CAN BRAIN BE HARDWIRED FOR RELIGIOUS DEVOTION?

Is there a "God spot" in the brain that determines whether you are hardwired to be religious? Research from Rice University, Houston, Texas, and West Virginia University, Morgantown, finds that nonbelievers are more likely than the faithful to think that is true.

"One of the new frontiers of the science and faith interface has to do with the brain and understanding what the public thinks about the role of the brain in explaining religious experience," says study coauthor and principal investigator Elaine Howard Ecklund, professor of sociology, chair in Social Sciences, and director of the Religion and Public Life Program at Rice.

Data for the study came from the Religious Understandings of Science survey. The researchers examined the influences of demographics, religious differences, education, and opinions on science and religion on attitudes towards whether religious experience can be explained by brain wiring.

The analysis is unique, indicates coauthor Christopher Scheitle, assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at WVU, "because it focuses on whether science can directly explain religiosity itself rather than just contradict a single religious claim or moral tenet."

About 15% of U.S. adults think brain wiring can explain...