Oh God

Often, it is during our darkest, gloomiest hours that we find ourselves believing more firmly in the supernatural, especially when the rigors of life weaken our ability to manufacture hope.

When we are at our highs, we tend to rely less on religious, spiritual,  or superstitious practices for intangible comfort. Comfort contributes largely to the reason these belief systems are utilised still today, as they soften the blows of society, by distorting a person's perception of reality. However bleak it may be, it is easier to imagine a lamenting person on their knees praying for the change they desire, than it is to picture  a person with a shining smile thanking a deity for the misfortune they've acquired. From boyhood, I can recount being confused by many religious and superstitious customs, living with a family who held strong beliefs. I was oblivious that as my imagination widened, my confusion would only grow deeper, as I matured.

   One of the oldest of questions that I can recount from one of my youngest of ages, asked to any adult that would listen, was: "why does god have three names; are there three people?" --Exhausted questions about "the birds and bees" were taken care of a considerable time before that, as I happened to be a firy little fellow. What worked for me at the time, especially those times I was ignored(a lot), was considering the possibility of a first, middle, and last name. My mother thought my immature theory to be laughable. Instead, she did her best to explain that Jesus, God, and Lord were essentially the same person. "Baby, Lord Jesus is our God", is closer to her precise words. It is needless to say that fun strolls to the neighbourhood market were not so fun for her sometimes. 

 Fortunately, or not so luckily, I've retained the curiosity that plagued the sanity of my mother during my boyhood. Questions designed to discover the difference between Jesus, God, and Lord made the smooth transition to questions engineered to find a working explanation of puzzling things such as the Holy Trinity. To this day, though some of my believing friends think the answer is simple, I am perplexed by that divine trio. --The father, son, and Holy ghost. The manner in which I've been taught to theorize is in complete disagreement with any proposed religious explanation I've ever received. Is reason the culprit? If I even hint that this is so, I will never hear the end of it.    

Science permits us to peer at the world as it truly is. It is through utilising its laws, and seeking to better understand them, that the world makes sense to me. I've been unsuccessful thus far in locating a scientific theory, or law that demystifies the Trinity; how a divine father, son, and spirit are one remains inconceivable to me.  Many philosophers regard religion to be a cultural and historical phenomenon. Reductionism is the idea that a system is merely the workings between its parts. It fares well in providing an array of explanations, but it performs poorly at providing an adequate elaboration on how the inner workings of the human mind makes way for religious experience.  

 This is where neurotheology introduces itself, though greeted with fierce criticism. A scientist, namely Dr. Andrew Newburg, uses this branch of study to uncover what transpires in a human's brain when they are having religious, or spiritual experiences.  The jargon responsible for this madness is "single photon emission computed tomography". This process involves a chemical that emits gamma rays being injected into a subject. Once injected, a computer builds an image that depicts many areas of the brain.- Personally, it's just a bloody MRI on steroids to me. Dr. Newburg has analyzed the brains of people including nuns while in prayer, Tibetan monks indulged in profound meditation, and Pentecostals while speaking in tongues(that's pretty spooky, sue me). 

 The discoveries single photon emission computed tomography has afforded the scientific world are quite amazing. When subjects were entranced in deep prayer, and other spiritual practices, blood flow to specific areas of the brain changed. The frontal lobe suffered a dramatic decrease in blood flow; 
this has important implications.  The said area of the brain is known for its role in willful attention, and our humanly sophisticated consciousness. Closing down that area is likely to induce the feeling in a person that something divine is actively controlling their actions; it allows them, as evidenced by the scans, to have the realistic experiences. While I don't have the fancy equipment, and am definitely not as informed as Dr. Newburg, I am just as curious about the persistence and evolution of religious practices. I imagine that I will continue to seek understanding as long as I live, as there are multitudes of gods, and billions of people.   -cheers D.A.