wonder whether there is a link to aging as well? Just from personal experience I suspect that religiousity becomes more important when people enter their their later 50s or 60s. Brains change of course in that stage of life too, perhaps this might influence religious belief in older demographics too? Perhaps some of the pathways in the brain that are particularly associated with religious belief change somewhat significantly when we reach a certain age? Assuming that people more commonly become religious when they get older, no idea whether thats actually true
fMRI maps colorful pixelation on a brain scan as a function of task-related statistically significant differences in regional magnetization as a function of differences in blood oxygenation as a function of differences in regional brain perfusion as a function of neural activity. It's easy to fool yourself and/or others if you don't really know what you're working with - a profound problem, given fMRI's broad availability and "user-friendly" tool kits.. The fact that so many different studies find so many different brain areas might relate more to the individual task setup than to a rather vague concept as "religiosity" or "spirituality". Although only mentioned in passing in the video, there had been larger discussions linking religiosity to epilepsy (Dostoevsky being the posterchild here) and schizophrenia (with religious convictions being indistinguishable from psychotic ones). Thanks as always for an interesting video!
I’m so excited for this series. I hope you really get to dig into these questions.
I’ve been trying really hard to find more work on this topic of how the mind interacts or has possibly evolved to be religious but have only found scattered results.
I personally find this to be a HUGE question to be asking and testing for answers. I deconstructed from religious, spiritual and superstitious belief these last few years since the coof. It has led me down a path of inquiry as to whether or not we can so easily “turn off” the belief center of our brains. I’ve been seeing more and more evidence that even people can’t turn off these seemingly instinctual behaviors. Even atheists who scoff at religion and god just adopt other non-evidence based ideologies and tribal like defense mechanisms to those beliefs that mirror religious apologetics. I’ve been very interested in the idea of the religious/beliefs systems we fall into being a biological adaptation that we cannot just rationalize our way out of.
I’m super excited to see what you have put together in this series.
🤗🤙🙏👍🥳😁😆
I'm thrilled to receive this knowledge and over the moon that there is so much interest!! Funny thing! My heart goes out to Benny Hinn in this moment.
I've been a fan for quite a while but this is my favorite series so far. Very excited for more!
Absolutely beautiful sourcing in the video!
Thank you as always for scratching that spiritual itch I get every once in a while
6:22 Statistician here. N=88 is NOT a small sample. Fewer than 20 is a small sample, but still big enough for most studies (depending on effect size). Twelve is a small sample. Eighty eight is really good, even though it's not in the thousands reported by Swedish epidemiology studies.
there are documented cases of individuals who have lived relatively normal lives despite having significant brain abnormalities, including one famous case often referred to as the "man with no brain."
This case involves a French man who, in 2007, was found to have a condition called **hydrocephalus**, where cerebrospinal fluid builds up in the brain, causing the brain tissue to compress. In his case, the fluid had severely compressed his brain against the skull, leaving only a thin layer of brain tissue. Despite this, the man lived an ordinary life, had a family, and worked as a civil servant.
Interestingly, he had an IQ of 75, which is below average but still functional. The case amazed neurologists and raised profound questions about the brain's ability to adapt and rewire itself, suggesting that human consciousness and cognitive function might not depend entirely on having a "full" brain.
This story highlights the brain's **neuroplasticity**-its ability to adapt and reorganize itself under extreme circumstances. While rare, it demonstrates the resilience and mystery of human biology.
So excited for the new series!
Loved this! Thank you so much
Fellow PhD here. Mine is in philosophy and I have a background in Descartes (I almost wrote my dissertation on the Meditations). I've loved your videos for years, but you couldn't be more wrong about his theory of mind. The soul (Or mind. They're synonymous for him) is a completely separate substance in his system, one which interacts with the body through the pineal gland, but is no way part of it. Think of the body like a drone. The operator controls it, but is in no way the drone itself. The soul is like the person controlling the drone and it's the pineal gland that receives the signal and makes the mechanism operate according to the instructions it receives. Of course the metaphor isn't exact because the body sends messages back to the soul (i.e. sensory data) as well. A human is a composite of the soul and body, but at death they separate.
