In the 1st task the volunteers were asked to silently recite the Lord’s Prayer followed by a nursery rhyme. According to the researchers identical brain areas got activated – those linked to repetition and rehearsal. In the second task they thought up spontaneous prayers followed by requests to Santa Claus. So what sort of responses or what parts of the brains got triggered? According to the researchers, with the spontaneous prayers they discerned patterns linked to when people communicate with each other and “activated circuitry that is linked with the theory of mind – an awareness that other individuals have their own independent motivations and intentions.” [p.9].
What is interesting is that two of the activated areas are those associated with processing desire and that which considers how another individual (God in this case) will react. Also activated, were “part of the prefrontal cortex linked to the consideration of another person’s intentions, and an area thought to help access memories of previous encounters with that person.” [p.9]
Not surprisingly, the prefrontal cortext (key area in terms of our thinking) was dormant during the task related to Santa Claus. Hence the researchers were able to deduce that for the volunteers (all adults and I suppose white Danes) Santa was fictitious and God was perceived as a real person – expecting reciprocity. For the researchers, but not necessarily new for many faithful believers, this shows that when people say they pray to God they actually believe they are talking to someone. Just take a walk down to your nearest Black Pentecostal Church to experience this fact! Now both atheists and believers have latched on to this with vigour to defend their own position. For Atheists, the tests demonstrated what they have been always contending: God is pure illusion. Christians, on the other hand are rejoicing that this is more evidence to show that God is real.
The reality, however, is that what this suggests has nothing to do with the existence of God, but only with the subjects’ belief about the existence of God and the researchers own subjective use of bodies of knowledge (which is yet to be recognised) to carry out their experiments.
In the meantime, scientific findings aside, prayers may be just what people need at this time of economic woes and the fear of swine flu. Talking to someone, Divine or otherwise, always carry cathartic possibilities.
