You can't take that statement at face value. Part of the point of prayer is to focus your mind and block out irrelevant thoughts and stimuli. (Is it not?) I'd like to see how brain activity of people praying compares to those in meditation.
Except, that's not what the article is talking about. It was not the person praying that had their activity shut down, but the person hearing prayers. And not prayers in general, but only when coming from someone they perceived to be a "healer", but not prayers by an "ordinary" Christian.
Right.. I don't really like the wording of the statement. But the article makes sense though. If already believe in someone, your "doubt" mental processes shouldn't be firing.
teilo is right: this really has nothing to do with the act of praying, but rather people's brain reactions to those whom they intrinsically believe to be in a position of authority/power. Related to your question, I remember reading a few articles about this in the past. Essentially, brains deep in prayer == brains deep in meditation. (Quick search - this might be one of those articles: http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,995465-6,00...)
I'd like to see how the brain activity of people reading the article compares across religions. Do Skeptics become more or less skeptical when presented with a claim that seems to reflect negatively on religion? Are Christians more or less likely to be skeptical when reading the same claim?
What's the actual phenomenon being measured here? Is it a shutting down of skepticism due to prayer, or due to trust, or something else?
There is probably a similar effect in Apple fans listening to a Jobs keynote, and so on. If you like what you are hearing, you are not going to be skeptical about it.
You probably intended this at least half tongue-in-cheek,but I imagine this study opens a door to scientific verification of determining what constitutes religous experience, and some very non-religous themed things may qualify for some people.
The similarities between cults and Apple (with Jobs at the helm) is pretty well studied and written about. The good news is that people who buy Apple products actually get something of value for their money -- so it's far less sinister.
The comments ask whether physicists at lectures would be susceptible to the same phenomenon. I'm inclined to doubt that. It's a rare speaker indeed who makes it through even a five minute session without blistering Q&A.
"Mr. Wilson, ve at za Max Planck Institute for Kernphysic invented zis field, and you are doing it vrong! You have neglected ze contribution of higher order terms without grounds, and as results from Bergen, et al show..."
Sometimes, I wonder what a religion would be like with rapid-fire talks anyone could speak at, poster sessions, and critique for every presenter.
> Sometimes, I wonder what a religion would be like with rapid-fire talks anyone could speak at, poster sessions, and critique for every presenter.
It would look like the Talmud, since that's exactly what they did. Most of the scholars were also farmers, and in the off season they would all get together and argue. Someone would present a logical conclusion, other would refute it, etc etc. They wrote it all down, including all the arguments.
I'm afraid you're comparing apples and oranges. The more analogous situation is laypeople reading scientific articles like this one. I imagine the same phenomenon would be observed.
Physicists at lectures are more analogous to other religious scholars (like from other sects). You'd find a lot more skepticism there than in religious lay-people who probably aren't very educated in theology.
You're right. I tend to assume that everyone takes an interest in their worldview, and can argue about it. It seems incomprehensible to me that someone could not be deeply engaged with their own beliefs--but then I have these paradoxical conversations where I learn that no, many people have no idea what exactly they believe or why it's that way.
It seems to me that religion is something everyone ought to be challenging, because it often includes strong moral directives with enormous impact on our lives.
I agree, but with the recognition that people have differing capabilities of critical thinking. As an example, I get extremely fed up with people that use computers with no understanding of even the basic principles underlying their use, to the extent that they cannot troubleshoot the smallest of unexpected behavior; but I guess the majority of people fall into that group, and that's why I spend so much time fixing computers for friends and family ;).
In Islam, there are well-defined requirements with regards to the amount of knowledge a lay-person is required to attain. On the matter of beliefs, theology, cosmology, etc. the criterion is something like, "the subject must be studied sufficiently to be able to remove the doubts that are a person is capable of understanding". So for example, an illiterate Muslim bedouin is only required to understand the analogy between footsteps in the sand that indicate on the presence of a person having walked and the wonderous creation indicating on the presence of a creator. On the other hand, a Muslim that has a Ph.D. in philosophy has the responsibility to study deeply the cosmological and other rational arguments that justify every level of belief.
The bedouin can't be faulted for not studying to the level of the Ph.D. and the Ph.D. can't be faulted for not accepting without question the reasoning that was sufficient for the bedouin.