Thanks for all the great videos! I have an undergrad minor in religious studies, but have learned so much more from your work.
I'm inclined toward the pineal gland being the center of the individual's hallucination, each individual's experience being an interpretation of material reality
Congratulations on your grant!
Can’t wait for the serotonin receptor episode!
I am very interested in the idea of animals and religion, especially as a person in the orthodox faith. So many of our stories involve animals. And, there are plenty of examples of monks interacting with wild animals. Also, my dog loves to pray. If I forget to pray in the morning, he goes over to the icon corner and reminds me.
Your dog is habitual.
That’s normal.
This doesn’t permit us to conclude that it loves supernatural communication.
Correct?
We also can't rule it out
Will this lecture be recorded? I'll be unavailable at designated time.
Yes!
That guy feeling one with the divine. Really stoked.
also i’m very excited for this new series! 👍🏼👍🏼👍🏼
2:57 literally displaced my tab from my hands I just wasnt ready for that 😂
Please please please more videos on these topics please amazing knowledge
What a fascinating series. Reminded me how the purpose/use of religious practices relates to the therapeutic understanding of the mind as a physical, neurological structure. Perhaps the way religion shows up neurologically depends on the way the brain happens to use religion/how it has learned to use religion in a specific situation etc. Whether it’s used to generate mindful, meditative mental-states via prayer or meditation etc., or if it’s used an “inner drill sergeant” of sorts or otherwise used to elicit mental-states related to shame and “I am bad” - type of thoughts, emotions, and inner conflicts.
Nice vest! 0:13
🤓
fascinating. I will listen to this again.
Observation does not change the state of matter; instead it would be more accurate to say measurement, which imparts energy to the system, is what changes the outcome of particles i.e. photons.
A thought about those who reported a decrease: Is it possible that recognizing a sudden change in their own personality affected their sense of self, and this change led to questioning everything they believed up until then?
Thanks for open this topic ❤ It is very interesting 👍
The nigro-striatal circuit (wich is malfonctioning in parkinson's desease) is a different circuit from those mesolimbique circuits system. The only comm point is that they both use dopamine but the later is not particularely damaged in parkinson's desease
Amazing, thank you very much ❤️❤️❤️
Interesting discussion. Yeah, debates over "brain centers" have changed. No doubt particular areas exist that are linked with particular functions, but the ideas and evidence of parallel processing as well as neuroplasticity have shown how other areas of the brain can be involved in/ replace other functions. While definitely a cultural construct, religion also seems to involve unique states of consciousness like feelings. Recall reading about sleep paralysis, and found a book over the topic by a Freudian, Ernst Jones, in a bibliography. Jones' book is titled "On the Nightmare". While much of his ideas about the cause of the nightmare, or sleep paralysis ( the term nightmare, while currently referring to bad dreams in general, used to refer to a specific bad dream. A dream in which one encountered the "mare" and was paralyzed, overcome by fear and terror), are dated, some of the ideas in the book still have some life. One of the big claims he makes is that the nightmare (SP) is 'the origin of all religion'.
Reports over SP include experiences that feel "supernatural". It has a quality that has been categorized as "numinous". In fact one author, JA Cheyne, has written an article over SP titled "The Ominous Numinous". Here, he outlines a neurological model of SP that could be viewed as not just a model of supernatural experiences, but also a model of important religious feeling--the numinous. The concept was originally developed by the German theologian Rudolf Otto in his book "The Idea of the Holy", which characterizes encounters with the "big other" (to borrow a phrase) as invoking an emotion that surpasses every day terror, fear, and dread into something like awe. Otto called this feeling the numinous.
