Tuesday, August 21, 2012

I'll Stop The Whirl And Melt With You!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZw3lxyuhEU
The Same Goes For Religiousity. You Might Hear A Female Say "Wow, He's A Really Religious Guy. His Parents Raised Him Well." But, In Actuality, It Wasn't Entirely His Environment That Shaped His Religious Commitment And Religious Faithfulness. Much Of It Had To Do With His Genes. His Genes Predisposed Him To Be Highly Religious And These Genes Then Interacted With His Environment To Create The Religious Person He Came To Be.

  1. Mar 3
    2. Join CARTA live! Ajit Varki discusses the "Mind Over Reality Transition": The Evolution of Human Mortality Denial
     https://carta.anthropogeny.org/events/awareness-death-and-personal-mortality-implications-anthropogeny
  1. Nov 9 Schweinfurt, Bayern
    Reminders of death make the highly religious draw comfort from apocalyptic beliefs,
    PARTY TIME!!!!
    https://richarddawkins.net/2015/06/atheists-remind-people-of-death/
 7 Oct 2017
The worst thing about death isn't that the party is over; it’s that we must leave and the party goes on without us.

  1.  Jan 22
    I don't think that the terrible thing about dying is the expiration of the self. The terrible thing is that WE must leave - and the party goes on without us. Social comparison until the end.


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kyagrj-OHAM
0:45 "There's No Reason To Feel Sorry When It Comes To Death! Cuz In G0D There Is No Death! Jesus Said Any Man Who Believes My Word...Shall NOT See Death!" - Sam


Imagine, for example, a prehistoric hunter making his way home through unfamiliar woods. His mind wanders as he travels, and he is only absently aware of ambient noises of the forest, but when a twig snaps in the underbrush, his mind is instantly, involuntarily focused. This intense mental alertness results from the sudden activation of the amygdala, the ancient limbic watchdog that monitors all incoming sensory information for signs of danger and opportunity. When the amygdala detects the unaccounted-for auditory impulses caused by the sudden noise, it rivets the hunter's mind upon it. Already, the autonomic system has triggered an arousal response, bracing the body for action. In the same split second the hunter first hears the suspicious sound, the cognitive imperative is driving the causal operator to discover what it might mean.

Discovering a cause is the first priority of the causal operator, but as the hunter scans the underbrush, no cause is apparent. Uncertainty at such an urgent moment is intolerable to the causal operator, so it does what it is designed to do in the absence of a specific cause: it proposes one. The proposal arises out of activity in the hippocampus, the limbic structure where past experiences are stored as memories. Rapidly, the mind scours these memory banks, sorting and cross-referencing information as it searches for any pertinent content - images, sounds, or larger chunks of experience - that might shed light on the problem at hand.

The computational task is staggering, but in an instant, all the brain's memory files have been consulted, all irrelevant data has been ignored, and the casual operator presents its best hunch by conjuring in the hunter's mind the idea of a leopard lurking in the trees. For the hunter, who had seen the tracks of a big cat earlier that day, and who had once been chased by a leopard in woods very similar to these, there was no need for further deliberation; the unseen predator was utterly real, the danger was immediate, and his only option was to run.

Later, in a calmer moment, the hunter might reconsider his reaction. After all, he had no way of knowing for sure that the noise was made by a leopard - it's just as likely that the twig was stepped on by a plump wild pig, or by a harmless foraging deer. But the hunter didn't need to know the leopard was real, it was enough that he believed it. The causal operator is designed to promote survival, not necessarily to find the truth, and if there really had been a leopard in the bushes, it was the hunter's ability to think about the potential for danger, as opposed to an antelope that can only react, that would save his life.

But why would he believe so surely in something he didn't know absolutely to be true? We think there was more to the hunter's reaction than simple common sense. We believe he accepted the realness of the unseen leopard because neurological forces allowed him no other choice.

The hunter's process of believing that began as amygdalar function focused the mind's cognitive operations upon the mystery of the noise in the bushes. The causal operator, or, more specifically, the brain structures that support the causal operator, responded by proposing the presence of a leopard. Simultaneously, the binary operator interprets the problem as a conflict of opposites. In a specific sense, this conflict is between the concepts of leopard and not-leopard, but on a deeper and more general level it is a fundamental conflict of life versus death.

