Well done Ricordo for all you're hard work. You more than deserve a well earned (non-religious (?), but nonetheless festive) break and hope to see you in the new year. Obrigata!
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🧠 *Dr. Patrick McNamara emphasizes the importance of using neuroscience to study religion, stating that the brain shapes the phenomenology of religious experience, and understanding it requires tapping into neuroscience tools.* 02:32 🧬 *Religious experiences may manifest in the brain with distinctive signatures, recruiting specific neural circuits such as the salience network, default mode network, and fronto-parietal executive control network.* 04:21 🌐 *Dr. McNamara adopts a broad, Wickensteinian family resemblance approach to define religion, focusing on ritualistic interactions with supernatural agents, particularly rituals and belief in supernatural entities.* 08:14 🧬 *Religiosity may have an inheritable trait, with evidence suggesting a predisposition for religiosity in individuals, especially considering children tend to develop conceptions about supernatural agents.* 09:21 🧠 *Sexual conflict, where the two sexes have different genetic interests, influences brain structures, contributing to religiosity and impacting evolutionary processes related to social learning and cooperation.* 11:16 🔄 *The 4E framework (Embodied, Enacted, Embedded, Extended) is crucial in understanding religion, highlighting that the mind and brain extend beyond the individual into tools and cultural evolution.* 13:54 🔄 *Biological and cultural evolution both contribute to religious thinking and behavior, with brain evolution, self-domestication, and social learning capacities playing significant roles.* 16:55 🔄 *Dr. McNamara discusses religion as a transformational technology, involving the decentering process where religious practices dynamically transform the sense of self, linking it with an ideal self.* 19:08 🔄 *Decentering in religious cognition involves updating the topmost predictive model of the sense of self, addressing conflicts and facilitating transformative experiences.* 22:11 🔄 *The divided self, emerging from genetic conflicts, reflects conflicting impulses in the brain, and religion serves as a technology to create a unified self for cooperative group functioning.* 23:47 🧠 *Dr. McNamara explores the divergence in mentalizing between schizophrenia (hypermentalizing) and autism (hypomentalizing), noting their relevance to religiosity and how the same neural networks are altered in opposite ways.* 28:42 🤝 *Solving the divided self through religion aids in group cooperation, as it helps individuals have executive control, intentionality, and a sense of agency necessary for sustained intentional goals in cooperation.* 30:21 🧬 *Executive control is linked to religious cognition, seen in experiences like psychedelic-induced ego dissolution, where a reduction in executive control is the initial step in the decentering process.* 31:31 🧠 *Religion induces a decentering process, downregulating executive control and then enhancing it, leading to a better sense of self and agency.* 32:29 🌐 *Religiosity promotes cumulative cultural evolution by increasing the population's strong executive control, aiding technological development.* 35:52 🧠 *Disorders associated with hyperreligiosity include temporal lobe epilepsy, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and some forms of dementia, often linked to hippocampal atrophy.* 39:30 🤔 *Hyperreligiosity can stem from the need to process a large amount of emotionally significant information, either through trauma or when the system for processing breaks down.* 41:53 🧠 *Autism and left onset Parkinson's disease are associated with reduced religiosity, suggesting a link between specific brain conditions and religious beliefs.* 43:46 🍄 *Psychedelic experiences involve enhanced connectivity in the default mode network, inducing ego dissolution and potentially offering therapeutic benefits, especially for depression.* 46:30 🌌 *Psychedelics compress the process of updating priors in the brain, providing a rapid transformation of the sense of self, potentially beneficial for depression.* 51:11 🤯 *Mystical experiences result from encountering intensely surprising information that disconfirms the topmost predictive model of the self, leading to a transformative view of the world.* 52:51 🌌 *Near-death experiences involve an eruption of REM sleep processes into waking consciousness, explaining hallucinatory states and mystical experiences during these events.* 54:55 🔄 *Religious conversion is a form of self-transformation, changing the sense of self and predictive model to align with the beliefs and practices of a particular religious group.* 56:48 🤖 *The origin of supernatural agents involves cognitive processes, including hypermentalizing and perceiving agency everywhere, contributing to the postulation of gods.* 58:00 😇 *Supernatural agents can influence behavior through a supernatural punishment hypothesis, where belief in omniscient beings affects individual behavior to avoid divine wrath.* 01:00:03 😱 *Supernatural agents induce anxiety not only as a source of comfort but also due to their demanding nature, with historical examples of sacrifices to appease gods.* 01:01:27 🤯 *Rituals, rooted in motor stereotypes and studied through neurobiology, can be understood better by exploring OCD and identifying neural mechanisms associated with these repetitive behaviors.* 01:02:09 🔄 *Stereotypes reduce uncertainty in organisms by repeating behaviors, often displayed in groups to signal non-threat and encourage cooperation. Brain circuits involved in rituals include the mesocortical dopaminergic circuit,salient circuit, default mode network, and executive control network.* 01:04:11 🚻 *Harvey Whitehouse's modes of religiosity theory distinguishes between imagistic and doctrinal rituals, linked to sexual conflict. Males, in task-oriented groups, prefer imagistic rituals, while females in low-trust situations form coalitions with doctrinal rituals emphasizing loyalty and rules.* 01:08:10 👑 *Kings and queens in certain monarchies were considered supernatural agents, embodying divine powers, often treated with reverence and rituals. This historical perspective could provide valuable data for understanding supernatural legends.* 01:10:18 🗣️ *Religious language exhibits a decentering process, reducing markers of agency in linguistic analysis. Language in religious contexts sets the bounds of thinkable thought, operating at the boundaries and, in mystical states, expanding language horizons.* 01:13:43 🤝 *Religion promotes groupishness by fostering in-group cooperation and out-group antagonism. It enhances loyalty within the group by displaying religious markers while potentially fueling animosity toward outsiders.* 01:15:09 📚 *The book discussed is "The Cognitive Neuroscience of Religious Experience: Decentering and the Self." Dr. McNamara's work can be found on Amazon, and there's a website called "Cognitive Neuroscience of Religion" with additional resources.* Made with HARPA AI
I wish he could show results from experiments and human brain recordings rather than saying it's in our genes. I cannot fallow when he jumps from the genes to the cognitive processes.