Sorry to go overboard, but I offer this as a way to say that it might be worth including a discussion over sleep paralysis in this series. See the book by Sharpless et. al "Sleep Paralysis: Historical and Medical perspectives".
There are brain image studies that show the same brain areas light up during prayer and meditation. Arguably, it could be because they are similar processes. However, it's interesting to note.
Nice. I like this whole quantum physics angle. Someone needs to debate this and who better than you!
Oh I’m gonna love this series
Love this new direction
Religious experiences seem to be associated with a reduction in activity across the "default mode network" (DMN).
A reduction in activity in this region is associated with ego-death/disillusionment and psychedelic-type experiences(which can occur naturally, although, typically without the visual aspect)
The feeling of, "all is one" or "divine connection" can be repeatedly and predictably produced, with various methods of suppressing the DMN.
I used to suppress mine about once a day(or more) through neuro-chemical means.... and i started to think i had a connection with god/the "all-mind".... But the entities i witnessed, never gave me any information or insights that could not be inferred through the information contained in my memories and experience, implying that they only had access to the information contained inside of my brain.... which would (seemingly) not be the case, if they were objectively real... so i stopped thinking they were real. Rather, they're probably - projections of spontaneous neural re -configurations, which are so foreign to the constructs that constitute my sense of identity.... that the only way to process it, is to project it as a separate entity within the experience..
That's just part of the picture though ^~^
I believe at most charitable, it could be an interesting way to experience one's own subconscious, or even repressed emotions. But even then it is clouded and nebulous, kind of like induced dreaming.
It makes sense to me that the brain can spontaneously generate ideas independent of consciousness, because that's basically what creativity is.
I had similar experience. When the "God" I was talking to had nothing new to say I knew I was just talking to myself
Well I'll be DMNed.
How did you repress it?
Video ends at 2:08
0:01 That is glowing diodes. Our minds interpret it as an image of the human brain. (Yes, I got that from René Magritte.)
This is fascinating
In my opinion, the spirit or life force interfaces with the physical world, in part, through living bodies - including the human nervous system. However, materialistic reductionism (which reduces spirituality to material phenomena) is insufficient to fully explain the life force and religious mysteries and their impact on our lives. It's like reducing a complex and subjectively meaningful phenomenon like "love" to nothing more than a chemical reaction in the brain. People with materialistic cultural biases (including many scientists) often tend to read their own preconceptions into scientific data on physically observable phenomena (such as brain activity during religious experiences) that, in reality, neither confirms nor denies their prejudices about things that are very difficult to directly observe with the physical senses.
I'm super excited about this .
I know this is a longshot but I would love a future film from Pixar's Inside Out or TV spin-off to tackle the God Spot
It's a mechanism that acts as an anchor and a receiver. The boundary between heaven and earth.
I really thought Andrew Huberman was gonna be the first one out with this. Thank you for this video.
Slight point of contention about Phineas Gage - most of the story about around him is foundational myth. We have very few sources (just 4 documents from 2 people) that could be considered primary sources and the most important one was written 8 years after Gage's death by the doctor who treated him for his injuries. This document uses only 200 words to describe the injuries to his skull and the changes in his demeanor noted by his mother. This is nowhere near as stark a difference in his pre-accident versus post-accident personality that is described later by early scientists who found the story and were trying to prove that certain parts of the brain were related to specific elements of cognition. They happened to be correct of course but they had a vested interest in proving their point and created much of the information that later went on to become part of the Phineas gage myth about his dramatic changes after the accident.
Essentially, Gage's story was likely not as dramatic as many people believe. He no doubt had some long term complications of the accident (Indeed he started having epileptic seizures and died of a seizure) but how many personality changes he why through as a direct result of the traumatic injury is very unclear and likely overemphasised.
Great points.
I imagine the video didn't go over it since it would have distracted from the overall topic.
Way to go! This is just what I have wanted to know about. So not surprised about the prefrontal cortex on cognitive flexibility. So how do you explain “all the knocks in the head”, we have overall become a nation promoting inflexibility.
