Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Me brain no damage

A Christian I know has a theory that my atheism has its roots in a bad knock on the head I experienced 27 years ago. He suggested my god spot was damaged by the massive injury inflicted on my brain. I was a Christian before the accident, and not after my recovery a year later. Could I have had God knocked out of me? Thankfully no. I turns out that the god spot is nonsense .
The human brain does not contain a single "God spot" responsible for mystical and religious experiences, a new study finds.

Instead, the sense of union with God or something greater than the self often described by those who have undergone such experiences involves the recruitment and activation of a variety brain regions normally implicated in different functions such as self-consciousness, emotion and body representation.
The real story for me was simple. I started to have doubts, the doubts grew, the church abandoned me, science stepped in to explain things, god evaporated. ok - it is more complex, and I may tell the story someday. Suffice it to say that a hit on the head only really gave me blinding headaches, temporary weakness, and some balance problems - for like a friggen year.

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1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Wow, that's really interesting! I don't think I've ever heard of the "god spot." So is this different than the "god gene?"

I'm so glad that your non-existant "god spot" is still intact (or not)... :-)
But damn, that must have been one hit on the head! Seriously, good to hear that you recovered from such an injury.