Neurological Effects of Religion

While writing this post, I found myself having to list detailed definitions along with caveats and careful explanations: the concepts of religion and spirituality are complex and often ill-defined, so if you aren't careful, someone will raise their hand and say "well, what about this obscure point that you didn't address?!"  So over time the post evolved from a concise, clear description of interesting neurological facts to a meandering monstrosity. The need to keep the post short, clear, and interesting is at odds with the need to be procedurally complete.

I decided to err on the side of concise clarity.  If something rubs you the wrong way, we can hash it out in the comments later.

So lets jump right in.  In this post I will describe the neurological effects of religious worship.  Note that I am no expert.  Everything about specific neurological activity comes from the books How God Changes Your Brain by Newburg and Waldman, and Why God Won't Go Away by Newburg et. al.  Everything else is mine.

The neurological effects of worship can be summarized in one sentence: we become like what we worship¹, regardless of whether what we are worshiping is real or imagined.  For example, if we worship an angry, authoritarian, punitive God, we gain a proclivity for anger and we become less capable of being understanding and compassionate.  The amygdala - the part of the brain that produces fear and anger - is strengthened.  Interestingly, when we are angry it becomes physically impossible for us to think rationally.  On this topic, Newburg and Waldman wrote

"Anger interrupts the functioning of your frontal lobes. Not only do you lose the ability to be rational, you lose the awareness that you’re acting in an irrational way. When your frontal lobes shut down, it’s impossible to listen to the other person, let alone feel empathy or compassion. Instead, you are likely to feel self- justified and self- righteous, and when that happens the communication process falls apart. Anger also releases a cascade of neurochemicals that actually destroy those parts of the brain that control emotional reactivity."

It goes without saying that we should avoid worshiping "angry" Gods - the effects are clearly destructive.  In fact, I don't think that many people would admit to following this kind of God.  Rather, I think that people worship the authoritarian, punitive type of God without realizing what they are doing.  I'll talk more about this later, because worshiping the wrong kind of God - knowingly or unknowingly - is unhealthy and destructive.

In contrast, worshiping a compassionate, loving God actively strengthens the frontal lobe and the anterior cingulate.  The frontal lobe is the reasoning center of the brain, and the anterior cingulate is the area of the brain that allows us to suppress fear and feel empathy and compassion.  Worshiping a loving God actually rewires our neural circuits so that we don't respond with anger as quickly or easily.  It also makes us more physically capable of feeling empathy, compassion, and love for others.

To be clear, the "God" that you worship isn't necessarily the same God described by your religion.  Practically speaking, your God may be more accurately defined by what you allow yourself to focus on.  For example, if you tend to focus on the "wicked" state of the world and the impending judgment of God, then you probably worship an angry God.

More generally, your God may be described by the attitude that you generally espouse when you aren't thinking about God at all.  If you are consistently pessimistic, angry, or fearful, it has the same neurological effect as worshiping an angry, authoritarian God.  In contrast, if you actively work on being understanding, compassionate, and optimistic, it has the same neurological effect as contemplating a loving, compassionate God.

The idea that worship and regular daily activity are closely related forms much of the basis for what I called "Spiritual Atheism" in the title of my last post.  The idea suggests that at least some of the neurological benefits of religion can be obtained by consciously adjusting your attitude about life.  That is, perhaps you can get the benefits of religion without using the religion at all.

There are other benefits of religious practice that I haven't talked about - reduced fear of death, deep peace and comfort, powerfully tangible joy, and direction and meaning, not to mention the social benefits of interacting in a religious community.  In my next post, I will discuss why these other benefits can also be obtained outside the context of traditional religion.

1. When I say "worship," I am referring to specific, conscious activity centered around a God figure.  This activity could be religious ritual, deep contemplation, study of religious texts, or meditation.  In this post, I will make the case that worship and daily activity are not necessarily disjoint.  They are, I think, closely connected.  But when I use the "worship" by itself, I refer specifically to God-centered activities.

Spiritual Atheism

In this and the next few posts I am going to describe a brand of spiritualism that is compatible with many concepts of deity - from "no God" to the "unknowable God" to the highly personal God.  This idea is new to me, but I am not perfectly well-read in the philosophical and religious literature.  Chances are good that someone else thought of this hundreds of years ago.

