Science and Religion Experiment - Interesting Attempts Here - Might Surprise Folks

[Selene]

Other animals have hierarchies, organized behaviors, even a semblance of norms. Only humans have religion and science. And the two have seldom been on civil terms.

Jeff Anderson and Julie Korenberg, neuroscientists at the University of Utah, want to change that. They're among a growing number of scientists aiming their field's most sophisticated machinery at religious cognition.

"It amazes me how one of the most profound influences on human behavior is virtually completely unstudied," Anderson said. "We think about how much this drives people's behavior, and yet we don't know the first thing about where in the brain that's even registered."

The researchers want to see more than religion's registry on the brain. They want to know whether it differs across sects, or by intensity of belief. They want to see what genes it activates, what hormones it releases, and how it relates to social behaviors. Can the same basic circuitry produce Mother Teresa and the Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta? If so, how?

To approach even speculative answers to such questions, the researchers have to capture what goes on in the brain of a believer during a religious moment.

Right now, that depends on whether a maw of helium-cooled superconducting magnets can become Auriel Peterson's personal church.

The 26-year-old community college student lies still, clears her mind. The machine whirs and clicks, taking rapid-fire snapshots of the flux of blood through billions of neurons.

These researchers have a good sense and approach.

"I think we're trying to do something much more simple, and that is look at private religious practice," said Korenberg, who is Jewish, was raised in a Catholic neighborhood in Natick, Mass., and sings in a Christian chorale. "I think that what we're expecting to find here is that Mormons aren't really going to be that different from Jews or Muslims."

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Religious-Experience----in-the-Brain-/story.xhtml?story_id=0200014PRC5G#

A...

[jts]

That is not from a peer reviewed refereed scientific journal. Therefore it is a pile of male bovine excrement, the same as most of the stuff that I post.

If there is such a thing as a religion center in the human brain (which I doubt), that would seem to suggest that in the course of evolution, religion had survival value to humans in some mysterious way even tho it's bullshit.

[Selene]

That is not from a peer reviewed refereed scientific journal. Therefore it is a pile of male bovine excrement, the same as most of the stuff that I post.

If there is such a thing as a religion center in the human brain (which I doubt), that would seem to suggest that in the course of evolution, religion had survival value to humans in some mysterious way even tho it's bullshit.

I thought they were clear that they were not looking for anothe G-spot [God spot in the brain].

A...

[BaalChatzaf]

Other animals have hierarchies, organized behaviors, even a semblance of norms. Only humans have religion and science. And the two have seldom been on civil terms.

Jeff Anderson and Julie Korenberg, neuroscientists at the University of Utah, want to change that. They're among a growing number of scientists aiming their field's most sophisticated machinery at religious cognition.

"It amazes me how one of the most profound influences on human behavior is virtually completely unstudied," Anderson said. "We think about how much this drives people's behavior, and yet we don't know the first thing about where in the brain that's even registered."

The researchers want to see more than religion's registry on the brain. They want to know whether it differs across sects, or by intensity of belief. They want to see what genes it activates, what hormones it releases, and how it relates to social behaviors. Can the same basic circuitry produce Mother Teresa and the Sept. 11 hijacker Mohamed Atta? If so, how?

To approach even speculative answers to such questions, the researchers have to capture what goes on in the brain of a believer during a religious moment.

Right now, that depends on whether a maw of helium-cooled superconducting magnets can become Auriel Peterson's personal church.

The 26-year-old community college student lies still, clears her mind. The machine whirs and clicks, taking rapid-fire snapshots of the flux of blood through billions of neurons.

These researchers have a good sense and approach.

"I think we're trying to do something much more simple, and that is look at private religious practice," said Korenberg, who is Jewish, was raised in a Catholic neighborhood in Natick, Mass., and sings in a Christian chorale. "I think that what we're expecting to find here is that Mormons aren't really going to be that different from Jews or Muslims."

http://www.sci-tech-today.com/news/Religious-Experience----in-the-Brain-/story.xhtml?story_id=0200014PRC5G#

A...

Mormons do not have zits. And they all have even white teeth.