Study suggests 'born-again' believers have smaller brains

reply to post by jonnywhite


Your right , never stop searching for gnosis,BUT life is way too short. I'm sure you have heard that saying countless times. And that saying is the holy grail for this debate. Humans live way too short to even start contemplating these daunting questions. Until we can live 150,200 ,250 (and counting)years we will not be able to begin to answer factually (not theoretically , how science does it) these amazing questions. And we dont realize how amazing these questions are , because we have churches ,religous networks, science labs,science channels that provide theories on how to graps it; we have so many outlets that we think we can figure it out. when we havent figured out sh*t. Perfecting medicine(ANT-AGING) and becoming somewhat divine is the ONLY way to make the first step to the true future. Until then we are just going in cirlces and recycling the same sh*t. We are holding on to religion like a little boy off to his first day of school and obsorbing "novice science " like if it were the Council of Nicea deciding fact or fiction. We need more time. And taking gnosis from the past isnt always the answer, How's that going for us?

reply to post by sk0rpi0n

Originally posted by sk0rpi0n
reply to post by madnessinmysoul

 

Well, its a fact that brutal communist regimes have, by default, been established by atheists, good sir

Yes, and it's a fact that brutal theocratic regimes were never set up by atheists. People of all sorts of persuasions have been behind horrible atrocities, so what?

Facial hair is not exactly a pre-requisite for making life miserable for the populace that they govern.

And neither is atheism. I was merely pointing out exactly how silly your point was.

reply to post by dilly1


Incorrect. Brain to body mass is not brain size. Brain to body mass is indeed a good measure of intelligence, but not all humans are the same size. And a crow, for your info, has a bigger Brain to body scale than an ape. How do we think Crows are smarter? Judge for yourself.

www.telegraph.co.uk...

Look it up yourself. they make spears, you know.

Sorry, but brain size is purely relative to the individual.

reply to post by sk0rpi0n


Ofcourse we do live in America right ? lol

reply to post by mkkkay


I dont understand how would you become stressed because you are saved wouldnt that do the complete opposite if your a believer?

I know i'm going to be flamed for this, but perhaps it's less about stress and more about the experiences you have as a born again christian. Born-agains believe you can speak in tongues, which is unscriptual anyway, and anyone who actually experiences this either has some sort of mental difference to the average person or has convinced themselves into believing it. Either way it's not normal behaviour to start speaking gibberish and roll around on the floor in some sort of spiritual awakening.

I am a christian and i respect much of what born agains believe in. However it's the fact that many born agains believe you can't be baptized or saved unless you have one of these experiences which makes me think perhaps their is a slight difference in the way their brain works. Either that or they are so stressed that they have not had a speaking in tongues episode that their brain plays tricks on them.

I hope i haven't offended any born agains, but i'm just trying to offer a better reason then CHRISTIANS ARE ALL NUTJOBS Crowd will.

Living in the bible belt,I can honestly say that this study comes as NO surprise to me. Religious beliefs today are no different than they were thousands of years ago when people were praying to Zeus or the Rain God or the Corn God or any other bull$%&! make believe story the superstitious neanderthals made up to apply a little order to the chaos that was the natural world. We live in the 21st Century and somehow its still acceptable for so-called intelligent people to believe and devote their entire lives and the lives of their children to the made-up magical dead carpenter who lives in the sky and grants wishes(only if you're good...if you're bad the demon gets ya!)???? GROW THE F*** UP PEOPLE!!!!! And if you MUST waste YOUR life believing in fairy tales,at least have the common decency to keep it to yourself and not force it down the throats of everyone else in the world.

You need more gray matter to survive and suceed if you believe that this is your only one live, because if you believe in eternity, well, you calm down a little bit and take things more easily. So no need for lots of gray matter but instinct.

So why would born-again Protestants, Catholics and those with no religious affiliation have a smaller hippocampus?

No religious affiliation = atheist ?

Well gee, isn't this a nice thread? If you wanna see why believers and non-believers will never get along, this thread is the perfect example of why. Both parties are guilty and both parties are equally dumb.



P.S.
I thought I had read somewhere on ATS that believing in a god was part of human nature? Kinda funny how all these reports say different things. But we all know that the side we believe in is the right side... Right?

