"Studies strongly suggest that beliefs are encoded in the brain differently than facts. Different parts of the brain seem to light up when we recall facts than when we recall thematic beliefs or emotional conclusions or beliefs about things." Dr. Steven Novella, an academic neurologist from the Skeptics Guide to the Universe podcast, episode 163, September 3rd, 2008.How cool is that? I've always kind of vaguely wondered if there was a difference with how a believer thinks as opposed to an atheist. Now, before you go tearing me apart, Steven Novella said that this is all very new and not set in stone at all. If you know of any studies, let me know. He also mentioned that most of the studies were done with FMRI which is hard to do right, so you have to wade through the questionable techniques and stuff.
Still, all that aside, that's pretty interesting to me, and I wanted to share it with you.
Sounds like a promising line of research. I've stated many times before that beliefs can be divorced from knowledge - this just might explain why!
ReplyDeleteYeah, it totally makes sense to me. Of course, I'd really like to read some research on it, though, to understand it better. But it's quite fascinating. It seems to me, especially in this light, that knowledge and beliefs are more than divorced. Perhaps they've never even met? :P
ReplyDeleteI hope people reading this little article realise how imperitive it is that Church and State are seperarated, or at least kept at arms length, now that such research has begun. Typically speaking if a person is unable to fathom basic principles that everyone else can grasp easily, it is typically referred to as a mental condition, if any high-powered world leader found out that beliefs can and are embedded in the brain, he or she could easily point to all atheists or agnostics being brain damages or mentally retarded, which is unlikely to earn our opinions or thoughts any merit by anyone.
ReplyDeleteHi,
ReplyDeleteI have been interested in A.I. for some time, and that 2/3 ratio is, in my opinion, underestimated. It is more like 100%.
When you mention atheist vs believer difference, this has more to do with our ability to see fact and belief for what it really is, it's not a blur between the line.
When discussing knowledge, or what we categorically see as fact, is the biggest problem with A.I. Best example is *conceptualising* stuff. When we dream up a concept, we make a premature conclusion and go about finding evidence; this kind of "induced learning" would flash up as totally different from recalling a memory. I like to keep A.I. in the loop because feeding a machine with facts is easy - to make it learn in a meaningful way is only conceptually viable using neural networks.
Anyway to get to my point, a believer, deep down, knows full well that his/her faith in invisible creatures is NOT a fact. Most of them are happy to admit this, and say "that's why it's called faith". If some research and tests are done and it turns out that it DOES, however; we're talking about serious mental illness not far nor better than schizophrenia. Most easy going religious folk don't think Christ is fact - they just getting a warm buzz thinking that it just *might* be in a similar fashion to an atheist hoping for a definitive cure for cancer.
Anyway, interesting article. I can imagine it has lots of potential for meaningful debate.
In grue,
H
Thanks for commenting, Veridas and H.
ReplyDeleteVeridas: Yes, the separation of church and state is incredibly important. I'm not sure atheists have to worry yet about being considered brain damaged. In fact, I'd say the reverse is closer to what the research might loosely infer, that if you believe in fairy tales and myths, you're a bit off your rocker and perhaps shouldn't be trusted. Or maybe that's just wishful thinking on my part. :P
H: I'm not sure what A.I. has to do with this research. Also, in my experience, religious folks seem to casually believe whatever they're told in relation to the bible and their god. I don't think they "think" deep down at all about such things because they are taught not to. All they have to do is lazily believe. It's very simple for them. No thinking needed or wanted.
Again this is my experience as a believer when I was young and impressionable, as well as with believers I encounter now.
Lumping schizophrenia in with believing, I think is a huge leap that is neither accurate nor helpful. I've met schizophrenics. It's not pretty. While dealing with religious folks isn't pretty either, I don't think they have anything to do with each other.
On the other hand, I would tend to agree that there is definitely a screw loose if you believe in fairy tales when you're older than about 6 or 7 years old.
Haha thanx, I am happy to accept a few slaps. I admit I see things in the extreme.
ReplyDeleteOn the A.I. part, it exclusively was triggered from:
"Studies strongly suggest that beliefs are encoded in the brain differently than facts". I took that maybe too literally.
It just happens that when I have been struggling with the concept of programming an AI and imagine using a "creative learning" approach, I realised that would be a recipe for creating religious robots. Taking it further than was necessary, well, maybe I just poured the religious folk in the same blender because it feels so good.
If your experience as an impressionable youth was "No thinking needed or wanted", I must say I've learned something new. With me I could not stop thinking and before ultimately reaching the sound conclusion such as I envision was your fate, my evil analysis only affirmed that the bible is lies, so god is a liar, and the devil is right (this was in my pre-teens). That it was all a hoax dawned on me only a few months after that huh.
In grue,
H
I won't thumb speculations like this up (on SU) - since they're nothing more.
ReplyDeleteI think that most people, even atheists (yes, everyone really), would use such a part of the brain equally as much. What's different between a religious person and an atheist (imo) is generally education, upbringing, environment, etc. Those are what decide, at least as far as I know (or what I can presume), whether a person believes in one thing or the other. Be it the Big Bang, Allah, God or any other belief system.
This seems to me like very questionable research that will take a lot of work to prove and put in perspective.
Religious people don't suddenly become atheistic because their brain is built a certain way, and not the other way around either... (This isn't fact either, I'm just assuming this. Sounds logical to me anyway)
Hi again, H. Well, let me clarify, my experience as a youth was that no thinking was wanted. I thought too much and it got me into trouble. My pastor told me I asked too many questions and refused to answer them. That gave me my first inkling that something was amiss with the church.
ReplyDeleteTomte: hello and thanks for stopping by. If you read the quote, it clearly says that "studies" showed that knowledge and beliefs are coded differently in the brain. That is science, from a rather great source (a neuroscientist), not speculation. I would like to find and read the studies myself, but these studies have been done over time. It's not one study, it's many.
While you have your own ideas, you're speculating based on your own life and belief system. Basically it's a great snippet of how to look at this information.
A neuroscientist talks about his field of practice, and states that the latest research "strongly suggests" (see, in science, we keep an open mind and try to disprove our hypotheses) how facts and beliefs are stored in the brain. While it's not a cold hard fact, it's an interesting bit of information (based on research and coming from a reliable source) that I will tuck away in my brain. I'll wait for more information about newer studies to see if this is proven or disproven.
On the other hand, you take this information, it doesn't fit into your world-view and your belief system, so therefore you must discard it. Fascinating, don't you think?
This study doesn't contradict what you are saying. It suggests that there is a fundamental difference in the way different beliefs are encoded; if someone was trained from an early age to use the "faith-encoding" it would be more used than in someone who wasn't trained. It might even agree with the findings of sociologists (what you seem to suggest), and may help compensate for the low bar they set for statistical correlation.
ReplyDelete