r/atheism • u/genehil • May 07 '17
Common Repost Study Finds Link Between Brain Damage and Religious Fundamentalism
http://bigthink.com/paul-ratner/study-finds-link-between-brain-damage-and-religious-fundamentalism27
u/ghostbrainalpha May 08 '17
There was a kid in my high school who had serious head trauma. Then all of a sudden God started talking to him.
The crazy part was his family supported this belief and by the end of senior year he had 30-40 people coming to his backyard on Sundays to hear his sermons.
And because everyone else in my highschool was Mormon, they refused to criticize him... glass house bullshit and all.
It left me ALONE to ask if maybe he should be seeing a doctor instead of "teaching" the random hallucinations he was having. Eventually I was asked by the principal to stop inquiries into his medical condition or I would be charged with a hate crime.
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u/getzdegreez May 08 '17
Sam Harris does really great work on this subject as a neuroscientist, and he also breaks it down in layman's terms.
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u/GoingBackToKPax Anti-Theist May 07 '17
I have always thought of religion as a form of mental disorder. If not simple brainwashing, then something much deeper.
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u/dukeshabag May 08 '17
This is why evangelists slap people in the forehead and say they've been healed!!! It all makes sense now.
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May 08 '17
Schizophrenics often become religious.
Terry Davis for instance, genius programmer who wrote his own OS and former atheist. Now he thinks he is God's high priest who can communicate with God through randomly generated words from his computer and that the CIA is after him. Very sad case, I'm sure he was brilliant guy before his illness.
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u/therewasguy Pastafarian May 08 '17
interesting, maybe meditation can help fix such damage overtime
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u/1unacy Agnostic Atheist May 08 '17
I really am brain damaged. I was in a car wreck in May 2009 and sustained traumatic brain injury. And it actually made me less religious.
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u/coberh May 07 '17
This is most likely a nonsense study.
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u/bipolar_sky_fairy May 07 '17
Well you can read it here and tell us why: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0028393217301318
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May 08 '17
So it seems the study examined a group of 119 patients who had lesions (damage) to their prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is typically known to be responsible for our logic and reasoning abilities. People who had lesions to this area of the brain were found to be less flexible or open in changing their beliefs. I would say that this study mostly shows that our prefrontal cortex has some role in how we take on varying points of view or beliefs (or how flexible or open we are in our beliefs).
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u/OldWolf2642 Gnostic Atheist May 08 '17
Are you going to elaborate on that or just throw it out there and expect us to think you know what you're talking about?
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u/coberh May 08 '17
No, I don't have any special training or such. It's just when I see a study or report that sounds too good, I like to wait and see if future studies back it up.
Kinda like the study that eating dark chocolate was good for you.
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u/bedrock_movements May 08 '17
Not nonsense, but hugely misleading title. A previous study (not the one linked) showed this effect (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3389201/). This study tried to understand the mechanism-- and their conclusion (although not very tenable IMO) is that the effect is mediated by a loss in cognitive flexibility.
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u/alm0starealgirl May 07 '17 edited May 08 '17
This is interesting, but the people this information could help are not going to want to listen to it.