Researchers are beginning to consider that individuals who think about whether or not God exists; does not "require divinely dedicated neurological wiring."
"... brain scans of people contemplating God, don't explain whether a propensity for religion is a neurobiological accident. But at least they give researchers a solid framework for exploring the question."
Cognitive scientist Jordan Grafman, co-author of a study in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and member of the National Institutes of Health.
"Though scientific debate about God's existence has transfixed the public, Grafman's findings fit into a lesser known argument over why religion exists."
"Some scientists think it's just an accidental byproduct of social cognition. They say humans evolved to imagine what other people are feeling, even people who aren't present — and from there it was a short step to positing supernatural beings."
"Others argue that religion is too pervasive to be just a byproduct. Historically, at least, it must have provided believers and their communities some sort of advantage, or else it would have disappeared."
The argument over the existence of a supernation power "breaks down into the so-called byproduct and adaptation camps," many experts believe.
Justin Barrett, an Oxford University specialist in the cognitive neuroscience of religion believes; "Religious beliefs might have arisen as a byproduct,... but once in place, they're pretty handy."
Grafman's approach to exploring the cognitive neuroscience of religion "started by interviewing 26 people of varying religious sentiments, breaking down their beliefs into three psychological categories: God's perceived level of involvement in the world, God's perceived emotions, and religious knowledge gained through doctrine or experience. Then they submitted statements based on these categories to 40 people hooked to fMRI machines."
Grafman's questions involved queries such as "God protects one's life" or "Life has no higher purpose" activated brain activity in portions of the brain associated with understanding intent. Statements of God's emotions — such as "God is forgiving" or "the afterlife will be punishing" — stimulated regions responsible for classifying emotions and relating observed actions to oneself. Knowledge-based statements, such as "a source of creation exists" or "religions provide moral guidance," were asked questions that "activated linguistic processing centers."
Scientists conjecture: "Taken together, the neurological states evoked by the questions are known to cognitive scientists as the Theory of Mind: They underlie our understanding that other people have minds, thoughts and feelings."
Researchers agree: "just as a Theory of Mind provided benefits, so might its supernatural byproducts and the religions that grew from them."
Scientists agree: "Unlike other animals, humans can imagine the future, including their own death. The hope given by religious beliefs to people confronting their own mortality might provide motivation to care for their offspring.
"Supernatural beliefs may also have produced group-level advantages that then conferred benefits to individuals.
"You get some selective advantages, such as inter-group cooperation and self-policing morality," said Barrett, "and maybe the entire network of belief practices, and whatever is behind them, gets reinforced."
"According to Barrett, religion may even have created a feedback loop, refining the Theory of Mind that produced it.
"It could be that when you're in a religious community, it improves what psychologists call perspective-taking," he said: "Exercising your Theory of Mind could be good for developing it, making your reasoning more robust."
"David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist at Binghamton University, said the findings fit with the idea that religion started as a cognitive byproduct and became a cultural adaptation, but cautioned against over-interpreting them.
"It's tremendous to see religious belief manifested at the neurological level," he said. "But there's a sense that when you bring things down to that level, that trumps other kinds of understanding. That's not true in this case."
"Grafman declined to speculate, instead concentrating on what he hopes to achieve with future research: studying other kinds of religions than were represented in his small sample size, and comparing religious cognition to legal and political certainties.
"The differences and nuances between these types of belief systems will be important to understanding the deliberation that goes on," he said.
"Grafman also stressed that the study examined only the nature of religion, not the existence of God.
"He, or She, didn't come in for the evaluation," he said.
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