Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth

Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth

Language: English

Pages: 321

ISBN: 0743274970

Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub


WHY DO YOU BELIEVE THE THINGS YOU BELIEVE? Do you remember events differently from how they really happened? Where do your superstitions come from? How do morals evolve? Why are some people religious and others nonreligious? Everyone has thoughts and questions like these, and now Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman expose, for the first time, how our complex views emerge from the neural activities of the brain. Bridging science, psychology, and religion, they demonstrate, in simple terminology, how the brain perceives reality and transforms it into an extraordinary range of personal, ethical, and creative premises that we use to build meaning, value, spirituality, and truth into our lives. When you come to understand this remarkable process, it will change forever the way you look at the world and yourself. Supported by groundbreaking research, including brain scans of people as they pray, meditate, and even speak in tongues, Newberg and Waldman propose a new model for how deep convictions emerge and influence our lives. You will even glimpse how the mind of an atheist works when contemplating God. Using personal stories, moral paradoxes, and optical illusions, the authors demonstrate how our brains construct our fondest assumptions about reality, offering recommendations for exercising your most important "muscle" in order to develop a more life-affirming, flexible range of attitudes. You'll discover how to: Recognize when your beliefs are altered by othersGuard against mental traps and prejudicial thinkingDistinguish between destructive and constructive beliefsCultivate spiritual and ethical ideals Ultimately, we must always return to our beliefs. From the ordinary to the extraordinary, they give meaning to the mysteries of life, providing us with our individual uniqueness and the ability to fill our lives with joy. Most important, though, they give us inspiration and hope, beacons to guide us through the light and dark corners of the soul.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 74(6):1646–1655. 13. J. C. Lai, P. D. Evans, S. H. Ng, et al. 2005. Optimism, positive affectivity, and salivary cortisol. British Journal of Health Psychology 10(Part 4):467–484. 14. For a comprehensive description of cognitive functions relating to mysticism and spirituality, see A. B. Newberg, E. G. D’Aquili, and V. Rause. 2001. Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. New York: Ballantine, 2001. See also E. G. D’Aquili and

authors and the study and acknowledged noncompliance with its policies and protocols. Flamm writes, “Specifically, Dr. Lobo never presented the above research to the Institutional Review Board of Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.” 15. E. Ernst. 2003. Distant healing—An “update” of a systematic review. Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift 115(7–8):241–245. 16. Several months prior to the publication of this book, Herbert Benson and associates conducted a well-designed and randomized large-scale

Cataloging-in-Publication Data Newberg, Andrew B. Why we believe what we believe: Uncovering our biological need for meaning, spirituality, and truth/Andrew Newberg, Mark Robert Waldman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references. 1. Psychology, Religious. 2. Brain—Religious aspects. I. Waldman, Mark Robert. II. Title. BL53.N49 2006 153.4—dc22 2006048274 ISBN: 0-7432-9372-X Visit us on the World Wide Web: http://www.SimonSays.com To Gene d’Aquili and Jeremy Tarcher for

broad assortment of stimuli ranging from the innocuous and pleasurable (like blue skies and apple pie) to the noxious and disagreeable (like spiders or politicians). But the map is not the territory. It’s an abstraction, a symbol of something that we assume exists, like a lamppost or a feeling of satisfaction. We may not have any direct evidence or proof of its existence, but we do have this great internal map, and for the most part, it appears to work quite well. Our brain also makes our

anthropologist, however, might be able to suspend personal bias and see the experience as an integral aspect that maintains cohesiveness in the group.* When we temporarily suspend our system of beliefs, we may be able to glean new insights about our life that are inaccessible when normal consciousness is governing our thoughts. However, once the rapturous state has ended, normal cognition returns, and this is when individuals would interpret the experience they have had. In this later stage,

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