Scientists are Attempting to ‘Prove’ that ‘Religious’ People are Crazy – Study

According to a study done by the researchers at Northwestern University, damage in a particular part of the brain is linked to an increase in religious fundamentalism. In particular, lesions in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex reduced cognitive flexibility – the ability to challenge our beliefs based on new evidence.

The research was conducted by Jordan Grafman, who utilized data gathered from Vietnam War veterans as part of the Vietnam Head Injury Study.

The study is being used to claim further that religious beliefs are centered in the prefrontal cortex.

“The variation in the nature of religious beliefs are governed by specific brain areas in the anterior parts of the human brain and those brain areas are among the most recently evolved areas of the human brain,” said Grafman. How free these areas are from disease, in particular, the part known as the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, may determine a person’s mental openness – necessary to appreciate the “diversity of religious thought.”

The scientists are claiming, that ‘they are not stating religious people overall are mentally inflexible, or that belief is caused by brain damage.’ However, when one compares ‘brain damage’ to an increase in religion, then that typically means that scientists such as Jordan are trying to label those who hold religious beliefs as mentally unstable.

Abstract

Beliefs profoundly affect people’s lives, but their cognitive and neural pathways are poorly understood. Although previous research has identified the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (vmPFC) as critical to representing religious beliefs, the means by which vmPFC enables religious belief is uncertain. We hypothesized that the vmPFC represents diverse religious beliefs and that a vmPFC lesion would be associated with religious fundamentalism, or the narrowing of religious beliefs. To test this prediction, we assessed religious adherence with a widely-used religious fundamentalism scale in a large sample of 119 patients with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI). If the vmPFC is crucial to modulating diverse personal religious beliefs, we predicted that pTBI patients with lesions to the vmPFC would exhibit greater fundamentalism, and that this would be modulated by cognitive flexibility and trait openness. Instead, we found that participants with dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC) lesions have fundamentalist beliefs similar to patients with vmPFC lesions and that the effect of a dlPFC lesion on fundamentalism was significantly mediated by decreased cognitive flexibility and openness. These findings indicate that cognitive flexibility and openness are necessary for flexible and adaptive religious commitment, and that such diversity of religious thought is dependent on dlPFC functionality. — See The Study

To sum up the study, the scientists are claiming that if you are not religiously flexible, then there could be some damage done to your ventromedial prefrontal cortex. Bad news Jordan, we all weren’t dropped on our heads as a baby.

The real question is, who funded the study?

Scientists are literally attempting to label all Christians as nuts while pushing the agenda of ‘religious experiences,’ this is an attack on the Church at large, and if you are not rooted in FAITH, then science and whatever other spiritual wind blows your way will sway you.

The Christian religion has been around far longer than modern day science, and it’s a guarantee that not all of the people rooted in Christianity had brain damage. The scientists concluded the study and stated further testing needed to be done.

“We need to understand how distinct religious beliefs are from moral, legal, political, and economic beliefs in their representations in the brain, the nature of conversion from one belief system to another, the difference between belief and agency, and the nature of the depth of knowledge that individuals use to access and report their beliefs,” Grafman added.

If science can understand it, politics can further control it. Labeling Christians as nuts can further bring about controls placed upon people of faith. Is this how the New World Order will ‘cleanse’ the Earth of Christianity?