In either case, these urgent conflicts must be effectively resolved. The analytical, verbally inclined left brain immediately attacked the problem by making certain logical connections: The hunter realized he was in leopard country, and remembered having seen leopard tracks a few miles back. It was logical to believe that a leopard might have been lurking in the trees.

At the same time, the hunter knew that the tracks he'd seen were at least several days old. He also knew that leopards do not customarily hunt at that time of the day. This led to the logical possibility that something other than a leopard - a deer or a pig, for example - was the source of the startling sound. The hunter now faced a logical dilemma: Fleeing might have cost him an easy kill, but hesitation might have cost him his life.

While the verbal, analytical left brain struggled with this problem, the intuitive, holistic right brain was taking a different approach. Thinking with images and emotions, rather than language and logic, the right brain analyzed how the situation felt. The right brain visualized the easy kill, and the reaction was highly positive. But those positive feelings were heavily outweighed by the vivid visualization of being eaten by a leopard. As the right brain dwelt upon this grisly possibility, a memory sprang to mind of a time when the hunter was chased by a man-eating cat in the woods very similar to these. The right brain remembered the terror and instantly made its decision: There's a leopard in the trees.

This emotional apprehension immediately colored the decision making process of the left brain. The logical idea of the leopard was now charged with emotional substance, and as the intuitive faculties of the right brain came into unified agreement with the logical powers of the left, the ideas in his head gained depth and authority. He not only thought there was a leopard in the bushes, he felt it in his bones.

Now the opposites of leopard versus not-leopard, and of life versus death, had been powerfully and neurologically resolved. A cause had been determined. Ideas had become emotionally charged convictions; a logical possibility had become a visceral belief.

In a sense, the hunter had created a simplistic myth - the myth of the leopard in the bushes. It began, as all myths do, with urgent, unanswerable questions. In this case: What is that noise, and what does it mean? The importance of finding answers compelled the mind, through the drive of the cognitive imperative, to bring the brain's analytical powers to bear. The causal operator found a plausible explanation for the noise. The binary operator framed the problem in terms of opposites. And finally, the holistic agreement of the left and right sides of the brain led to a whole brain unification that turned logical ideas into emotionally felt beliefs. These beliefs resolved all uncertainties and gave the hunter a coherent scenario in which he could react effectively.

Like all effective myths, the story of the leopard in the trees may or may not have been literally true. Yet this simple scenario explains the unexplainable in a way that allowed the hunter to take effective and possibly life-saving action. His belief enhanced his chances of survival, and that is precisely the goal of the cognitive drive.

This process is automatic: uncertainty causes anxiety, and anxiety must be resolved. Sometimes resolutions are obvious and causes are easy to spot. When they are not, the cognitive imperative compels us to find plausible resolutions in the form of a story, like the story of the leopard in the trees. These stories are especially important when the mind confronts our existential fears. We suffer. We die. We feel small and vulnerable in a a dangerous and confusing world. There is no simple way to resolve these enormous uncertainties. In such situations, the explanatory stories that the mind creates take the shape of religious myth.

It would be impossible to trace the endless web of cultural and psychological factors that led to the genesis of a single specific myth, and it would be foolhardy to suggest that anyone could explain for certain how any specific religious myth developed. But if we frame our discussion carefully, we can certainly examine the biological origins of the urge to make myth. We can even speculate upon the neurological origins of a single myth concept. Consider, for example, the following scenario: 
In a close-knit prehistoric clan, one of the tribe has died. His body lies on a bearskin. Others approach and touch him gently. They sense immediately that the man who used to be exists no more. What was once a warm and vital person has suddenly become a cold and lifeless thing.
The clan's chieftain, an introspective man, slumps beside the campfire and broods upon the lifeless form that was once his comrade. What is it that is missing? he wonders. How was it lost and where has it gone? As he watches the crackling fire his stomach tightens with sadness and anxiety. His mind's need for cause will not rest until it finds resolution, but the longer he dwells upon the unnerving puzzle of life and death, the deeper he sinks into existential dread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nNTOAOPD044
"When You Die You Go Into A Comfortable Hole And We Blow You A Kiss G00D Bye!" - KoKo The Gorilla Mastering The Abstract Concept Of Non-Existence!

