It seems that this experiment would be stronger if they had controlled for time spent in quiet attention-focusing practices. It might be that the correlation is not with belief in God, but rather with prayer, which involves conscious focusing of attention. It would be interesting to see if the results would hold for a comparison between believers who spend a certain amount of time daily in prayer versus non-believers who spend the same amount of time daily in non-religious meditation.
Eliza: that's an interesting way of considering it, though the way I understood it, religious people may be less anxious or stressed because of an ultimate trust in an intelligent higher being (Being?). But yeah, I also wonder if the same is true for the none-religious spiritual type, who believe in "nature" or something else bigger that is less definitive than religion...
The study focused on a belif in god as being the cause of these brain differences. What I'm wondering is if it needs to be a hard and fast belief in the existance of god, or a mainstream religion, or if just the belief in something bigger than themselves would affect the brains of study participants.
It seems that this experiment would be stronger if they had controlled for time spent in quiet attention-focusing practices. It might be that the correlation is not with belief in God, but rather with prayer, which involves conscious focusing of attention. It would be interesting to see if the results would hold for a comparison between believers who spend a certain amount of time daily in prayer versus non-believers who spend the same amount of time daily in non-religious meditation.
ReplyDeleteThe link doesn't work for me — how should I search for the article on Science Daily?
ReplyDeleteThe link doesn't work for me either. What's the title?
ReplyDeleteI just copied the address into my browser window, and that worked, even though clicking the link didn't.
ReplyDeleteEliza: that's an interesting way of considering it, though the way I understood it, religious people may be less anxious or stressed because of an ultimate trust in an intelligent higher being (Being?). But yeah, I also wonder if the same is true for the none-religious spiritual type, who believe in "nature" or something else bigger that is less definitive than religion...
ReplyDeleteThe study focused on a belif in god as being the cause of these brain differences. What I'm wondering is if it needs to be a hard and fast belief in the existance of god, or a mainstream religion, or if just the belief in something bigger than themselves would affect the brains of study participants.
ReplyDelete