It could well be true.

From a spiritual perspective and what the Bible teaches about spirit life and experience, it could be that those without a 'born again' spirit filled existence actually need more brain size to function to the same level?

reply to post by mkkkay


Wow, yet another thread with a lie for a title. If you would've read the article before posting, you would know better. Please stop crapping up ATS.

This type of thread is little better than trolling.

Originally posted by Ghandi
reply to post by Mactire

 

Please tell me where/how to get that saddam flash.

My question for these scientists, irrelevant of their findings is, don't we have better things to be studying other then differences in human beings? I dunno maybe say finding a cure for brain tumors?

I'm probably just crazy

edit on 25-5-2011 by Ghandi because: (no reason given)

No, you aren't crazy. Everyone on this thread should agree. Its an argument of semantics that will lead to what I call a BRICK WALL. If there was any actual data that substantiated their claims I might reconsider. They didn't have a constant in their tests. "Faith" cannot be tested by the scientific method consistently, thus it is folly.
We should employ our time, money, and resources for curing ills, not provoking further pointless debate about religion.

Doesn't seem to bother me. I'm still the smartest developer we have at work. I don't see how this would be relevant unless they measured the brain before and after they were "born again".

..."Study suggests 'born-again' believers have smaller brains"...


....true !

reply to post by mkkkay


The bigger my brain gets through brainwave entrainment meditation, the more I'm given to see about God.

I like call myself a born again and again and again Christian.

It's an evolutionary process. Organic.

So in my experience, the precise opposite is true, and everyone else increasingly appears rather small-minded, to be honest, including whoever the smug atheist with an axe to grind was who's making such claims. Absurd I say. A rational and philosophic, expanding mind, seeks and finds God, and in so doing, sees God in everything already always present - with new eyes to see - born again.

Originally posted by eNaR
..."Study suggests 'born-again' believers have smaller brains"...


....true !

Actually False, the article does not say that. Which you would know if you had read it. It would be nice to be able to have a conversation about an actual article or news item once in a while, instead of people's knee jerk response to a thread title.

Every once in a while an article like this pops up. Its a shame its not true...

Here are a few Christians you might have heard of:

From the Past
1) Issac Newton -- The bulk of his writings actually dealt with proving the Bible and God.
2) Lewis Pasteur -- Created vaccine against Anthrax & Rabies.
3) Galileo Galilei -- I don't believe he needs an introduction...
4) Johannes Kepler -- Laws of Planetary Motion.
5) Nicolaus Copernicus -- Introduced Heliocentric world view.
6) James Clerk Maxwell -- Independently developed Calculus & Electromagnetic Field Theory.
7) Erwin Schrodinger -- Ever hear of his cat?
8) Werner Heisenberg -- The Heisenberg Principle.
9) Max Planck -- Planck's Constant (Used in Chemistry)
10) Leonard Euler -- Euler's Method (Mathmatics)

Present Day:

1) Charles Hard Townes -- 1964 he won the Nobel Prize in Physics
2) Francis Collins -- Former Director US National Human Genome Research Institute. Helped map the Human Genome.
3) Jennifer Wiseman -- She is Chief of the Laboratory for Exoplanets and Stellar Astrophysics at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. An aerial of the Center is shown. In addition she is a co-discoverer of 114P/Wiseman-Skiff
4) Stephen C. Meyer -- DNA By Design, former professor before being removed for his beliefs.
5) Martin Nowak -- Professor, Harvard University.

I could go on...but why bore you?

Here is an interesting list on wikipedia of other scientists who are Christians List of famous scientists who are Christian

Originally posted by Evanzsayz
reply to post by mkkkay

 

I dont understand how would you become stressed because you are saved wouldnt that do the complete opposite if your a believer?

No, not stressed we are saved. Apparently we are really depressed when we are saved and either right before or right after being born-again by the Spirit we get really really dumb.

Moral of the story is become Catholic or Buddhist and your brain will swell and u won't be stupid anymore and you'll have hot chicks flirting with you at parties.

reply to post by Koinonia


Good post. It has been demonstrated time and time again that there is no co-relation between religious beliefs (or lack of it) and intelligence(or lack of it), but we will still be seeing people who think they are smarter by default because they don't believe in a deity.