In neurobiological terms, the grieving chief is in the grip of the same arousal responses that seized the startled hunter. It began in the chieftain's brain when the amygdala noticed frustration in the thought processes of the logical left hemisphere - the effect of the chief's intense, prolonged brooding. Interpreting this frustration as a sign of distress, the amygdala triggered a limbic fear response, and sent off neural signals that activated the arousal system. Now, as the chief continues to ruminate upon his grief and fear, that arousal response intensifies. His pulse quickens, his breath grows shallow and rapid, and his forehead becomes beaded in sweat.
The chief stares vacantly at the fire, turning his troubles around and around in his head. Soon the fire has burned down to embers, and as the last flames sputter and die, an intuition strikes him: The fire was once bright and alive, but now it's gone, and soon there will be nothing but lifeless grey ashes. As the last wisps of smoke rise to the heavens he turns to the body of his fallen friend. It occurs to him that his comrade's life and spirit have vanished completely as the flames. Before he can consciously phrase the thought, he is struck by the image of the very essence of his friend escaping to heavens, like smoke, the rising spirit of the fire.   
This conviction begins as nothing more than an idea, just one more possibility offered up by the intellectual pondering of the brain's left side. At the same time, the brain's right side is proposing holistic, intuitive, nonverbal solutions to the problem. As the intellectual idea of the ascension of the spirits enters the chief's consciousness, it becomes "matched" with one of these emotional right-brain solutions. Suddenly, the agreement of both sides of the brain causes a neurobiological resonance that sends positive neural discharges racing through the limbic system, to stimulate pleasure centers in the hyopthalamus. Because the hypothalamus regulates the autonomic nervous system, these strong pleasure impulses trigger a response from the quiescent system, which the chief experiences as a powerful surge of calmness and peace.

All this happens in the wink of an eye, too fast for the arousal response that triggered the chief's anxiety to subside. For a remarkable moment, both the quiescent and arousal systems are simultaneously active, immersing the chief in a blend of fear and rapture, a state of intensely pleasurable agitation that some neurologists call the Eureka Response, which the chief experiences as a rush of ecstasy and awe.

In this transforming flash of insight, the chief is suddenly freed from his grief and despair; in a deeper sense, he feels that he has been freed from the bonds of death.

The insight strikes him with the force of revelation. The experience feels vividly, palpably real. In that moment, the opposites of life and death are no longer locked in conflict; they have been mythically resolved. Now he sees clearly the absolute truth of things - that the spirits of the dead live on.

He feels that he has discovered a primal truth. It is more than an idea, it is a belief he has experienced in the deepest reaches of his mind. Like the story of the leopard in the bushes, the chief's intuition about the ultimate destiny of the soul may or may not be true. What matters is the notion that it is based on something deeper than imagination or wishful thinking. We believe that all lasting myths gain their power through neurologically endorsed flashes of insight, like the one that struck the chief. These insights might take many forms, and can be triggered by many different ideas. For example, the chieftain might have seen fog rising up a mountain slope in the moonlight, and concluded that like the eerie mist, the spirits of the dead go off to dwell in the holy hills. Any idea might trigger a myth if it can truly unify logic and intuition, and lead to a state of left-brain/right-brain agreement. In this state of whole-brain harmony, neurological uncertainties are powerfully alleviated as existential opposites are reconciled and the problem of cause is resolved. To the anxious mind, the resonant whole-brain agreement feels like a glimpse of ultimate truth. The mind seems to live this truth, not merely comprehend it, and it is this quality of visceral experience that turns ideas into myths.

That personal myth becomes a communal myth when it is shared with others who find meaning and power in the resolutions it provides. There is no guarantee that this will happen. The chief's clan mates, for example, will not accept his insights unless, as they listen to him share his story, they experience within themselves the same neurological ring of truth that seized the chief during his moment of penetrating vision. Their reactions, in hearing the story, will not necessarily be as intense as the chief's, but if they feel even a small degree of neurologically experienced emotion, the chief's passionate testimony will gain credence. They will believe him not because they think he is right, but because they feel it. The chief may become considered a seer, and a system of mythology may rise from his beliefs.   

Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and The Biology of Belief. Newberg, D'Aquili, Rause, p. 67-73.


The Premise Of Ajit's Book Seems To Be Based On The Premise Of This Book
Which Is Based On The Hypothesis That Belief In G0D And The Afterlife Occurred Once Homo Sapiens Evolved The Capacity For Denial (Denying Reality)! Read Both Books To See If What I'm Saying Is Accurate! 

"HE IS I AND I AM HIM, SLIM WIT THE TILTED BRIM!" - NIGGA DOGGY DOGG!