Sometimes, I wonder what a religion would be like with rapid-fire talks anyone could speak at, poster sessions, and critique for every presenter.
Science?
EDIT: Figured I should explain myself lest I get voted down for being snarky. In science, to me at least, a lot seems to be taken on faith. There are many stories of a wrong result being published and scientists later not publishing their own research because it didn't agree with that wrong result. Combine that with the fact that a scientist with lots of published history accumulates more and more credibility and, from the outside, it starts to look like a religion with a self-correcting facility.
From the outside the scientific community can often look a little like that; but on the inside it things are very disengaged from ritual observance and faith.
Of course at certain times assumptions are made or theories wrongly rejected :) but, in the words of a great man, "it all comes right in the end".
I don't agree. Science is explicitly concerned with natural phenomena. Anything supernatural must be the domain of superstition, spirituality, or religion.
We suffer somewhat from salience bias: cases where the scientific process is successful are frequent and expected. Cases where the method failed but eventually corrected itself are spectacular. There are literally hundreds of thousands of papers published each year. Quick, can you name two researchers involved in the discovery of the electron's discrete charge? What were their methods? Now, how about Millikan?
As for religions, I would be more likely to believe in one where challenges and debate were frequent, as opposed to something more rigid like, say, Catholicism.
I know that's how it works internally, but I'm not inside. Honestly, I believe in the scientific method in a way very close to how the religious believe in their chosen faith. I have no problem admitting that to myself. Science is basically my religion. The difference between religion and science is what you've described and more (an objective measurable goal for one) and is why I believe in it. But I've never done research, never published a paper. So for me, it's largely faith in the system.
Actually, it's less than that. It's your perception of the healer. In other words, people don't think skeptically about people they trust. Essentially a tautology, only confirming that those are the regions of the brain involved in skepticism.
Or, in other words, the believers become relaxed and content. Never thought of prayer-time as being a time of needing to having one's guard up. Is the suggestion that prayer is bad?
I suppose I'm in the believer category, and boy does my mind wander when I hear prayer. And during sermons, and pretty much when anybody is speaking. Sometimes I wish I could focus on what somebody else is saying, but usually it's only in the narrow context of somebody speaking directly to me. How do normal people manage it? If somebody was praying TO ME, maybe I could focus better.
Ha, I'm glad I'm not the only one who's mind wanders during those things! I've come to believe that it's more a function of having an extremely active mind that prefers to interact over simply receiving information passively. Same thing happens to me during lectures in class. I try to engage my mind with what's being said, looking up relevant passages and asking myself questions about the validity of what's being said.
Also, there's no incompatibility between believing in a higher power and being able to reason. I'm a Christian in his third year of a Computer Science degree at a major university, and I like to think I have some capacity for reason :p
According to the article, only devout believers experience this effect. If you "suppose" you are a believer, that probably doesn't include you. Be glad you can still reason!
There seems to be more to the study that you might find interesting--just wish there was a way for us "lay people" to access the paper without paying a huge fee for access =/
Obvious result. Not so sure as I don't agree that the interesting result is that being spun from the paper (of which I've only read a detailed review and an abstract as it's paywalled).
The takeaway point for me, that harkened back to Milgram's Experiments and the like, was that the person running the experiment was able to induce in the subjects entirely different behaviour simply by saying the level of authority that the people they were hearing [supposedly] had.
To recapitulate they alter their critical consideration according to the level of authority claimed for the speaker by a third party. It is the authority of the scientist that swings the whole thing.
> It's not clear whether the results extend beyond religious leaders, but Schjødt speculates that brain regions may be deactivated in a similar way in response to doctors, parents and politicians.
Could this be how hypnosis works? Patients for whom hypnosis is effective have a mental model of 'the power of the hypnotist', and effectively anaesthetize their critical thinking faculties to follow the hypnotists commands?
If you are interested in the philosophical implications of this, then the following book is a favorite of mine (and may have indirectly inspired this research).
It's politically charged to no apparent reason. You might as well say "Hierarchal organizations produce figures with perceived/real authority that cause some people to stop filtering information based on their trust in the individual transmitting (information) and/or the organization as a whole."
Bit of a misleading headline. The article suggests that we are less skeptical of people we already agree with and in particular of people in positions of perceived authority.
