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Religious Experiences Have Similar Effect On Brain As Taking Drugs, Study Finds (cnn.com)
A new study published in the journal Social Neuroscience finds through functional MRI scans that religious and spiritual experiences can trigger reward systems like love and drugs. "These are areas of the brain that seem like they should be involved in religious and spiritual experience. But yet, religious neuroscience is such a young field -- and there are very few studies -- and ours was the first study that showed activation of the nucleus accumbens, an area of the brain that processes reward," said Dr. Jeffrey Anderson, a neuroradiologist at the University of Utah and lead author of the study. CNN reports: For the study, 19 devout young adult Mormons had their brains scanned in fMRI machines while they completed various tasks. The tasks included resting for six minutes, watching a six-minute church announcement about membership and financial reports, reading quotations from religious leaders for eight minutes, engaging in prayer for six minutes, reading scripture for eight minutes, and watching videos of religious speeches, renderings of biblical scenes and church member testimonials. During the tasks, participants were asked to indicate when they were experiencing spiritual feelings. As the researchers analyzed the fMRI scans taken of the participants, they took a close look at the degree of spiritual feelings each person reported and then which brain regions were simultaneously activated. The researchers found that certain brain regions consistently lit up when the participants reported spiritual feelings. The brain regions included the nucleus accumbens, which is associated with reward; frontal attentional, which is associated with focused attention; and ventromedial prefrontal cortical loci, associated with moral reasoning, Anderson said. Since the study results were seen only in Mormons, Anderson said, more research is needed to determine whether similar findings could be replicated in people of other faiths, such as Catholics or Muslims.
... People have a problem with separating fantasy from reality. What else is new?
FTFY
If these people were not willing to kill, maim ... and slaughter to support their fantasy, it would not be much of a problem.
Among the worst are the people trying to build a "heaven on earth," also known as a "worker's paradise." Oddly enough they tend to be atheists.
much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot - George Orwell
99% of buddhists believe in magic unfortunately.
and ghosts. and also that gods of other religions are "real".
yeah it's weird, but pretty much true and the source of the wealth of buddhist organizations in asia.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.