FAITH’S PLACE: –

Belief in Spiritual power is a universal trait. We were custom-made for re- ligious experience. The human brain even at its ancient, primitive core is less an organ of impulse than a machine of reason. We are built to make sense of things. Our brains restlessly scan the world for patterns in chaos and causes in coincidence. We crave explanation and when faced with the ineffable, sometimes we create the answer. For many people, the answer to the most indescribable question of all – “Why do we exist?” – is GOD.

Neuroscientists have spent years studying history, myth and biology in their quest to understand the universality of spiritual experience and its evolutionary function. In his studies of the brains of Tibetan monks and Franciscan nuns, radiologist Andrew Newberg seeks out the relationship between neural activity and mystical experience. Many scientists believe the connection between the brain and spirituality, which suggests that there is a physiological basis for religion – that human beings, in essence, are hard-wired for GOD.

Some neuroscientists theorize that Homo sapience have evolved the capacity to experience GOD primarily through the amygdale, a small almond shaped structure buried deep in the brain. The amygdale along with the hippocampus and hypothalamus, make up the limbic system, the first formed and most primitive part of the brain, where emotions, sexual pleasure and deeply felt memories arise. Spiritual experience is not based on superstition but instead is real, biological and part of our primitive biological derives.

May be the ability to experience GOD and the spirituality sublime is an in- herited limbic trait. May be we evolved these neurons to better cope with the unknown, to perceive and respond to spiritual messages because they would increase the likelihood of our survival. Consciousness create so much anxiety that our species had to come up with the cognitive adaptation to deal with the pain of our intelligence – being able to think about our own mortality for instance. So it came up with the brain modification that allows us to believe in an alternative reality, that when we die there is a spiritual part of us that will live forever.

Am I religious? No, I am Spiritual? Yes, I certainly do not believe in an- thropomorphic (something not human) GOD. I would say that the kingdom of GOD is inside us all. The brain is the chamber of GOD. It allows us to re- alize GOD and contemplate GOD, whatever GOD is.