At the heart of all the mystic's descriptions, however, is the compelling conviction that they have risen above material existence, and have spiritually united with the absolute. The primordial longing for this absolute union, and the transcendent experiences to which it might lead, are the common threads that run through the mystical traditions of East and West, of ancient centuries, and of the present. And while the mystics of different times and traditions have used many techniques to attain this lofty union, from the pious self-denial of medieval Christian saints to the ritual sexuality of some tantric Buddhists, the mystical states they describe sound very much the same. For example, here is the Sufi master Hallaj Husain ibn Mansur, a resident of medieval Iraq, describing the intimate intermingling of the mystic and his Lord:
I am He Whom I love, and He whom I love is I:
We are two spirits dwelling in one body.
If thou seest me, thou seest Him,
And if thou seest Him, thou seest us both.
The medieval Catholic sage Meister Eckhart, writing from the cooler climes of Germany, had similar words to say on the very same subject:
How then am I to love the Godhead? Thou shalt not love him as he is: not as a God, not as a spirit, not as a Person, not as an image, but as sheer, pure One. And into this One we are to sink from nothing to nothing, so help us God.
The theme of unity echoes in the Taoist wisdom of Lao-tzu...
Ordinary men hate solitude 
But the Master makes use of it, 
embracing his aloneness, realizing
he is one with the whole universe  
...Christian mystics relied upon intense contemplative prayer, fasting, silence, and various forms of mortification to free their minds from mundane matters and focus more intently upon God. These disciplines emerged independently, but all are based on a common insight; The first step in attaining mystical union is to quiet the conscious mind and free the spirit from the limiting passions and delusions of the ego.

"The separate self dissolves in the sea of pure consciousness, infinite, and immortal," says Hindu scripture. "Separateness arises from identifying the Self with the body, which is made up of the elements; when this physical identification dissolves, there can be no more separate self. This is what I want to tell you, beloved."

 ...In her book A History of God, religion scholar Karen Armstrong explains that the goal of Greek mysticism was to gain "a freedom from distraction and multiplicity, and the loss of ego - an experience that is clearly akin to that produced by contemplatives in nontheistic religions like Buddhism. By systematically weaning their minds away from their 'passions' - such as pride, greed, sadness, or anger which tied them to the ego - hesychiasts would transcend themselves and become deified like Jesus on Mt. Tabo, transfigured by the divine 'energies.'"

Armstrong finds similar ideas among the Islamic mystics, called Sufis, who developed the concept of 'fana, or annihilation, which was brought about by a combination of fasting, sleepless vigils, chanting, and contemplation, all intended to induce altered states. These behaviors often resulted in actions that seemed bizarre and uncontrolled, which, according to Armstrong, earned those mystics who practiced such techniques the nickname of the "drunken" Sufis. The first drunken Sufi was Abu Yizad Bistami who lived in the ninth century, and whose introspective disciplines, Armstrong says, carried him beyond any personalized conceptions of God.

"As he approached the core of his identity," she writes, "he felt that nothing stood between God and himself; indeed, everything that he understood as 'self' seemed to have melted away:  
I gazed upon [Allah] with the eye of truth and said to Him: "Who is this?" He said, "This is neither I nor other than I. There is no God but I." Then he changed me out of my identity into His Selfhood...Then I communed with him with the tongue of his Face saying: "How fares it with me with Thee?" He said, "I am through Thee, there is no god but Thou."
Bistami had united with God, Armstrong says, had become a part of God, beyond his self. In Armstrong's words, "This was no external deity 'out there,' aline to mankind: God was discovered to be mysteriously identified with the inmost self. The systematic destruction of the ego led to a sense of absorption in a larger ineffable reality."

"THERE IS NO OTHER THAN ME. A PROPHET, A MAC MESSIAH! TURN WATER TO HENNESSEY!" - MAC ALLAH

Ramachandran, the Temporal Lobes and God - Part 1

 TELL IT, MY INDIAN BROTHERS, TELL IT.  

 In their follow-up study Johnstone and colleagues found that, as before, patients with damage to their right parietal lobe (as measured by their ability to judge the orientation of lines and ability to identify the fingers on their left hand) were more spiritual. In particular, they tended to score higher on measures of forgiveness (so they were less ‘self-oriented’) as well on measures of spiritual transcendence (tending to agree with statements like “I feel the presence of a higher power”).

In contrast, patients with damage to their frontal lobe (measured using a kind of ‘connect the letters and numbers’ puzzle) tended to be less likely to engage in private religious practices and go to church. There was also some evidence that they tended to be less spiritual.