I originally conceived of this idea while thinking about a common objection that people have about religion.  Many people see religious belief as unjustified because there is simply no evidence to support it - there is no quantifiable reason to believe.  For some, religion seems to be outdated, outmoded, unfounded, superstitious, untestable, overly emotional.

To put it another way, religion always seems centered around powerful personal emotion.  This emotion can, in fact, be so powerful that God can seem more real and literal than the words on this page or the chair you are sitting in¹. It is expected that if you are a devoted worshiper, you will begin to "know" that what you are worshiping really exists, irrespective of what that thing happens to be.  The following quote, from the book "How God Changes your Brain," illustrates this point:

"The thalamus [the part of your brain that is mainly responsible for perceiving/interpreting reality] makes no distinction between inner and outer realities, and thus any idea, if contemplated long enough, will take on a semblance of reality.  Your belief becomes neurologically real, and your brain will respond accordingly.  But for someone else, who has meditated on a different set of beliefs or goals, a different reality will seem true."

Don't misunderstand my purpose here - I am not trying to minimize the value of religious belief or invalidate anyone's faith.  Rather, I am pointing out an objection that many atheists and agnostics have about religion - specifically, that human beings will predictably believe in whatever religion they choose to immerse themselves in, whether it be Islam, Buddhism, Catholicism, Mormonism, or whatever.  But "believe" isn't strong enough a word, because eventually the belief will feel like certain knowledge.  More certain even than physical reality.  As a method for finding absolute truth, then, religion seems inadequate because the part of our brain that makes us think something is true doesn't actually care whether that thing is true or not.

It is probably an uncomfortable thing for many religious people to read this - please don't let it bother you.  As explained in The Varieties of Religious Experience by William James, the existential study of religion has no bearing on religion's value.  Just because we are neurologically wired to believe what we worship does not mean that we shouldn't choose to worship. 

In fact, studies that measure the neurological effect of religion show that worship is almost always incredibly healthy.  In my next post, I will describe how religion positively affects the mind.  Then, I will describe how all the positive neurological benefits of religion can be obtained in a way that avoids the atheistic/agnostic objection I described in this post.

1. This has been shown to be true through anecdotal descriptions by scores of religious individuals, and by a number of neurological studies. The book How God Changes Your Brain by Waldman and Newberg describes many of these studies.

So much for idealism

Last year about this time I started hunting around for companies that make injection molds (for those who don't know, an "injection mold" is something used to make plastic parts in high quantities).  One local company was particularly hospitable.  They invited me to their factory, showed me around the manufacturing floor, and introduced me to their lead engineer - all the while emphasizing the benefits of making local contracts instead of foreign ones.  "Face-to-face contact, better service, faster lead-times, security (no-one will steal your design here), safety, and perhaps above all, PATRIOTISM."

I found the same general message on their web-site, although it was much more direct.  They even had a page devoted specifically to documenting all the cases when Chinese manufacturing had gone bad - poisonous plastics on sandals, toxins in baby food, stolen designs and molds.  You name a China-oriented scandal, and they dutifully reported it.  I assumed that they were fighting to keep their business running in the face of cheap competition overseas.

Just last week (a year after my first contact with them) I called on them again to get a quote on a new design.  The picture this time was completely different.  There was no offer for a site visit, no communication with engineering staff, no aggressive self-promotion.  I specifically asked if I could talk to an engineer, but they reported that they no longer did mold design.  They outsource all their design work to - get this - China!  I guess their struggle to justify higher costs in the name of locality and patriotism failed.

I guess sometimes you just can't fight the tides of world-wide economic change.  You embrace them or you die.

Even "Scientists"

I stumbled upon an interesting article today.  Apparently scientists have found a planet which is potentially habitable because it is the right distance from its star for liquid water to exist.  The story itself is fascinating to me, but I couldn't help but notice the following quote from one of the scientists who made the discovery:

"Our findings offer a very compelling case for a potentially habitable planet," said Steven Vogt, professor of astronomy and astrophysics at UC Santa Cruz, in a statement released by NASA. "The fact that we were able to detect this planet so quickly and so nearby tells us that planets like this must be really common."

Ten points to the first person who can tell me what is wrong with that statement.