assumption creeps in, seemingly so obvious that it goes unnoticed) it
would be even better if the religious thoughts in question were
intense. So people who have visions or those who are intensely reli-
gious should be the favored subjects in such experiments. Is there
some religious center in the brain, some special cortical area, some
special neural network that handles God-related thoughts?
Not really. It is certainly possible to measure some specific brain
activity during visions and other such extreme episodes that people
usually interpret in religious terms, but then this is found also in sub-
jects who have similar visions but no religious interpretations for
them. In a more promising way, other neuroscientists have found that [309]
particular micro-seizures, in which some part of normal communica-
tion between cortical and other brain areas is impaired, do give people
a subjective sensation very close to that described by mystics. That
people can experience a sudden feeling of peace, of communion with
the entire world, or even the presence of some hugely powerful agent
can be to some extent correlated with particular brain activity, in the
same way as out-of-body or near-death experiences. Naturally, these
are very fragmentary and ambiguous results—but then so are most
results in neuropsychology. We will certainly gain a better knowledge
of the neural processes underlying "religious states." In particular,
intense religious experience is very often about the presence of some
agent, so it is plausible that such experience stems from a particular
activation of cortical areas that handle thoughts about other people's
thoughts (what I called intuitive psychology) and those that create
emotional responses to people's presence.^4
IS EXCEPTIONAL EXPERIENCE
A SOURCE OF BELIEF?But is this a promising research program? That is, should we expect
such studies to give us a better understanding of why there is religion
and why it is the way it is? I think we will never fail to learn more by
studying the brain and getting to understand its function better, but
this requires that we know what it is that we want to understand,
which is less than clear in this case. Consider an analogy. We want to
understand how processes in the brain give us good ballistic capaci-
ties. Compared to most other species, humans are extremely good at
throwing projectiles at targets, and they are also better at getting bet-
WHYBELIEF?