If they find God - make the jerk apologise ! Quoting rayilynlee <[log in to unmask]>: > I selected this article because there is a paragraph about Parkinson's > disease and religiosity. A study showed people with PD were more secular > than healthy people. > Ray > Where angels no longer fear to tread > Mar 19th 2008 > From The Economist print edition > Science and religion have often been at loggerheads. Now the former has > decided to resolve the problem by trying to explain the existence of the > latter > BY THE standards of European scientific collaboration, ?2m ($3.1m) is not a > huge sum. But it might be the start of something that will challenge human > perceptions of reality at least as much as the billions being spent by the > European particle-physics laboratory (CERN) at Geneva. The first task of > CERN's new machine, the Large Hadron Collider, which is due to open later > this year, will be to search for the Higgs boson-an object that has been > dubbed, with a certain amount of hyperbole, the God particle. The ?2m, by > contrast, will be spent on the search for God Himself-or, rather, for the > biological reasons why so many people believe in God, gods and religion in > general. > "Explaining Religion", as the project is known, is the largest-ever > scientific study of the subject. It began last September, will run for three > > years, and involves scholars from 14 universities and a range of disciplines > > from psychology to economics. And it is merely the latest manifestation of a > > growing tendency for science to poke its nose into the God business. > Religion cries out for a biological explanation. It is a ubiquitous > phenomenon-arguably one of the species markers of Homo sapiens-but a > puzzling one. It has none of the obvious benefits of that other marker of > humanity, language. Nevertheless, it consumes huge amounts of resources. > Moreover, unlike language, it is the subject of violent disagreements. > Science has, however, made significant progress in understanding the biology > > of language, from where it is processed in the brain to exactly how it > communicates meaning. Time, therefore, to put religion under the microscope > as well. > I have no need of that hypothesis > Explaining Religion is an ambitious attempt to do this. The experiments it > will sponsor are designed to look at the mental mechanisms needed to > represent an omniscient deity, whether (and how) belief in such a > "surveillance-camera" God might improve reproductive success to an > individual's Darwinian advantage, and whether religion enhances a person's > reputation-for instance, do people think that those who believe in God are > more trustworthy than those who do not? The researchers will also seek to > establish whether different religions foster different levels of > co-operation, for what reasons, and whether such co-operation brings > collective benefits, both to the religious community and to those outside > it. > > *This is it: > It is an ambitious shopping list. Fortunately, other researchers have blazed > > a trail. Patrick McNamara, for example, is the head of the Evolutionary > Neurobehaviour Laboratory at Boston University's School of Medicine. He > works with people who suffer from Parkinson's disease. This illness is > caused by low levels of a messenger molecule called dopamine in certain > parts of the brain. In a preliminary study, Dr McNamara discovered that > those with Parkinson's had lower levels of religiosity than healthy > individuals, and that the difference seemed to correlate with the disease's > severity. He therefore suspects a link with dopamine levels and is now > conducting a follow-up involving some patients who are taking > dopamine-boosting medicine and some of whom are not. > > Such neurochemical work, though preliminary, may tie in with scanning > studies conducted to try to find out which parts of the brain are involved > in religious experience. Nina Azari, a neuroscientist at the University of > Hawaii at Hilo who also has a doctorate in theology, has looked at the > brains of religious people. She used positron emission tomography (PET) to > measure brain activity in six fundamentalist Christians and six > non-religious (though not atheist) controls. The Christians all said that > reciting the first verse of the 23rd psalm helped them enter a religious > state of mind, so both groups were scanned in six different sets of > circumstances: while reading the first verse of the 23rd psalm, while > reciting it out loud, while reading a happy story (a well-known German > children's rhyme), while reciting that story out loud, while reading a > neutral text (how to use a calling card) and while at rest. > Dr Azari was expecting to see activity in the limbic systems of the > Christians when they recited the psalm. Previous research had suggested that > > this part of the brain (which regulates emotion) is an important centre of > religious activity. In fact what happened was increased activity in three > areas of the frontal and parietal cortex, some of which are better known for > > their involvement in rational thought. The control group did not show > activity in these parts of their brains when listening to the psalm. And, > intriguingly, the only thing that triggered limbic activity in either group > was reading the happy story. > Dr Azari's PET study, together with one by Andrew Newberg of the University > of Pennsylvania, which used single-photon emission computed tomography done > on Buddhist monks, and another by Mario Beauregard of the University of > Montreal, which put Carmelite nuns in a magnetic-resonance-imaging machine, > all suggest that religious activity is spread across many parts of the > brain. That conflicts not only with the limbic-system theory but also with > earlier reports of a so-called God Spot that derived partly from work > conducted on epileptics. These reports suggested that religiosity originates > > specifically in the brain's temporal lobe, and that religious visions are > the result of epileptic seizures that affect this part of the brain. > Though there is clearly still a long way to go, this sort of imaging should > eventually tie down the circuitry of religious experience and that, combined > > with work on messenger molecules of the sort that Dr McNamara is