God's perceived moral agency revealed through fMRI

[showmeproof]

My point is that we cannot determine the correctness of religious beliefs based on neuroscience.

We surely cannot determine its correctness, but we can determine what neural circuits are used for religious belief. We can also determine if religious belief is a epiphenomena; i.e. not the main purpose for those neural circuits. A study by Kapogiannis et al set out to determine precisely that. Not surprisingly the concept of God and his involvement or lack thereof utilizes neural circuits used for Theory of Mind. It is quite possible that once we were able to project a theory of mind we started applying TOM to non-entities. I'll not go straight after God here, let's use a another example that doesn't have such emotional attachment; You're out in the woods in the dark alone. You here a noise. It could be a limb that's fallen, a squirrel, the wind, possibly a dangerous animal, or even possibly someone. Your mind will try to make patterns out of the noise and determine intent by the agent causing it...even if you are mistaken as to what is making it. Even if the cause of the noise is inanimate like the wind or a broken limb, or a rock falling down a hill. We are wired to project agency.

[showmeproof]

I can easily believe that men do believe God's morality matches their own. But there can be two reasons for such.

Before I was a Christian, I believed in God, but the God I believed in was an amorphous idea about God, that he was good, and coupled with my own moral beliefs, I just figured that since I was good and God was good that he believed the same things I did. So yes, I created God in my "own image" so to speak. So a scan of my brain at that time would have shown my ideas of morality matched my ideas of God's morality.

But after I came to become a Christian, and believe in the God of the bible, I found that what God said was "good" and moral was not the same as what I believed. So I adjusted my morality to match with what the bible taught. A scan of my brain today would also show that my ideas of morality matched with what I believe God's morality to be. Yet for completely opposite reasons. Not because I was recreating God in my image, but because I adjusted my morality to fit with God's, to closer fit me to HIS image.

You seem to miss the point of the study. Even if you agree with the morality of a certain subject with another moral agent such as the Average American or Bill Gates the brain area utilized to make that judgement is different when you make the decision for yourself than that of the other person. However, when making that assessment about god your brain activation is statistically indistinguishable. Your brain is acting like it is you making the decision not another moral agent.

[Mountain Man]

We surely cannot determine its correctness, but we can determine what neural circuits are used for religious belief. We can also determine if religious belief is a epiphenomena; i.e. not the main purpose for those neural circuits. A study by Kapogiannis et al set out to determine precisely that. Not surprisingly the concept of God and his involvement or lack thereof utilizes neural circuits used for Theory of Mind. It is quite possible that once we were able to project a theory of mind we started applying TOM to non-entities. I'll not go straight after God here, let's use a another example that doesn't have such emotional attachment; You're out in the woods in the dark alone. You here a noise. It could be a limb that's fallen, a squirrel, the wind, possibly a dangerous animal, or even possibly someone. Your mind will try to make patterns out of the noise and determine intent by the agent causing it...even if you are mistaken as to what is making it. Even if the cause of the noise is inanimate like the wind or a broken limb, or a rock falling down a hill. We are wired to project agency.

But this is all just question begging. As I said from the start, it depends on your metaphysical presuppositions.

[Sparko]

You seem to miss the point of the study. Even if you agree with the morality of a certain subject with another moral agent such as the Average American or Bill Gates the brain area utilized to make that judgement is different when you make the decision for yourself than that of the other person. However, when making that assessment about god your brain activation is statistically indistinguishable. Your brain is acting like it is you making the decision not another moral agent.

I think you are the one missing the point of the study. they are comparing egocentric beliefs of others and the self.

In fact in the study they state the same thing I did:

Of course, significant correlations between people's own beliefs and God's presumed beliefs could reflect both egocentric projection onto God and the opposite (using God's beliefs as a guide to one's own)

Not only that but thinking about an "average american" in contrast with God, is not really a good test of what brain areas are activated. "average american" is a much more abstract concept than God. Thinking about what an average american thinks about a topic involves a lot of guesswork and imagination, which would activate different areas of the brain than thinking about what God believes, assuming the believer is familiar with his own deity and the bible which tells us what he believes and what he is like.

also a test base of 17 subjects is a pretty low sample group. I don't think anyone can conclude anything based on such a small sample.

[Plantasm]

It boggles my mind how easily you miss the point. Either it's deliberate because you find it easier to debate strawmen, or you really are a philosophically and theologically ignorant zealot for science. It's quite simple: we cannot determine the correctness of religious beliefs through neuroscience. Science can answer the question of what the brain does, but it's powerless to tell us why on a metaphysical level.

Incorrect. Science can easily conclude that what once was thought of as possession in many different cultures, not just Christianity, is a disorder of the mind. Science can liberate in that sense, while Jesus, shamans, and Bob Larson remained convinced it's supernatural. Obviously, it's much more harmful to conclude spirit beings from another dimension hijack bodies than it is to diagnose the problem and hopefully seek surgical and pharmaceutical help. Science rules out certain supernatural explanations of phenomena quite easily, and that's to the benefit of society.

