WHERE IS MY PERSONAL GOD HIDING?
With MRIs and Pet scans we can find discrete areas of brain activity when we are active mentally, watching movies using drugs, or listening on our cell phones.
Frances Collins, in his recent book, argues for the existence of a personal God. Some parts in the brain need God. We have an innate sense of right and wrong. God implanted moral law into our brains. We are programmed to use good behavior since it leads to the preservation of the species.
Source: The Language of God, 2007
David Linden, in his recent book, says evolution accounts for the development of religion, love, dreams, and memory. The primitive emotion laden limbic structures in the hypothalamus and brain stem link the rational cortex with the primitive emotional brain stem. Frequently a breakdown in emotional control is labeled a design of a God.
Source: The Accidental Mind, 2007
Michael Timble, an expert on epilepsy says in his recent book, great religious leaders had partial seizures during their conversions. St. Paul was blind for 3 days and fell frequently into eclectic visionary states. Mormon founder Smith had lapses of consciousness and speech arrests and saw heaven and angels.
Source: The Soul and the Brain, 2007
Drugs certainly can change our mental states. LSD, Mescaline, and psychedelic drugs can block serotonin receptors in the raphe nuclei of the brain. The non-dominant emotional right side of the brain has sites for religious states, poetry and music.
Researcher Sandi, in a recent NEJM article, mapped sites involved in language that included parental, temporal and frontal regions. The analytical left-brain has been found to control great achievements in science and the arts.
Source NEJM 1.3.2008
Going to a house of worship might stimulate many of these sites and free God to work in us.
What do you think? Is there a God in your future?
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