🔒 Human? Slide comment captcha below and wait for the unlock button. (Cookies required)
7 thoughts on “Brain Differences Found Between Believers In God And Non-believers”
“Could you, tomorrow, honestly believe something you do not believe today? Could you do that just by talking yourself into it?”
I’ve asked myself that very question many times. I used to be a theist, now I’m not. But could I be if I tried hard enough? Or maybe I still am and don’t realize it, how can I know? It’s so confusing. I’m so good at fooling myself, convincing myself, ect… I would agree that I lean more towards the idea that we can’t just choose our beliefs.
For me, when I ignore any emotional responses, and just stick to evidence/reason/logic/ it becomes rather obvious that I am not a theist. But many theists say to me.. “Well, there’s your problem. You can’t ignore your emotions. That’s how God reveals himself”. Well shoot, why would he go and do a thing like that.
I’ll take the anxiety for now. For me personally, as a theist, God was a nice stress reliever yes. But it was only temporary, and sometimes dangerous because I truly believed God had the power (not me) to fix things, so I didn’t work as hard as I should have. Now, I have to deal with issues head on, or the stress won’t go away. It might be harder, but I just take a nice long bath afterwards. 🙂
The Epic of Gilgamesh is written in Akkadian or Babylonian but scholars have determined that certain parts of it existed in Sumerian as a number of short stories about Enkidu and Gilgamesh that were later patched together and expanded into a great epic. The steppe Enkidu grows up in Sumerian is called eden/edin, in Akkadian (Babylonian) it was called seru.
The Sumerian word for uncultivated steppeland is eden/edin. The Epic of Gilgamesh although written in Akkadian which renders “steppe” as seru or seri, states unequivocally that Shamhat saw Enkidu at the watering hole as a wild man of “eden/edin” (the “steppe”). How is it that the watering hole is described as being in _the eden/edin_ instead of being in _the seru_? Akkadian scribes were trained in both Sumerian and Akkadian, they frequently used a Sumerian LOGOGRAM (a single sign) as “substitute” for an Akkadian word which had several cuneiform signs or letters as a type of “shorthand.” That is to say _one_ Sumerian logogram could replace _several_ cuneiform signs making up a word. Hence Enkidu “the wild man of the steppe” was written using the Sumerian logogram eden/edin and the scribe knew upon seeing this logogram that it was synonymous with the Akkadian word seru or seri, meaning “steppe.” – bibleorigins
The story of Moses and the tablets:
One of my favorite Sumerian stories is the original version of the biblical story of Moses and the ten commandments. In the Sumerian version Enlil, the god of the great mountain Kurgal, gives the ME to Enki on the mountain top. The ME are more than 100 instructions for the people to follow in order to bring order out of chaos. Enki brings the tablets down from the mountain to his city of Uridu where the instructions are used to bring civilized order to the Sumerians.
The story of a great flood originally comes from the Sumerian tale of Gilgamesh. The biblical version copies some of the language almost word for word. Apparently the Judeans in Babylonian captivity in the 6th century BCE borrowed the older tales when they were creating the stories in Genesis in order to make their own history from the stories of other cultures.
If the original Sumerian versions of the stories hadn’t been discovered then people may have actually come to believe the biblical versions may have been true. – history.com
There is a balance point somewhere, between trust and fact checking. Overdoing either one can be problematic. Have faith, we are told. Based on what? The older Sumerian stories? Faith is useful, but add discernment too. Otherwise, you might buy a home for way more than it is worth and destroy your credit with a foreclosure.
Think of it this way. Having faith is having the ability to place trust into uncertainty. We can not possibly know all the variables to everything so we must have faith that when we deal with these unknown variables we will be able to survive them(how ever that may be, emotional, physical, etc). Of course we don’t know what we are all capable of so we use faith to make new achievement. I dare you to find me one person without faith in something. And if they argue they have no faith then they still have faith in them selves, or they would not be arguing the point(because they have faith in them self that they can convince you what they are saying is right).
“Could you, tomorrow, honestly believe something you do not believe today? Could you do that just by talking yourself into it?”
I’ve asked myself that very question many times. I used to be a theist, now I’m not. But could I be if I tried hard enough? Or maybe I still am and don’t realize it, how can I know? It’s so confusing. I’m so good at fooling myself, convincing myself, ect… I would agree that I lean more towards the idea that we can’t just choose our beliefs.
For me, when I ignore any emotional responses, and just stick to evidence/reason/logic/ it becomes rather obvious that I am not a theist. But many theists say to me.. “Well, there’s your problem. You can’t ignore your emotions. That’s how God reveals himself”. Well shoot, why would he go and do a thing like that.
I’ll take the anxiety for now. For me personally, as a theist, God was a nice stress reliever yes. But it was only temporary, and sometimes dangerous because I truly believed God had the power (not me) to fix things, so I didn’t work as hard as I should have. Now, I have to deal with issues head on, or the stress won’t go away. It might be harder, but I just take a nice long bath afterwards. 🙂
Do believers get ripped off more? Try this Atheist meets God cartoon. This explains the origin of Eden:
The story of Moses and the tablets:
There is a balance point somewhere, between trust and fact checking. Overdoing either one can be problematic. Have faith, we are told. Based on what? The older Sumerian stories? Faith is useful, but add discernment too. Otherwise, you might buy a home for way more than it is worth and destroy your credit with a foreclosure.
Think of it this way. Having faith is having the ability to place trust into uncertainty. We can not possibly know all the variables to everything so we must have faith that when we deal with these unknown variables we will be able to survive them(how ever that may be, emotional, physical, etc). Of course we don’t know what we are all capable of so we use faith to make new achievement. I dare you to find me one person without faith in something. And if they argue they have no faith then they still have faith in them selves, or they would not be arguing the point(because they have faith in them self that they can convince you what they are saying is right).
Glad I found your blog. I’ve found a few good tips on your site. I’ll be a regular visitor from now!
Thank you Mr. President. Let me know what I can do to help our country out of the mess it is in.
Cool Blog! I’m Reddit-ing this! 🙂
Great post! I read your other posts as well and I subscribed to your RSS Feed!
Regards,
Mike