Interestingly, science can help Seventh Day Adventists conclude Ellen White likely had temporal lobe epilepsy or a disorder of the brain that caused her "religious visions." Some stubborn Adventist doctors at Loma Linda University still believe her visions were genuine, but piecing together her life and juxtaposing it with neurological data and neurotheological studies helps give a more sound
perspective. No one should ever worry that White had genuine communications with god is the point.

Do you think science shouldn't conclude that possession, for example, isn't rooted in the metaphysical?

[Sparko]

Incorrect. Science can easily conclude that what once was thought of as possession in many different cultures, not just Christianity, is a disorder of the mind. Science can liberate in that sense, while Jesus, shamans, and Bob Larson remained convinced it's supernatural. Obviously, it's much more harmful to conclude spirit beings from another dimension hijack bodies than it is to diagnose the problem and hopefully seek surgical and pharmaceutical help. Science rules out certain supernatural explanations of phenomena quite easily, and that's to the benefit of society.

Interestingly, science can help Seventh Day Adventists conclude Ellen White likely had temporal lobe epilepsy or a disorder of the brain that caused her "religious visions." Some stubborn Adventist doctors at Loma Linda University still believe her visions were genuine, but piecing together her life and juxtaposing it with neurological data and neurotheological studies helps give a more sound
perspective. No one should ever worry that White had genuine communications with god is the point.

Do you think science shouldn't conclude that possession, for example, isn't rooted in the metaphysical?

Is completely ignoring someone else and simply repeating yourself a sign of mental disorder?

[showmeproof]

Because it appears self-evident that there is more to reality than simply what can be observed.

To you. Explain to those of us who do not find it so 'self-evident' why you think the metaphysical presupposition is necessary.

[showmeproof]

To give life to a body (or an otherwise lifeless carcass).

If you were to find a completely intact caveman carcass frozen and perfectly preserved for thousands of years, and you thawed it, do you think it would take life, become conscious and start walking about? Or would something be missing that would give it life after so many thousands of years? I think it would not take life. Call that a presupposition if you want. I pre-suppose that because of what I have been taught and what I believe.

Just to address the other side, what would your presupposition be and why would you believe in your particular presupposition?



Again, I think the brain is mostly autonomic. It is what keeps making the chemicals and hormones producing that help the body to function. The mind does the actual moral thinking and moral choosing beyond the autonomic responses of the brain.

I do think the mind/spirit is an "id". It is identifiable. It would explain how a blind person can recognize the presence of a particular loved one even in a silent and sightless state. There have been studies and experiments that show an identifiable effect on one person when a loved one thinks or focuses or prays for that person even though they are separated by locked vaults or miles of distance. Many of these experiments focus on how people heal from maladies.


Why do you presuppose that it is unnecessary?

Man is not the only living creature and I don't see many other people submitting that all living creatures have souls or spirits...some may, but it seems people want to presuppose a spirit for humans.

I don't think my arrival that it is unnecessary is a presupposition, but rather a summation of the findings of neuroscience. It is what I think the evidence shows.

[OtherCheek]

Man is not the only living creature and I don't see many other people submitting that all living creatures have souls or spirits...some may, but it seems people want to presuppose a spirit for humans.

Not me. I believe all living things have a soul/spirit. But I realize I am in the minority on that issue, so I tried to use mankind as an example. I originally wrote my example using a frozen woolly mammoth, but changed it before I posted it.

I don't think my arrival that it is unnecessary is a presupposition,

If you didn't have a presupposition, you would not know what to think about what you read in the science journals.

but rather a summation of the findings of neuroscience. It is what I think the evidence shows.

You are reading the conclusions (findings) of others based upon their suppositions.

[showmeproof]

I think you are the one missing the point of the study. they are comparing egocentric beliefs of others and the self.

In fact in the study they state the same thing I did:

Of course, significant correlations between people's own beliefs and God's presumed beliefs could reflect both egocentric projection onto God and the opposite (using God's beliefs as a guide to one's own)

Not only that but thinking about an "average american" in contrast with God, is not really a good test of what brain areas are activated. "average american" is a much more abstract concept than God. Thinking about what an average american thinks about a topic involves a lot of guesswork and imagination, which would activate different areas of the brain than thinking about what God believes, assuming the believer is familiar with his own deity and the bible which tells us what he believes and what he is like.

also a test base of 17 subjects is a pretty low sample group. I don't think anyone can conclude anything based on such a small sample.

I agree. Seventeen subjects is a low sample group, but the results weren't in dispute amongst the seventeen...they all showed the same pattern. I'd like to see this replicated with people of different faiths and possibly from other cultures. I also agree that the group 'Average American' is more abstract than a specific God. However, what does that tell us? I think it odd that if God is so specific and if he/she/it were a moral agent that our judgment of God's moral disposition would be indistinguishable from our own. This study is by no means an end all be all explanation. However, I think it does allow us to ask the question; Is god a moral agent apart from ourselves.

