Is belief toxic for your brain?
Homepage › Forums › Small Talk › Is belief toxic for your brain?
This topic contains 24 replies, has 8 voices, and was last updated by God 7 years, 6 months ago.
-
AuthorPosts
-
July 6, 2017 at 11:14 am #3494
@tom – I don’t see why not. It’s the kind of thing atheists are interested in. Also, “anything goes”.
July 6, 2017 at 5:20 pm #3495Ok Tom, I will create a separate post when I get a chance. I still don’t know if you consider the Universe to be expanding or to be static though 🙂
July 6, 2017 at 6:34 pm #3496In the meanwhile this is a podcast worth listening to on measuring distances in the Universe.
July 9, 2017 at 11:51 pm #3530RE: Please cite the studies. They may show that ritualistic habits like repetitive prayers or mantras have a calming effect on the brain. I accept that mediation certainly does and is probably more effective than prayer.
I will gladly site the studies here this evening but just a quick aside: Prayer and meditation have the same effect on the brain. It’s all about raising brain chemicals like dopamine, serotonin, etc…. People who are mentally ill all have a varying amount of difference as to which chemicals are lacking or out of whack. There is no “one size fits all” approach. Many times medication is needed, but prayer, or meditation can go a LONG way at least in the moment….. meditation and prayer do essentially the same thing. Something about quieting the mind, redirecting thoughts, and consciously CHOOSING to begin looking outward towards serving others rather than staying “stuck” wallowing onwards towards our own selfishness – that is something ALL mentally ill people can benefit from.
July 10, 2017 at 2:31 am #3531Reg, rather than create a separate post, do what Catholics are told is a mortal sin: look outside the hypotheses you now use.
Expanding or static? These terms are not relevant.July 10, 2017 at 2:37 am #3532@simon, you don’t see why not?
You will see why when I tell you the cost of admission to the Voyeurs Gallery.July 10, 2017 at 4:59 am #3533@Reg: Here’s ONE…and plenty more to come…how many do you want?
Khenfer, J., Roux, E., Tafani, E., & Laurin, K. (2017). When God’s (not) needed: Spotlight on how belief in divine control influences goal commitment. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 70117-123. Doi: 10.1016/j.jesp.2017.01.005
The conclusion was essentially, quoted from the conclusion: “Belief in divine control increased goal commitment when self-efficacy was low.”
I can certainly identify with this in my own life.
July 10, 2017 at 5:56 am #3534@belle – that makes sense. There’s also the Buddhist compassion meditation, which is a prayer in all but name.
There could be a lot of things going on at once.
There’s a concept in Gestalt Therapy called figure/ground formation. The idea is that what is relevant for us stands out clearly against a background of irrelevance (since the brain perceives the world by picking and choosing that which is relevant, and ignoring the rest). So in prayer, or for that matter meditation, we’re changing the “figure” from whatever it was before, to something else (God, morality, the long term future, or the present moment).
Also, morality, and cooperation, function partly as coping mechanisms. A normal person derives much of their sense of strength, security and well being from being enmeshed in a mutually supportive network of people. This is why narcissism is a tragic condition: being essentially competitive, they’re cut off from the support system that is morality and other people. This is why they are so prone to shame and their position is precarious. They’re always wondering when they’re going to get knocked off their perch. Everyone else gets through life by making friends.
So, perhaps, praying to a loving God generally increases the sense of hope and that it is “worth it” to make goals. By contrast, a competitive person is bound to be fearful and stressed.
July 23, 2017 at 7:41 am #3808Belle Rose: “No…belief is actually good for your brain….Multiple studies show this.
I had searched for a little while, and I am still unable to find scientific data showing belief being “good for the brain”.
Anyway, I had long found data showing belief’s science opposing nature:(1)
“Half of People Believe Fake Facts”http://neurosciencenews.com/false-memory-facts-psychology-5698/
(2)
Wikipedia is not complete, but Wikipedia’s data distribution is non-trivial.
Wikipedia neuroscience analysis reveals a paper that refers to belief.“…Recalling is, in some degree, always falsely believed, for a given recall is never exactly
like the original experience and goes through various modifications without our awareness, so much so that we falsely believe that memories represent events exactly the way we experienced them.”
(3)
“A cognitive account of belief”
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4327528/“…Belief evaluation, even in the absence of frank pathology, has several limitations….People tend to adopt non-optimal hypothesis-testing strategies. (Evans, 1989; Gilovich, 1991; Johnson-Laird, 2006; Nickerson, 2008).
…..general tendency to rely on initial judgement and discount newly obtained information, means that knowledge received after the initial judgement may be distorted to fit the original hypothesis.”Edit: I am now analyzing Belle Rose’s presented paper.
July 23, 2017 at 9:04 am #3811Paper analysis complete.
Simply, the data is unavoidably, inconclusive, as is expressed in the paper itself:
Paper: “Although religion was an appropriate field of study in which to test our hypotheses, other external sources of control may operate similarly.”
Belle Rose, had you read the paper in its entirety?
If so, why did you avoid presenting the above snippet?
-
AuthorPosts
You must be logged in to reply to this topic.