

Belief in the Brain: Sacred and secular ideas engage identical areas - araneae
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=belief-in-the-brain

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a-priori
Not surprising to me. Much of the activity you'd see in this experiment would
be related to more mundane cognitive activity like language processing,
semantic recall (remembering facts like what's in the middle of our solar
system), metamemory (e.g, where did I learn that?), guessing the intent of the
question, and thinking about what's for lunch.

Any activity related to theology could easily blend right in with this
background activity. They're making the assumption that because theology is a
"big issue" that it should stick out like a sore thumb on an fMRI. That's not
necessary true. The average church-going Christian adult has probably heard
about Jesus's life thousands of times in their life. They could easy answer a
question about him without even considering the theological implications of
the question. It's just another semantic detail to them.

Edit: Added second paragraph.

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tensor
I think it would make for a more interesting test if they took brain images of
the subjects reasoning about _new_ statements rather than established facts.

As you point out, it is a reasonable hypothesis that what they are measuring
is simply recalling already established beliefs. The critical part is really
why people come to their beliefs. Secondary to that is why people do not
revisit established beliefs, and if they do, why do they maintain them.

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a-priori
Asking people about novel statements would be a huge improvement over the
protocol they described. You probably would see a difference then.

Generally, the brain evolved to be lazy. Our ancestors needed to spend their
time finding food, not questioning reality, and so evolved to make a decision
and move on. We only re-examine firmly-held beliefs when a great conflict
arises and even then we spend a great deal of effort rationalizing to try to
resolve the conflict without overturning the beliefs.

Rational activities like science and philosophy, where you are forced to dig
deeply into your assumptions, are very _unnatural_. That's why they're so hard
to learn to do right.

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Perceval
A more interesting control would be to have two groups: one which had no
direct experience in proving a statement, and another that had empirically
proven a statement. You could ask a group of normal folks whether equilateral
triangles always have internal angles of 60˚ and then you could ask some
mathematics grad students the same question.

The key distinction I'm going after here is whether a fact believed on
authority or believed because of empirical proof. I believe that the earth
rotates around the Sun and that gravity accelerates things at 9.8m/s^2 and
that there once existed a fellow named Kublai Khan (who in Xanadu did a
stately pleasure dome decree). But I believe all of these things because I
read about them in books written by experts, not because I made observations
with a telescope and did the orbital calculations, or because I've timed
dropping objects from various heights, or because I've examined the historical
record of the Yuan Dynasty.

Presumably an expert who has done the empirical work will not accept these
facts on the basis of belief, but on the basis of real-world observed
evidence/proof. That ought to trigger a different part of the brain than in
someone who believes a scientific fact based on the authority of scientists
and the scientific method.

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lukev
This is exactly what one would expect.

To the brain, beliefs are beliefs, whether they concern god, angels or motor
oil.

Not all cognition about religious things involves a "mystical experience". In
fact, theologians tend to be an incredibly dry bunch and study their creeds
with all the emotional investment of an accountant.

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powrtoch
I seem to recall a similar article that was on Hacker News a while back, but
with seemingly opposite results (probably not testing for exactly the same
thing, but it seemed to suggest that secular and religious thoughts were
distinctly different). I'm curious to compare now, can anybody help me find
it?

