Assuming these findings are true, the debate would be the cause and effect - does a decreased brain size make one more susceptible to religious indoctrination or once indoctrinated does the brain waste away from disuse?
Actually, the article makes no determination about that:
So they think it has to do with stress brought on by religion?
I find that fascinating since I always ascribed to the view that people pick the religion that works for them. If someone chooses a religion (as opposed to being taught one which this study doesn’t seem to deal with), presumably they are choosing one that fits their beliefs. Maybe not perfectly, but it’s still surprising to me that it would cause people “stress.”
Do religious people here feel this “stress” that the authors indicate? Have you become conflicted because some unignorable epiphany conflicted with your former beliefs?
Even if someone’s worldview is shattered by a revelation, it seems to me that a religious person would eventually come to view that revelation as “truth” and previous convictions as false… So why the shrinking brains?[/COLOR]
If religion causes the brain to shrink, you have to come up with some rationale for people with full sized brains accepting it in the first place. I’d go with the small brain being the initial cause.
Did you overlook the part of your first quote that says that the shrinkage was in both “born-again” religious types as well as those with no religious affiliation. It was the ones with more “mainstream” views (religious but not born-again) that had less shrinkage.
I think that indicates that it may be the outlier status that causes the problem (or, perhaps the converse).
There was no correlation found between amount of religious activity and the shrinkage. So the idea that this finding was caused by religion is not supported. Also indicated is that non-religious people have the same shrinkage as the born again.
Two explanations that I can come up with to explain the findings: 1. Being born again is a great stressor in that it causes a large disruption in lifestyle. Being non-religious is also a great stressor. The stress is what causes the brain shrinkage. 2. Being born again usually means there was a period of non-religousness that proceeds the conversion. Since non religious people also have the shrinkage, there is something about not being religious that causes the shrinkage. Maybe the hole Augustine talked about was in the brain.
Purely wild speculation, strongly related to what puddle glum said: It may be the case that in order to be born again, one must be in a life situation that is stressful enough that they feel the need to have the fresh start that being born again brings. It may be that this stress causes the shrinkage.
Very true. In fact many people are in religions that are entirely inappropriate for them (I’m thinking of liberal-minded women in fundamentalist Islam or gays in the RCC).
Also I would dispute the notion that you have to be un-religious for awhile (or have significant life burdens) to become “born-again”. Born-again is simply a term that evangelical Protestants use. The second birth is a religious birth and doesn’t require any sort of atheist period or rock-bottom hitting, at least in my experience.
The study defined born again as “A conversion experience, i.e., a specific occasion when you dedicated your life to Jesus.” According to scripture all Christians are born again, but most people did not start referring to themselves as born agains until the mid to late 1970’s after Charles Colson’s book came out. The people in this study were probably in their forties at that point and thus probably less likely to think of themselves as born again just because they were Christians. There is really no way of knowing without asking the participants.
An Irish Protestant who converts to Islam will remain in some important sense an Irish Protestant until the day he dies – it’s less a matter of religious than of ethnocultural identity.
I agree it’s vague, but when I was a Southern Baptist I would have called myself born-again, and counted my baptism as the conversion experience. This was entirely typical, and didn’t reflect any sort of “coming to Christ” as I’d been raised Southern Baptist and never been anything else.
Born Again to me indicates a personal non-religious relationship with God as opposed to decided they start re-attending church, while the other class you mentioned ‘protestant’ would be the religious indoctrinated class of people.
Also it is not the whole brain that shrinks, but the hippocampus, which is the part of the brain that is involved in memory forming, organizing, and storing.
Just looking at what the hippocampus does it would seem like indoctrination would be exercising this section of the brain which would seem to make sense that it would be larger. Basically those who are indoctrinated by religion have brains that show evidence of that indoctrination. Borne again would be ones who broke the indoctrination and using that part less.
True, and how about: the size of brain structures says very little about intelligence, function, atrophy, or anything like that. A larger brain structure can mean the same thing. The main likely explanation is that the hippocampus is being used more in those individuals with larger ones. The hippocampus is one of the few areas where neurons are constantly dying and being created so its mass can fluctuate (don’t know if they accounted for this).
Non-religious disenfranchised? Sure, in some places. Born agains like to think they are. And Catholics? It’s the largest religion in the US, disenfranchised in the past but it’s not 17th century England now. Maybe they are more so in NC than MA? And they rarely have “life-changing religious experience[s]” compared to born-again.
Besides, the hippocampus is almost exclusively involved in long term memory and navigation. It doesn’t imply loss of intelligence, brain damage, or anything like that necessarily.
Certainly not. I’m just saying that most people have no idea what religion would work for them; they remain in the ones they’re raised in as a matter of convenience, ignorance, laziness, fear, etc.
In the past, however, terms like regeneration (still favoured by Calvinists) were used more often. And its perfectly possible to be regenerated without backsliding-just look at John Wesley or Jonathan Edwards who were highly religious in their youths.
Although I have religious doubts most of my life, I continue to practice the religion I was born in. I think that if God exists He wants me to go to church. If God does not exist, I enjoy going to church. I am one who wants to believe.
I investigated the Mormon religion. I thought that alone of the religions Mormonism lent itself to a rational evaluation. The other religions based their authority on miracles that happened so long ago they could not be verified or disproved.
Joseph Smith either had the golden plates, or he did not. The Book of Mormon is either a detailed history of pre Columbian America from about 500 BC to 300 AD, or it is not. On the basis of my investigation I concluded that Joseph Smith did not have the golden plates, and that The Book of Mormon is not a detailed history of the New World before the time of Columbus.
I don’t see how the reasons make a difference… If the religion you were born into is convenient, that works for you. If you are ignorant of other religions, that doesn’t mean the current one isn’t working. If you’re scared to change religions, you still are actively choosing to stay that way, just for reasons that others might find ridiculous.
And even if there might be one that works BETTER, that doesn’t mean the one they were born into doesn’t work for them just fine. And just because the reasons someone chooses to stay at a certain church or sect might seem ridiculous or silly to me… Well, a lot of people find religion in general ridiculous or silly. It’s still a choice.