How God Changes Your Brain - Andrew Newberg, M. D_ [51]
It even appears that our brain has a mutant strand of DNA that contributes to our creativity, inventiveness, and individual uniqueness. These “jumping genes,” as scientists are fond of calling them, can cause cells to change their functioning as we grow.44 This explains why identical twins are not really identical, why one family member can be brilliant at math, while another excels at sports, or why one relative ends up struggling with a serious mental illness when no other family member has any semblance of a problem. No two people perceive the world, or God, in the same way, because no two human brains begin with the same genetic code.
Terrance Deacon, the esteemed professor of anthropology and neuroscience at the University of California in Berkeley, describes the human brain as an “evolutionary anomaly” because human beings have unparalleled cognitive abilities to imagine the unimaginable:
We think differently from all other creatures on earth, and we can share those thoughts with one another in ways that no other species even approaches…. We alone brood about what didn't happen, and spend a large part of each day musing about the way things could have been if events had transpired differently. And we alone ponder what it will be like not to be…. No other species on earth seems able to follow us into this miraculous place.45
We live most of our lives in a world that is filled with imaginative thoughts, and as we age, we continually modify our beliefs. We are born anew, as the evangelicals like to say, and we can do it as often as we like. We can change our religion, we can change our moral code, and we can change our pictures of God, thanks to the evolution of a truly unusual brain.
∗ In 2008, in response to a growing dislike in American culture toward religion and church organizations, many of these groups dropped the words “Religious Science” and “Church,” and referred to themselves as various centers for “Spiritual Living.”
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DOES GOD HAVE A HEART?
Compassion, Mysticism, and the Spiritual
Personalities of the Brain
What is God's personality?
When a team of sociologists at Baylor University asked a nationally representative sample of Americans to describe which qualities symbolized their impression of God, they discovered that four distinct personalities emerged.1 These personalities not only tell us a great deal about our religious landscape, they also illuminate the inner neurological landscape of the American soul. In the Baylor study, which was co-facilitated by the Gallup organization, 34 percent of the participants were evangelical Protestants, 22 percent were mainline Protestants, 21 percent were Catholics, 5 percent were associated with black Protestant congregations, and 2.5 percent identified themselves as Jews. Approximately 5 percent associated themselves with other religions such as Buddhist, Christian Science, Mormon, Hindu, Jehovah's Witnesses, Muslim, Christian Orthodox, and Unitarian. Another 10 percent considered themselves unaffiliated with a specific denomination or creed. Responders were spread over all ages, from eighteen on up, and represented a variety of levels of education, socioeconomic status, and locations throughout the United States.
Before I share the Baylor findings with you, take a few minutes to think about God. What type of qualities come to mind? Is God loving, or critical, or both? Does God seem friendly or frightening, motherly or fatherly, forgiving or punitive, gentle or severe? How much does God care about the world? Do you see God as distant observer, or as a force that actively interacts