Why Our Brains Tell Us There Is A God

All of us science-based thinkers know how difficult it is to dissuade people from accepting their intuition over the findings of science. There is no greater example of this than the issue of claiming God communicates with us personally/one-on-one. The last segment of a recent podcast from the Freedom From Religion Foundation focuses on the latest information on the subject by interviewing scientist and author John C. Wathey about his new book, The Phantom God: What Neuroscience Reveals about the Compulsion to Believe: "Wathey argues that the feeling of God’s presence is spawned by innate neural circuitry, similar to the mechanism that compels an infant to cry out for its mother. In an adult, this circuitry can be activated under conditions that mimic the extreme desperation and helplessness of infancy, generating the compelling illusion of the presence of a loving, powerful, and all-knowing savior. When seen from this perspective, the illusion also appears remarkably like one that has long been familiar to neurologists: the phantom limb of the amputee, spawned by the expectation of the patient’s brain that the missing limb should still be there."

Click on the link below for the podcast segment (timestamp approximately at 25:00):

Phantom God

How Did Religion Evolve?

"Naturalism Next joins me to discuss 'the cognitive science argument against theism.' We talk about the psychology of religion, hyperactive agency detection, signaling theory, and more on the evolutionary origins of religious belief. Crucially, theories from modern cognitive science of religion are antecedently more likely on naturalism than on theism, and so provide good evidence against theism.

"We have plausible natural mechanisms that account for religious belief and practice – how they form and how they spread. The persistence and prevalence of religious belief can be understood through the framework of evolutionary theory and cognitive science of religion, providing us an answer to the question, 'If God doesn’t exist, why does nearly everyone believe in God?'"

Click on the link below for an enlightening, balanced podcast on the history and science of religion:

How we have religion

The Religious Have A Big Blind Spot

One of the biggest challenges when interacting with the religious as an atheist science-based thinker is to get them to realize that they are inconsistent regarding the need for evidence in support of their opinions. Most of us, theist or atheist, carry on our day-to-day lives expecting to have sufficient evidence before accepting claims. However, the religious have a blind spot regarding the claims of their religions, which also tends to bleed down to views about politics and science (link)(link).

Why Is Religion So Ubiquitous?

Most religious apologists claim as evidence for the reality of the supernatural the fact that virtually all human cultures in history have had a belief in God(s). This is the Bandwagon Fallacy. They talk about natural needs such as hunger and thirst having real things to satisfy them. However, the explanations in this thread are more in keeping with the present scientific understanding of supernatural beliefs (more: link, link, link, link).

Religion Is A Mind Disease

"Growing up in church impairs your ability to ask better questions and detect logical inconsistencies in the answers you get, and on a large enough scale that has far-reaching consequences for the fate of a nation, and maybe even the world. You are taught from birth to accept so many incompatible ideas that eventually it breaks your irony meter."

How Faith Breaks Your Thinker

The Psychology of Religion