You mean other than over half the nations citizens not having the same political beliefs as you?
Great video! Thank you!
You need to check Andy Thomson's Why we believe in god(s), which makes a summary of many studies and theories of why we evolved to have religious ideas. It's great!
Thank you
As an atheist with ADHD, that statistic about damage to the prefrontal cortex leading to increased reports of religious experiences really caught my attention. ADHD is a neurological condition that affects the PFC and impairs executive function. I wonder if there's a link between it and religious experiences and I just happen to be an outlier.
Yeah That’s why I depend on logic and reasoning when it comes to choosing religion rather than depending on my emotions and religious experiences because that is faulty at it’s finest, that’s why I ended up choosing islam
@@UzairSayyid237 Logic and reason don't factor into religion at all. there is absolutely no empirical, testable, falsifiable evidence for anything supernatural, so it doesn't make logical sense to believe in any of it.
@@UzairSayyid237 Honest question - why Islam, specifically?
@@Colddirector because I observed that it says things which could not have been from any human Specially a human from 1,400 years ago, I get that it has some rules which seem outdated to Modern people but that’s the whole issue, Because of the rulings people seem to overlook the amount of evidence it has So I told myself that I’m going to put my emotions aside, Gonna throw away my modern morality for a minute and Try to genuinly see if it has any evidence and it has tons, For example Muhammad was an illiterate man 1,400 years ago and the Book he gave us says That mountains look like they’re standing but they are actually moving, It takes like millions of years for Mountain movements to make any physical noticable Changes and prophet Muhammad who lived For around 63 years couldn’t have possibly known that they are moving unless he was some Top tier scientist which he couldn’t have been because he did not even have acces to devices let alone electricity, He also said Arabia used to be green before it became a sandy desert and Now we are discovering that he was correct so his source was non human who was giving him knowledge no one other than the creator himself knew that’s why I started accepting some islamic rulings even tho yes sometimes We get mocked on for accepting them (like polygomy etc,) But it is illogical to Ignore all the evidence just because it has some rulings which don’t exactly fit the current society’s standards
@@UzairSayyid237 If you were to use reason and logic you would choose either atheism or agnosticism since there is no credible evidence for the existence of any god or any credible logical reason why there would be a god.
Judging by your name, you likely chose Mohammedanism because you were culturally conditioned to do so.
Is not in the brain, is where we point when presenting ourselves to others.
Very interesting video.
This was fascinating and I am very much looking forward to the next episodes!
I still think that your episode on Wicca is one of the best representations by non-Wiccans out there, and much more accessible and comprehensible than pretty much everything by Wiccans. I really appreciate the curious-neutral tone and the complete absence of judgment :)
I am SO EXCITED for this series!!
I grew up evangelical. Graduated Bible college, focused in theology, apologetics, etc. and spent a decade in ministry.
In the last few years, out of my love for science, I recently started learning about evolution and the fossil record. Human evolution is incredibly fascinating.
But, heartbreakingly, I realized there was no need for the church to juxtapose itself against evolution the way they have. Even with ultra-literal interpretations of our conventionally accepted Biblical canon, there are almost no contradictions. Things align SO WELL.
I look forward to more in this series!
The Catholic Church does not oppose evolution. The human body most likely might have evolved from pre-existing material, the soul is directly created by God and cannot arise through natural processes.
Big life events (like developing a life threatening medical condition) can shift one’s religious perspective. Have there been any studies that control for this-for example, by including individuals with both brain tumors and life threatening tumors in other parts of the body?
Is that where Bulgakov got the idea for Heart of a Dog?
Nah that guy was just a freak
Very interesting! What about quantum physics and cognitive thought process? Are nuorons and quantum physics linked in someway?
The "G-- Spot" of the brain, as a certain religious group would call it
I wonder if those numerous spots around the brain are also responsible for naivety, gullibility and an inability to research one’s beliefs? 🙏