again a glitch...

What you know as "a fact", based on your personal experience, is a sliver of what Christianity can manifest itself as.  Not all religious experience is fundamentalist.  You would need to research this further.  What I say is correct.  I will not go into this further and argue it so, because I don't care if you believe it or not (I am more concerned about you ending up homeless or getting grief needlessly for what you think).  And this is not the place to get into it. Even a suggestion for a category to research related to what I discussed ends up people arguing I am wrong about its conclusions and what it is about or, off the cuff finding it suspect.

I believe it is a LOT better if people just believe or not, to just do it  and not make scenes on forums or elsewhere.  If you don't want to believe, then don't.  If you do, then do.  If you don't but are open to believing, seek to find positive answers, rather than challenge people that do.

don't sweat... i won't bother you again...

Well, if not listening to some wacko who thinks that hallucinations are proof of some reality outside the material one makes me dogmatic, I'll gladly take it as my middle name.

I'm sure there's a book out there somewhere where the author claims living in the countryside amongst nature is more beneficial to the brain then living in the downtown part of the city. Or where living in a household where the parents are always shouting and cursing at you is more harmful to the brain then parents speaking softly and kindly.

Or you could consider actual scientific research being done, like that which is being done by the author I listed.  It is more beneficial to consider what is going on, rather than speculate on what might be going on.   But, if you have no interest in actual scientific research, I suggest we close this discussion with it being your preference that things not be so, and you would rather it be that way.

If you consider these people "wacko", I doubt you have much regard for science:

http://www.andrewnewberg.com/bio.asp

http://markrobertwaldman.com/default.aspx

I am going to leave what is intended to be my last word on neurotheology in this thread by leaving this video with a speech by Waldman.  Watch and decide for yourself about it:

The value in this is found in what you can personally get out of it rather  than try to argue what it is NOT saying.

Ok it's an interesting video but I find the following quote most appropriate- 'Religion is the opium of the people'

You don't need God to do the following-

• Improve life expectency
• Reduce stress
• Reduce anxiety
• Increase social awareness
• Be happier

 The last 10 mins of the video of had nothing to do with God but rather how to be more at ease with oneself. It's less science and more motivational speaker imo.

Are we hardwired to believe in a higher being? Judging by human history and our lack of understanding of the world around us at the dawn of mankind we might be. By the same token we can unwire ourselves now that we can explain thunder, explain the evolution of eyes etc.

I leave you with this video...if you can be bothered to watch it.

Zeitgeist, the film that connects Jesus as myth to 9/11 as a hoax with the "New World Order" conspiracy talk of Alex Jones.  Unfortunately, unlike the work in neurotheology, Zeitgeist is not backed by respectable work by anyone credible.

http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/09-02-25/

A Roman Plot? (ending of the article)

Considering that Part II of Zeitgeist asserts that the destruction of the World Trade Center was a conspiracy on the part of the powers that be, and that Part III is an attack on the Federal Reserve Board and income tax as unconstitutional plots devised by hidden powers bent on reducing all of us to poverty, one might wonder why Peter Joseph even bothered to open his film with an attack on Jesus and Christianity. Summing up at the end of Part I, Joseph asserts that Christianity was, in fact, developed by the Romans as a means of social control. He cites the Council of Nicaea in 325 as the beginning of this social control. So this is the connection between Part I and the rest of the film: Everything you’ve ever believed to be true is all a pack of lies foisted on you by the secret manipulators who really run things. They faked the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center towers and the Pentagon to manipulate us into a war. They are undermining our financial and other freedoms through manipulation of our money and — guess what?! — they’ve been at it since the creation of Christianity, back in the time of the Roman Empire!

Zeitgeist is The Da Vinci Code on steroids.

Penn and Teller on 9/11 conspiracy theory talk:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kcrF346sS_I

And more here:

http://skeptoid.com/episodes/4196

In short, searching for alternative possible motivations, and finding and making extraneous connections between various people and events, does not prove or serve as evidence of anything. Raising the specter of doubts or alternate possibilities is very effective in distracting people away from the facts, as we saw so dramatically in O. J. Simpson's murder acquittal, and as we see throughout the 9/11 "truth" movement. (on the second part of the film)