Johnstone et al suspect that the link between the right parietal lobe and spirituality comes about because damage to this part of the brain makes it harder to locate yourself in 3D space. So there is a tendency to feel that you are somehow merged or blurred in with your environment – hence the sensations of spiritual transcendence.

They don’t speculate on the link between better frontal lobe function and religious activities per se (focussing instead on the spirituality link) but I find this result intriguing. The frontal lobe is involved in classic ‘figuring stuff out’ actions, as well as social functioning. So it seems likely that good frontal lobe function could be important to this aspect of religiosity.

Read more: http://www.patheos.com/blogs/epiphenom/2012/07/different-parts-of-the-brain-linked-to.html#ixzz3NtuXCFVe
Ramachandran, the Temporal Lobes and God - Part 2

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxDSOh66oWk
9:23 The BRAIN Has Evolved Neural Wiring That CreateS The Sensations, Thoughts, And Beliefs That, For Centuries, WERE Attributed To GOD's Presence Or GOD's Connection With You. So When You're Deep In Prayer Or Singing A Hymn In Church With The Rest Of The Congregation And You Feel That Closeness To GOD (That Transcendence) The Neurons In The GOD Region Of Your Brain Are Just Firing! (Those Parts Of Your Brain That Are Responsible For Belief In God, The Feeling Of The Presence Of God, Religious Out Of Body Experiences, Etc. Are Triggered By Neurochemicals, Electrical Signals, Etc. In The Brain Resulting In The Heightened Mental State Of Arousal That You Experience! In Other Words, The Concept Of God And The Sense That God Is With You Or You're With God, Are All A Product Of The Genetic And Biological Functioning Of The Brain!)


During brain scans of those involved in various types of meditation and prayer, Newberg noticed increased activity in the limbic system, which regulates emotion. He also noted decreased activity in the parietal lobe, the part of the brain responsible for orienting oneself in space and time.
“When this happens, you lose your sense of self,” he says. “You have a notion of a great interconnectedness of things. It could be a sense where the self dissolves into nothingness, or dissolves into God or the universe.”
Such “mystical”, self-blurring experiences are central to almost all religions – from the unio mystica experienced by Carmelite nuns during prayer, when they claim their soul has mingled with the godhead, to Buddhists striving for unity with the universe through focusing on sacred objects. But if Newberg and his colleagues are correct, such experiences are not proof of being touched by a supreme being, but mere blips in brain chemistry.
“It seems that the brain is built in such a way that allows us as human beings to have transcendent experiences extremely easily, furthering our belief in a greater power,” Newberg says. This would explain why some type of religion exists in every culture, arguably making spirituality one of the defining characteristics of our species.
https://www.amazon.com/Illusion-Gods-Presence-Biological-Spiritual/dp/1633880745
http://www.patheos.com/blogs/daylightatheism/2016/01/book-review-the-illusion-of-gods-presence/

"It's An Illusion" -Cellskini
They found that people of different religious persuasions and beliefs, as well as atheists, all tended to use the same electrical circuits in the brain to solve a perceived moral conundrum – and the same circuits were used when religiously-inclined people dealt with issues related to God.

The study found that several areas of the brain are involved in religious belief, one within the frontal lobes of the cortex – which are unique to humans – and another in the more evolutionary-ancient regions deeper inside the brain, which humans share with apes and other primates, Professor Grafman said.

"There is nothing unique about religious belief in these brain structures. Religion doesn't have a 'God spot' as such, instead it's embedded in a whole range of other belief systems in the brain that we use everyday," Professor Grafman said.

The search for the God spot has in the past led scientists to many different regions of the brain. An early contender was the brain's temporal lobe, a large section of the brain that sits over each ear, because temporal-lobe epileptics suffering seizures in these regions frequently report having intense religious experiences. One of the principal exponents of this idea was Vilayanur Ramachandran, from the University of California, San Diego, who asked several of his patients with temporal-lobe epilepsy to listen to a mixture of religious, sexual and neutral words while measuring their levels of arousal and emotional reactions. Religious words elicited an unusually high response in these patients.

This work was followed by a study where scientists tried to stimulate the temporal lobes with a rotating magnetic field produced by a "God helmet". Michael Persinger, from Laurentian University in Ontario, found that he could artificially create the experience of religious feelings – the helmet's wearer reports being in the presence of a spirit or having a profound feeling of cosmic bliss.

