There is no "god part of the brain".
Humans are hyper active agency detectors.
We evolved in an environment that was out to kill us.
A rustle in the bushes could be just the wind, but it could also be a predator. It is more advantageous to our survival, to have false positives. If it just the wind, and our ancestors ran, they were much better off, than if it was a lion, and our ancestors thought it was just the wind.
So, that same mental process that ascribes agency to the wind rustling a bush (a lion), gets applied to ascribing agency to other natural phenomena.
Earthquakes, floods, disease get ascribed to some other agent. Maybe first those agents are inhabiting the ground that caused the earthquake. Or a spirit inhabits the river that caused a flood.
Little by little, this animism evolves into separate gods controlling larger parts of nature. Instead of one spirit that inhabits that single river, maybe there is a god that controls all rivers.
Interesting enough, when functional MRI's are used on god believes, the same exact part of the brain lights up with activity, as when someone is told that some random process on a computer display is being controlled by someone in a different room as the test subject.
Humans are hyper active agency detectors.
We evolved in an environment that was out to kill us.
A rustle in the bushes could be just the wind, but it could also be a predator. It is more advantageous to our survival, to have false positives. If it just the wind, and our ancestors ran, they were much better off, than if it was a lion, and our ancestors thought it was just the wind.
So, that same mental process that ascribes agency to the wind rustling a bush (a lion), gets applied to ascribing agency to other natural phenomena.
Earthquakes, floods, disease get ascribed to some other agent. Maybe first those agents are inhabiting the ground that caused the earthquake. Or a spirit inhabits the river that caused a flood.
Little by little, this animism evolves into separate gods controlling larger parts of nature. Instead of one spirit that inhabits that single river, maybe there is a god that controls all rivers.
Interesting enough, when functional MRI's are used on god believes, the same exact part of the brain lights up with activity, as when someone is told that some random process on a computer display is being controlled by someone in a different room as the test subject.
You'd believe if you just opened your heart" is a terrible argument for religion. It's basically saying, "If you bias yourself enough, you can convince yourself that this is true." If religion were true, people wouldn't need faith to believe it -- it would be supported by good evidence.