doing, will > > illuminate how the brain generates and processes religious experiences. Dr > Azari, however, is sceptical that such work will say much about religion's > evolution and function. For this, other methods are needed. > Dr McNamara, for example, plans to analyse a database called the > Ethnographic Atlas to see if he can find any correlations between the amount > > of cultural co-operation found in a society and the intensity of its > religious rituals. And Richard Sosis, an anthropologist at the University of > > Connecticut, has already done some research which suggests that the > long-term co-operative benefits of religion outweigh the short-term costs it > > imposes in the form of praying many times a day, avoiding certain foods, > fasting and so on. > Leviticus's children > On the face of things, it is puzzling that such costly behaviour should > persist. Some scholars, however, draw an analogy with sexual selection. The > splendour of a peacock's tail and the throaty roar of a stag really do show > which males are fittest, and thus help females choose. Similarly, signs of > religious commitment that are hard to fake provide a costly and reliable > signal to others in a group that anyone engaging in them is committed to > that group. Free-riders, in other words, would not be able to gain the > advantages of group membership. > To test whether religion might have emerged as a way of improving group > co-operation while reducing the need to keep an eye out for free-riders, Dr > Sosis drew on a catalogue of 19th-century American communes published in > 1988 by Yaacov Oved of Tel Aviv University. Dr Sosis picked 200 of these for > > his analysis; 88 were religious and 112 were secular. Dr Oved's data include > > the span of each commune's existence and Dr Sosis found that communes whose > ideology was secular were up to four times as likely as religious ones to > dissolve in any given year. > A follow-up study that Dr Sosis conducted in collaboration with Eric > Bressler of McMaster University in Canada focused on 83 of these communes > (30 religious, 53 secular) to see if the amount of time they survived > correlated with the strictures and expectations they imposed on the > behaviour of their members. The two researchers examined things like food > consumption, attitudes to material possessions, rules about communication, > rituals and taboos, and rules about marriage and sexual relationships. > As they expected, they found that the more constraints a religious commune > placed on its members, the longer it lasted (one is still going, at the > grand old age of 149). But the same did not hold true of secular communes, > where the oldest was 40. Dr Sosis therefore concludes that ritual > constraints are not by themselves enough to sustain co-operation in a > community-what is needed in addition is a belief that those constraints are > sanctified. > Dr Sosis has also studied modern secular and religious kibbutzim in Israel. > Because a kibbutz, by its nature, depends on group co-operation, the > principal difference between the two is the use of religious ritual. Within > religious communities, men are expected to pray three times daily in groups > of at least ten, while women are not. It should, therefore, be possible to > observe whether group rituals do improve co-operation, based on the > behaviour of men and women. > To do so, Dr Sosis teamed up with Bradley Ruffle, an economist at Ben-Gurion > > University, in Israel. They devised a game to be played by two members of a > kibbutz. This was a variant of what is known to economists as the > common-pool-resource dilemma, which involves two people trying to divide a > pot of money without knowing how much the other is asking for. In the > version of the game devised by Dr Sosis and Dr Ruffle, each participant was > told that there was an envelope with 100 shekels in it (between 1/6th and > 1/8th of normal monthly income). Both players could request money from the > envelope, but if the sum of their requests exceeded its contents, neither > got any cash. If, however, their request equalled, or was less than, the 100 > > shekels, not only did they keep the money, but the amount left was increased > > by 50% and split between them. > Dr Sosis and Dr Ruffle picked the common-pool-resource dilemma because the > communal lives of kibbutz members mean they often face similar dilemmas over > > things such as communal food, power and cars. The researchers' hypothesis > was that in religious kibbutzim men would be better collaborators (and thus > would take less) than women, while in secular kibbutzim men and women would > take about the same. And that was exactly what happened. > Big father is watching you > Dr Sosis is not the only researcher to employ economic games to investigate > the nature and possible advantages of religion. Ara Norenzayan, an > experimental psychologist at the University of British Columbia, in > Vancouver, has conducted experiments using what is known as the dictator > game. This, too, is a well-established test used to gauge altruistic > behaviour. Participants receive a sum of money-Dr Norenzayan set it at > $10-and are asked if they would like to share it with another player. The > dictator game thus differs from another familiar economic game in which one > person divides the money and the other decides whether to accept or reject > that division. > As might be expected, in the simple version of the dictator game most people > > take most or all of the money. However, Dr Norenzayan and his graduate > student Azim Shariff tried to tweak the game by introducing the idea of God. > > They did this by priming half of their volunteers to think about religion by > > getting them to unscramble sentences containing religious words such as God, > > spirit, divine, sacred and prophet. Those thus primed left an average of > $4.22, while the unprimed left $1.84. > Exactly what Dr Norenzayan has discovered here is not clear. A follow-up > experiment which primed people with secular words that might, nevertheless, > have prompted them to behave in an altruistic manner (civic, jury, court, > police and contract) had similar effects, so it may be that he has touched > on a general question of morality, rather than a specific one of religion. > However, an experiment