RELIGIOUS REID!

The universality of religious behavior suggests that, as with language, it is mediated by specialized structures in the brain. Language is known to be supported by neural circuitry in certain regions of the brain because, if these regions are damaged even minutely, specific defects appear in a patient's linguistic abilities. No such dedicated regions have yet been identified with certainty for the neural circuitry that may underlie religious behavior. Excessive religiosity is a well-know symptom of temporal lobe epilepsy and could reflect the activation of neural circuits associated with religious behavior. But there is no agreement on this point, and the search for such circuitry in people who don't suffer from epilepsy is "suggestive but not conclusive," according to the neurologist Steven Schachter. It could be that religious behavior itself does not require a dedicated brain region large enough to be detectable by present methods.

 The fact that religious behavior is universal strongly suggests that it is an adaptation, meaning a trait shaped by natural selection. If it is an adaptation, it must have a genetic basis, such as a suite of genes that are activated during development and wire up the neural circuits needed to induce the behavior. Identification of such genes would be the best possible proof that religious behavior has an evolutionary basis. The lack of any progress in this direction so far is not particularly surprising: the genes that underlie complex diseases have started to be identified only recently and funds to support such expensive efforts are not available for studying nonmedical complex traits.

An indirect approach to the genetic basis of religious behavior is through psychological studies of adopted children and of twins. Such studies pick up traits that vary in the population, such as height, and estimate how much of the variation is due to environmental factors and how much to genetics. But the studies cannot pick up the presence of genes that do not vary; genes for learning language, for example, are apparently so essential that there is almost no variation in the population, since everyone can learn language. If religious behavior is equally necessary for survival, then the genes that underlie it will be the same in everyone, and no variation will be detectable. 

Religious behavior itself is hard to quantify, but studies of religiosity - the intensity with which the capacity for religious behavior is implemented - have shown that it is moderately heritable, meaning that genes contributed somewhat, along with environmental factors, to the extent of the trait's variation in the population. "Religious attitudes and practices are moderately influenced by genetic factors," a large recent study concludes. Another survey finds that "the heritability of religiousness increases from adolescence to adulthood," presumably because the influence of environmental factors decreases in adulthood (when you leave home you go to church if you want to, not because your parents say so). The aspects of religiosity that psychologists measure include factors like frequency of church attendance and the importance assigned to religious values. Their studies show that there are genetic influences at work on the intensity of religious behavior, but do not yet reach to the heart of the issue, that of probing the neural circuitry for learning and practicing the religion of one's community.

In the absence of direct evidence about the genes underlying religious behavior, its evolutionary basis can be assessed only indirectly. The effect of cultural learning in religion is clear enough, as shown by the rich variety of religions around the world. It's the strong commonalities beneath the variation that are the fingerprints of an innate learning mechanism. The common features seem very unlikely to have persisted in all societies for the 2,000 generations that have elapsed during the 50,000 years since the ancestral human population dispersed from its African homeland, unless they have a genetic basis. This is particularly true given the complexity of religious behavior, and its rootedness in the emotional levels of the brain.

To no less an observer than Darwin himself it seemed that religion was like an instinctive behavior, one that the mind is genetically primed to learn as indelibly as the fear of heights or the horror of incests. His two great books on evolution, Origin of Species and Descent of Man, have nothing directly to say about religion but in his autobiography, written in his old age, he was more explicit about this controversial topic. He wrote, "Nor must we overlook the probability of the constant inculcation in a belief in God on the minds of children producing so strong and perhaps an inherited effect on their brains not yet fully developed, that it would be as difficult for them to throw off their belief in God, as for a monkey to throw off its instinctive fear and hatred of a snake.        

...

 The neural circuitry that predisposed hunters and gatherers to learn the religion of their community remained the basis of religious behavior.
The Faith Instinct. Wade, p. 43-45, 133.



http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn7147-genes-contribute-to-religious-inclination.html#.VDwwJXbg5gU
In Other Words, We're Genetically Wired To Be Religious (To Learn And Practice The Religion Of Our Community) Just Like We're Genetically Wired To Learn And Speak The Language Of Our Culture (Whether That Culture's Korean Or Russian Or Portuguese Or What Have You).  
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/out-the-darkness/201309/can-neuroscience-explain-human-experience
I'LL ADD A PASSAGE FROM THIS BOOK: 
WHY GOD WON'T GO AWAY
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