My religion teacher gave everyone in the class a small tub of white clay and instructed us to form something that resembles our perception of God. Some people made crosses, faces of old men, perfectly round spheres, or even rainbows.

I shaped my God into a brain. We took turns explaining our shape to the class. I had to sort of ease the class into liking my idea without letting them know I was an atheist for fear of alienation, since I was the only non-christian.

"Oh, God exists alright. In your brain, you see," I eased.

"Ahhh," they nodded, "so it's like God exists in my mind."

I didn't get into specifics, but if I would have, I would have said this: Modern neurological experimentation leads to the conclusion that spirituality is hardwired into the brain. Of course, many had already privately concluded this notion of spirituality as a function of the brain.

The seperate research of Michael Persinger and Vilayanur Ramachandran puts forth demonstrations of the god spot in vitro and in vivo, respectively.

Persinger set up shop at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Canada. He subjected the brains of volunteers to an electromagnetic pulse gun and documented their reports. Specifically, he narrowed the pulse in on a little area of the temporal lobe. Persinger succeeded in illiciting episodes of intense spiritual feelings and out of body experiences even in patients who defined themselves as not being spiritual. Many people assume these sensations, that occur naturally, prove the existence of the divine or an afterlife.

Now, I know what you are thinking. If God is capable of communicating through the soul then obviously there needs to be a mechanism in the brain that can detect this. Quite frankly, believing in this refute is a fine way to ignore Occam's razor and continue on massaging your god spot.

Persinger pointed out other ways you can massage your god spot and bring about spiritual feelings:

Ramachandran took a different approach in studying the god spot. In his October 1997 publication, "The Neural Basis of Religious Experience," he organized the spiritual experiences of subjects prone to Temporal Lobe Epilepsy (TLP). The resulting sensations mirrored Persinger's artificial demonstrations of a naturally occuring neurological phenomenon.

Yes, I know the god spot is tough to swallow. Even after years of thinking about it and writing this, my body is still trying to explain it to my brain.

But what will always surprise me more (or perhaps not at all) is that you can read the God e2node and find no instance of the word brain.

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