Neuroscience of God Belief?

By Robert Bernstein

Dr John Wathey has been a guest of the Humanist Society in the past and he was back again to discuss the “Neuroscience of God Belief”.

John C. Wathey is a retired computational biologist whose interests include evolutionary algorithms, the biology of nervous systems, and electoral reform. He earned his PhD in Neurosciences at U.C. San Diego and has spent most of his career working on computer simulations of protein folding.

His latest book is “The Phantom God: What Neuroscience Reveals about the Compulsion to Believe”. And that was the theme of his talk.

This is a sequel to his 2016 book “The Illusion of God’s Presence: The Biological Origins of Spiritual Longing” which he spoke to us about in 2018.

He wants to emphasize two points:
    1. What he calls “Religious Compulsion”: The tenacity of religion and its obsession with sex.
    2. “Religious Phantoms”: He compared the feeling of God’s presence with a phantom limb.

Wathey’s thesis advisor was the neuroscientist Ted Bullock. Bullock is considered the father of neuroethology: The study of animal behavior in natural conditions. Wathey offered Bullock’s view of the brain: To understand the brain you must first understand the problem it is trying to solve.

Bullock discovered the infrared (heat) sensing pit organ in pit vipers and electroreceptors in weakly electric fish, as well as other electrosensory animals.

Wathey noticed the infantile aspects of religion. People often pray with upraised arms. He noted that this is similar to a child’s pose, wanting to be picked up. No wonder religious people talk of being “born again”.

Innate knowledge is essential. Sea turtle hatchlings hatch at night and head toward the brightest area on the horizon. Naturally, this would be the ocean.

Unfortunately, artificial lighting has confused the turtles to head toward buildings in exactly the wrong direction.

They also have a magnetic sense and can travel thousands of miles, following these signals.

But the artificial light is a “supernormal” stimulus that overrides the real stimulus.

He suggested the God concept is also a supernormal stimulus. A newborn child has an innate model of its mother. A mother exists, she knows how to help, she is able to help and she is willing to help. She has a face and a voice and provides nourishment and warmth.

This sense persists into adulthood, but is normally dormant.

However, the God concept can turn this dormant sense back on again. One can believe that God is omniscient, omnipotent, perfectly loving and exists.

He wanted to see how the brain does this. How it causes a “religious compulsion”. Some compulsions are essential for species survival: Eating, drinking, mating, crying as infants, caring for infants.

He talked of rat studies that give a clue. Rat pups are born helpless. The pups huddle and are OK if the mother goes away briefly. This is called contact quieting.

Wathey talked of research by psychobiologist Harry Shair at Columbia University. He took the rat mother away from the pups and kept the nest warm with a heating pad. Left the pups like that for 15 minutes and they were OK.

Shair then moved one pup to an empty box at room temperature. The pup immediately started crying. Put a sibling pup with it, it stops crying. Take the sibling pup away, the first pup cries again.

Now for the experiment. When the mother is removed, anesthetize her. Put the anesthetized mother with the isolated pup. The pup stops crying. This looks like contact quieting. After six minutes the mother is removed.

Now the pup cries again, but at a much higher rate. He calls this “maternal potentiation” and is specific to the mother.

This makes ethological sense. If the mother left or if the pup fell out of the nest it makes sense to cry out louder. The mother is expected to be nearby. This is the essence of the illusion of presence.

Wathey talked of further experiments. Quinpirole injections into the nucleus accumbens. This specifically suppresses the maternal potentiation. But injecting it into the nearby basal ganglia does not have this effect.

Basal ganglia are needed for learning complex sequences. Such as songbirds learning songs.

The nucleus accumbens handles appetitive, compulsive behaviors. But not alone. The dopamine level in the basal ganglia controls motivation.

Mice can be genetically engineered so they cannot synthesize dopamine. They will lack any motivation for anything. They won’t even eat. Unless given supplemental dopamine.

The Nucleus Accumbens is the epicenter of drug addiction. It is the source of the longing for Mother. And maybe God?

Mormons talk of “Feeling the Spirit”. A constant companionship with the Holy Ghost. Functional MRI (fMRI) is able to show brain activation in the Nucleus Accumbens during this “Feeling the Spirit”. Wathey said that this connects the infantile and the religious.

Why is religion so tenacious? Despite its obvious internal contradictions. Its failed prophecies. And bad conduct by clergy.