[Kenny]

If I believe that p, then I am committed to believing that p is true. And since I believe that God is omniscient, I believe that if that p is true, then God believes that p. So,for every belief I have, I committed to believing that God shares that belief. Of course, that doesn’t obviously commit me to the claim that God believes everything I believe (no more than my being such that, for each belief I have, I believe that I am right about that belief commits me to the claim that I’m right about everything I believe – it’s the paradox of the preface). So, in the above sense, my tendency to attribute beliefs to God is “egocentric”, but no more so my tendency to believe that what I believe is actually the case is “egocentric”, and the latter is just part and parcel of what it is to be rational.

[showmeproof]

Not me. I believe all living things have a soul/spirit. But I realize I am in the minority on that issue, so I tried to use mankind as an example. I originally wrote my example using a frozen woolly mammoth, but changed it before I posted it.



If you didn't have a presupposition, you would not know what to think about what you read in the science journals.



You are reading the conclusions (findings) of others based upon their suppositions.

I'll agree that I had a leaning prior to reading this article, but I have read many such articles before it. I also use to think there was a spirit, I have since come to the opposite conclusion based upon neuroscience.

I think the mind is the action of the brain not something that is independent or transcendent.

[showmeproof]

If I believe that p, then I am committed to believing that p is true. And since I believe that God is omniscient, I believe that if that p is true, then God believes that p. So,for every belief I have, I committed to believing that God shares that belief. Of course, that doesn’t obviously commit me to the claim that God believes everything I believe (no more than my being such that, for each belief I have, I believe that I am right about that belief commits me to the claim that I’m right about everything I believe – it’s the paradox of the preface). So, in the above sense, my tendency to attribute beliefs to God is “egocentric”, but no more so my tendency to believe that what I believe is actually the case is “egocentric”, and the latter is just part and parcel of what it is to be rational.

Yes that could plausibly explain the egocentricism of the surveys. But why would specific people like Gates, Bush, Katie Couric, Barry Bonds, and abstract groups such as the Average American all utilize different brain regions, but the brain areas used for god be indistinguishable from our own. In other words the fMRI isn't directly measuring your agreement or disagreement with the issue, but is merely showing the area of the brain that is activated in making the moral assessment. Even if you agree with one of the specific people a different part of your brain lights up. It doesn't with god.

[Kenny]

Yes that could plausibly explain the egocentricism of the surveys. But why would specific people like Gates, Bush, Katie Couric, Barry Bonds, and abstract groups such as the Average American all utilize different brain regions, but the brain areas used for god be indistinguishable from our own. In other words the fMRI isn't directly measuring your agreement or disagreement with the issue, but is merely showing the area of the brain that is activated in making the moral assessment. Even if you agree with one of the specific people a different part of your brain lights up. It doesn't with god.

Well, how am I going to go about trying to figuring out whether God believes that p? Since I believe that God believes all and only what is true, often, I’m going to go through the very same procedure that I would go about in trying to assess whether that p. I’m going to reflect on my own background knowledge and beliefs (perhaps including beliefs about the content of divine revelation, perhaps not) and see what their bearing on that p is and come to a conclusion about whether that p is true. This is not the procedure I would go through to decide whether Bush believes that p. In the latter case, I reflect on what I know about Bush, try to get myself to see things from what I think his perspective is likely to be, etc. These are radically different mental procedures.

[showmeproof]

Well, how am I going to go about trying to figuring out whether God believes that p? Since I believe that God believes all and only what is true, often, I’m going to go through the very same procedure that I would go about in trying to assess whether that p. I’m going to reflect on my own background knowledge and beliefs (perhaps including beliefs about the content of divine revelation, perhaps not) and see what their bearing on that p is and come to a conclusion about whether that p is true. This is not the procedure I would go through to decide whether Bush believes that p. In the latter case, I reflect on what I know about Bush, try to get myself to see things from what I think his perspective is likely to be, etc. These are radically different mental procedures.

But if god is a moral agent apart from ourselves, why don't you reflect on what you know about god to see what you think is his perspective? Because you believe that everything that god believes is true? Your hypothesis, that they are different mental processes, is definitely what the fMRI shows. However, it still doesn't address the question I raised...is god a moral agent apart from ourselves. This study seems to indicate that our perception of his moral stances is indistinguishable from our own. In either case of Bush or God you would have to recall either literature you've read (a newsweek article on bush or the bible on god), you'd have to recall (possibly) visual stimuli, you'd have to recall things you have heard etc... so the processes are not radically different.

I think what would be interesting is to see the fMRI Self>God from what a nonbeliever who clearly disagrees with some moral precepts of the Abrahamic god and does not have the presupposition you mentioned, i.e. that you believe that everything god believes is true. This could be run and we could posit hypotheses.

The conclusion still stands, that although people use god as a moral compass that compass doesn't point to an ultimate truth but rather to what the individual already believes.