The God part of the brain

created by plutonic

(thing) by plutonic (4.7 y) (print) ? (I like it!) Sun Aug 05 2001 at 21:51:01

The "God" part of the brain is a book written by Matthew Alper which in short, explains his theory of how we are "wired" to believe in a god, and have evolved this trait over time to balance our unique knowledge of our own deaths, to put ourselves at peace if you will. It goes on to explain how like many other genetically inherited traits such as the abilitly to form, learn and understand language we can form, learn and understand religion, and also like language there are many different kinds of religions based upon where you are in the world and your surroundings. He also did some reasearch into that if you are in a serious accident where a certain part of your brain is damaged, you can mysteriously completely change your beliefs, for example, someone who is an athiest who suffers this sort of injury will instantly become fanatically religious, and visa-versa, which lead him to believe that if our beliefs can be so easily changed without any other reason then brain damage, how can we still accept the notion that the soul is "infinite" and does not have anything to do with our physical being.

This is a very very well written complete book which leaves little to no holes in it, I would suggest this book to anyone who is at all interested in explaining our seemingly universal believe in some sort of god, throughout all history, and all cultures, though all of them completely different. Did this happen just by chance or did we evolve this trait to keep us from going insane? This book has completely changed my outlook on religion and answers questions i've been asking all my life, be carefull with this one though, sometimes it makes a little too much sense and makes a lot of people very angry

Mathew Alper was also a guest on the Art Bell show on 2001-05-14 discussing his book and theories, a very good listen if you can get ahold of a recording of the show.

printable version
chaos

It's always a pleasure to elevate a bad mood to an abstract principle	Art Bell	haha	God module
Magic mushrooms	some girls try too hard	God	Orion's Arm
Listen, we ended up ruined. I find my answers where I can.	Psychology of religion in adults	Debutante	God spot
Alcoholics Anonymous	religion	Reason and Faith

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