carried out by Jesse Bering, of Queen's University in > > Belfast, showed quite specifically that the perceived presence of a > supernatural being can affect a person's behaviour-although in this case the > > being was not God, but the ghost of a dead person. > Dr Bering, too, likes the hypothesis that religion promotes fitness by > promoting collaboration within groups. One way that might work would be to > rely not just on other individuals to detect cheats by noticing things like > slacking on the prayers or eating during fasts, but for cheats to detect and > > police themselves as well. In that case a sense of being watched by a > supernatural being might be useful. Dr Bering thus proposes that belief in > such beings would prevent what he called "dangerous risk miscalculations" > that would lead to social deviance and reduced fitness. > One of the experiments he did to test this idea was to subject a bunch of > undergraduates to a quiz. His volunteers were told that the best performer > among them would receive a $50 prize. They were also told that the computer > program that presented the questions had a bug in it, which sometimes caused > > the answer to appear on the screen before the question. The volunteers were > therefore instructed to hit the space bar immediately if the word "Answer" > appeared on the screen. That would remove the answer and ensure the test > results were fair. > The volunteers were then divided into three groups. Two began by reading a > note dedicating the test to a recently deceased graduate student. One did > not see the note. Of the two groups shown the note, one was told by the > experimenter that the student's ghost had sometimes been seen in the room. > The other group was not given this suggestion. > The so-called glitch occurred five times for each student. Dr Bering > measured the amount of time it took to press the space bar on each occasion. > > He discarded the first result as likely to be unreliable and then averaged > the other four. He found that those who had been told the ghost story were > much quicker to press the space bar than those who had not. They did so in > an average of 4.3 seconds. That compared with 6.3 seconds for those who had > only read the note about the student's death and 7.2 for those who had not > heard any of the story concerning the dead student. In short, awareness of a > > ghost-a supernatural agent-made people less likely to cheat. > Who is my neighbour? > It all sounds very Darwinian. But there is a catch. The American communes, > the kibbutzim, the students of the University of British Columbia and even > the supernatural self-censorship observed by Dr Bering all seem to involve > behaviour that promotes the group over the individual. That is the opposite > of Darwinism as conventionally understood. But it might be explained by an > idea that most Darwinians dropped in the 1960s-group selection. > The idea that evolution can work by the differential survival of entire > groups of organisms, rather than just of individuals, was rejected because > it is mathematically implausible. But it has been revived recently, in > particular by David Sloan Wilson of Binghamton University, in New York, as a > > way of explaining the evolution of human morality in the context of > inter-tribal warfare. Such warfare can be so murderous that groups whose > members fail to collaborate in an individually self-sacrificial way may be > wiped out entirely. This negates the benefits of selfish behaviour within a > group. Morality and religion are often closely connected, of course (as Dr > Norenzayan's work confirms), so what holds for the one might be expected to > hold for the other, too. > Dr Wilson himself has studied the relationship between social insecurity and > > religious fervour, and discovered that, regardless of the religion in > question, it is the least secure societies that tend to be most > fundamentalist. That would make sense if adherence to the rules is a > condition for the security which comes from membership of a group. He is > also interested in what some religions hold out as the ultimate reward for > good behaviour-life after death. That can promote any amount of > self-sacrifice in a believer, up to and including suicidal behaviour-as > recent events in the Islamic world have emphasised. However, belief in an > afterlife is not equally well developed in all religions, and he suspects > the differences may be illuminating. > That does not mean there are no explanations for religion that are based on > individual selection. For example, Jason Slone, a professor of religious > studies at Webster University in St Louis, argues that people who are > religious will be seen as more likely to be faithful and to help in > parenting than those who are not. That makes them desirable as mates. He > plans to conduct experiments designed to find out whether this is so. And, > slightly tongue in cheek, Dr Wilson quips that "secularism is very > maladaptive biologically. We're the ones who at best are having only two > kids. Religious people are the ones who aren't smoking and drinking, and are > > living longer and having the health benefits." > That quip, though, makes an intriguing point. Evolutionary biologists tend > to be atheists, and most would be surprised if the scientific investigation > of religion did not end up supporting their point of view. But if a > propensity to religious behaviour really is an evolved trait, then they have > > talked themselves into a position where they cannot benefit from it, much as > > a sceptic cannot benefit from the placebo effect of homeopathy. Maybe, > therefore, it is God who will have the last laugh after all-whether He > actually exists or not. > > > Rayilyn Brown > Board Member AZNPF > Arizona Chapter National Parkinson's Foundation > [log in to unmask] > > ---------------------------------------------------------------------- > To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] > In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn > ---------------------------------------------- This mail sent through http://www.ukonline.net ---------------------------------------------------------------------- To sign-off Parkinsn send a message to: mailto:[log in to unmask] In the body of the message put: signoff parkinsn