And why is religion so obsessed with sex? Why so many predatory priests?

He talked of the case of Saint Teresa. Her love of God and her desire for spiritual union with him found expression in a vision in which an angel pierced her heart with a golden spear and sent her into a trance. A very erotic experience.

Nuns are said to be “wedded to Christ”. Priests are said to “marry the Church”. Yet sex is sinful. Hence the demand for celibacy and the myth of the virgin birth.

Wathey noted that evolution reuses what is already available. For example, the wings of real animals (and not mythical angels) evolved from existing arms and hands.

And the attachment of mother and infant is repurposed for the love between mates. One downside is that this leads to infantile feelings as an adult.

The brain is tweaked for pair bonding. But he has the insight that incest avoidance is a missing piece of the puzzle. It leads to conflicting feelings of love, lust and revulsion. This results in an obsession to control or prohibit sexual behavior. But also an irresistible urge to violate this.

Our perceptual system is based on signals from our sense organs. But it is also based on expectations. We are constantly expecting to see faces, for example. We see the “man on the moon” and many people saw a face in an old Mars image.

We also expect sensations from our limbs. Even if a limb is missing. This results in the “phantom limb” phenomenon in amputees. Amputees will try to answer the phone or break a fall with a phantom limb that no longer exists. Wathey showed a video of a cat doing the same thing.

He urged us to remember that the phantom limb is very real to the amputee. And he said this is the same for the God Illusion.

Over 100 years ago William James published his “Varieties of Religious Experience”. These religious experiences are felt to be more true than any rational talk.

The brain represents the body in two ways. One such map or representation is in the somatosensory cortex, representing the incoming sensations. The other is in the primary motor cortex, representing planned actions.

The body parts are distorted in size in these representations. For example, the hand needs more neurons than the much larger leg.

The hand is next to the face in both representations. A touch on the face may be felt in the phantom hand.

He talked of how trans people in fact have different representations of their sexual organs than cis gender people.

Wathey talked of “xenomelia” which is the opposite of phantom limb. In this case a limb feels “alien”. The subject will seek to have the perfectly healthy limb amputated! It is a powerful drive, even with all evidence to the contrary that the limb is a perfectly healthy part of the subject’s body!

Wathey talked of experimental stimulation of the temporoparietal junction (TPJ). It results in a sense of “presence”. Depending on the body position, the presence moves. It is possible to feel one’s own body as an alien presence.

Personal note: I had this experience lying in bed at Cottage Hospital 20 years ago, after being hit by a car. I wondered what this useless thing was in bed with me. I realized that “thing” was my body.

Wathey thinks this TPJ activation may spawn the illusion of God’s presence. He noted that it is not a loving feeling.

He went on to ask: Why does this matter?

Science advances and we understand answers to ancient questions. We understand about electric charges to explain lightning and no longer need to imagine a sky god hurling lightning bolts.

But the presence illusion persists. Even for some very smart scientists. Including his advisor Bullock and for Francis Collins, former Director of the National Human Genome Research Institute.

Wathey then took questions.

Judy Fontana asked why gods so often are male if they are rooted in a child longing for its mother?

Wathey said this a good question and is only half the story. The other half is about reciprocal altruism, which works well in small hunter-gatherer groups. As groups grow, it is more difficult to control cheating. An omniscient, omnipotent and vengeful god keeps people in line. If they believe it. Asking people to sacrifice for this god will increase commitment to it. Such a god will be a cruel, dominant male.

Dr Andy Thomson asked about future research. Wathey said infant research will be valuable and will be challenging. Also, more research about people in specific varieties of religious states. The Mormon case was ideal.

Someone asked about autism. Wathey said that such people who have a reduced “Theory Of Mind” of other people tend to be less religious.

Someone asked about children who were deprived of normal human contact in a Bucharest orphanage. Wathey said the result is severe brain damage. In cases of less severe parental negligence the result is “insecure attachment”. These children grow up as functioning adults, but view other people with suspicion. They can become religious in a crisis, very suddenly.

Two woman asked how atheists don’t get sucked into religion. Wathey said some do. Francis Collins was raised in a secular family, but found religion. Probably due to dealing with the suffering of his cancer patients.

There is much individual variation. Statistically, men are more likely to be atheists than women. It comes down to abilities of critical thinking and personality differences. It is difficult for people to realize that intuition is not the best way to decide on whether something is true or false.

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