How can science explain why the human brain believes in a god?

[rewindparanoia]

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How can science explain human brain to believe on a god ?

[trinalla]

you are like questioning your mind why do you believe in god.. peace beliefs has nothing to do with science

[geo25]

it's not the mind, it's the person. you are either being stubborn or being open-minded.

[kit_cebu]

you can always "experiment"....jump out from a ship/boat in the middle of the sea....and see if you can "walk"...

[illidan_great]

wut? ain't nobody got time fo that!

science has nothing to do with religion.

[crocodile]

"what the hell" tagaan tka equation ana TS gnahan ka?hehehehehe

[Ginzz]

I'm not sure if God is real or not. But I realized that life is better when you believe.

[aljy]

It already has TS. It is called philosophy..There a lot of studies about the behavior of mankind and the need for it to believe in a higher being to have purpose.

[seraph_18]

Hard science cannot explain why. But Sociology & Psychology can.

[gareb]

neurology shows us how the brain behaves when one experiences something that can be referred to as "mystical". we cannot answer the question "why", but we can answer the question "how". with it comes insights.

Is the brain hardwired for religion?
HowStuffWorks "The Brain During Religious Experiences"

The Brain During Religious Experiences

Because of the work connecting temporal lobe epilepsy and spiritual experiences, scientists previously believed that the temporal lobe was the only part of the brain involved in religious feelings. Recent imaging studies, however, have shown that many parts of the brain are activated during a religious experience.

At the forefront of these imaging studies is Andrew Newberg, a doctor at the University of Pennsylvania. Newberg usedsingle photon emission computed tomography, or SPECT, imaging to take pictures of the brain during religious activity. SPECT provides a picture of blood flow in the brain at a given moment, so more blood flow indicates more activity.

One of Newberg's studies examined the brains of Tibetan Buddhist monks as they meditated. The monks indicated to Newberg that they were beginning to enter a meditative state by pulling on a piece of string. At that moment, Newberg injected radioactive dye via an intravenous line and imaged the brain. Newberg found increased activity in the frontal lobe, which deals with concentration; the monks obviously were concentrating on the activity [source: Vedantam].

But Newberg also found an immense decrease of activity in the parietal lobe. The parietal lobe, among other things, orients a person in a three-dimensional space. This lobe helps you look around to determine that you're 15 feet (4.6 meters) away from a bathroom, 6 feet (1.8 meters) away from a door and so on. Newberg hypothesizes that the decreased activity in the brains of the meditating monks indicates that they lose their ability to differentiate where they end and something else begins [source: Paulson]. In other words, they become at one with the universe, a state often described in a moment of transcendence.

Religion & Brain: Belief Decreases With Analytical Thinking, Study Shows
Religion & Brain: Belief Decreases With Analytical Thinking, Study Shows

Many people with religious convictions feel that their faith is rock solid. But a new study finds that prompting people to engage in analytical thinking can cause their religious beliefs to waver, if only a little. Researchers say the findings have potentially significant implications for understanding the cognitive underpinnings of religion.

Psychologists often carve thinking into two broad categories: intuitive thinking, which is fast and effortless (instantly knowing whether someone is angry or sad from the look on her face, for example); and analytic thinking, which is slower and more deliberate (and used for solving math problems and other tricky tasks). Both kinds of thinking have their strengths and weaknesses, and they often seem to interfere with one another. "Recently there's been an emerging consensus among [researchers] … that a lot of religious beliefs are grounded in intuitive processes," says Will Gervais, a graduate student at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, in Canada and a co-author of the new study, published today in Science.

One example comes from a study by neuroscientist and philosopher Joshua Greene and colleagues at Harvard University, published last September in the Journal of Experimental Psychology. They asked hundreds of volunteers recruited online to answer three questions with appealingly intuitive answers that turn out to be wrong. For example, "A bat and ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?" Although $0.10 comes easily to mind (it's the intuitive answer), it takes some analytical thought to come up with the correct answer of $0.05. People who chose more intuitive answers on these questions were more likely to report stronger religious beliefs, even when the researchers controlled for IQ, education, political leanings, and other factors.