Thanks for such an interesting conversation
Great interview! Fascinating topic and it's nice to see such an undogmatic approach to religion, science, and atheism.
Well done Ricordo for all you're hard work. You more than deserve a well earned (non-religious (?), but nonetheless festive) break and hope to see you in the new year. Obrigata!
Great video! Thank you v much!
🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation:
00:00 🧠 *Dr. Patrick McNamara emphasizes the importance of using neuroscience to study religion, stating that the brain shapes the phenomenology of religious experience, and understanding it requires tapping into neuroscience tools.*
02:32 🧬 *Religious experiences may manifest in the brain with distinctive signatures, recruiting specific neural circuits such as the salience network, default mode network, and fronto-parietal executive control network.*
04:21 🌐 *Dr. McNamara adopts a broad, Wickensteinian family resemblance approach to define religion, focusing on ritualistic interactions with supernatural agents, particularly rituals and belief in supernatural entities.*
08:14 🧬 *Religiosity may have an inheritable trait, with evidence suggesting a predisposition for religiosity in individuals, especially considering children tend to develop conceptions about supernatural agents.*
09:21 🧠 *Sexual conflict, where the two sexes have different genetic interests, influences brain structures, contributing to religiosity and impacting evolutionary processes related to social learning and cooperation.*
11:16 🔄 *The 4E framework (Embodied, Enacted, Embedded, Extended) is crucial in understanding religion, highlighting that the mind and brain extend beyond the individual into tools and cultural evolution.*
13:54 🔄 *Biological and cultural evolution both contribute to religious thinking and behavior, with brain evolution, self-domestication, and social learning capacities playing significant roles.*
16:55 🔄 *Dr. McNamara discusses religion as a transformational technology, involving the decentering process where religious practices dynamically transform the sense of self, linking it with an ideal self.*
19:08 🔄 *Decentering in religious cognition involves updating the topmost predictive model of the sense of self, addressing conflicts and facilitating transformative experiences.*
22:11 🔄 *The divided self, emerging from genetic conflicts, reflects conflicting impulses in the brain, and religion serves as a technology to create a unified self for cooperative group functioning.*
23:47 🧠 *Dr. McNamara explores the divergence in mentalizing between schizophrenia (hypermentalizing) and autism (hypomentalizing), noting their relevance to religiosity and how the same neural networks are altered in opposite ways.*
28:42 🤝 *Solving the divided self through religion aids in group cooperation, as it helps individuals have executive control, intentionality, and a sense of agency necessary for sustained intentional goals in cooperation.*
30:21 🧬 *Executive control is linked to religious cognition, seen in experiences like psychedelic-induced ego dissolution, where a reduction in executive control is the initial step in the decentering process.*
31:31 🧠 *Religion induces a decentering process, downregulating executive control and then enhancing it, leading to a better sense of self and agency.*
32:29 🌐 *Religiosity promotes cumulative cultural evolution by increasing the population's strong executive control, aiding technological development.*
35:52 🧠 *Disorders associated with hyperreligiosity include temporal lobe epilepsy, obsessive-compulsive disorder, and some forms of dementia, often linked to hippocampal atrophy.*
39:30 🤔 *Hyperreligiosity can stem from the need to process a large amount of emotionally significant information, either through trauma or when the system for processing breaks down.*
41:53 🧠 *Autism and left onset Parkinson's disease are associated with reduced religiosity, suggesting a link between specific brain conditions and religious beliefs.*
43:46 🍄 *Psychedelic experiences involve enhanced connectivity in the default mode network, inducing ego dissolution and potentially offering therapeutic benefits, especially for depression.*
46:30 🌌 *Psychedelics compress the process of updating priors in the brain, providing a rapid transformation of the sense of self, potentially beneficial for depression.*
51:11 🤯 *Mystical experiences result from encountering intensely surprising information that disconfirms the topmost predictive model of the self, leading to a transformative view of the world.*
52:51 🌌 *Near-death experiences involve an eruption of REM sleep processes into waking consciousness, explaining hallucinatory states and mystical experiences during these events.*
54:55 🔄 *Religious conversion is a form of self-transformation, changing the sense of self and predictive model to align with the beliefs and practices of a particular religious group.*
56:48 🤖 *The origin of supernatural agents involves cognitive processes, including hypermentalizing and perceiving agency everywhere, contributing to the postulation of gods.*
58:00 😇 *Supernatural agents can influence behavior through a supernatural punishment hypothesis, where belief in omniscient beings affects individual behavior to avoid divine wrath.*
01:00:03 😱 *Supernatural agents induce anxiety not only as a source of comfort but also due to their demanding nature, with historical examples of sacrifices to appease gods.*
01:01:27 🤯 *Rituals, rooted in motor stereotypes and studied through neurobiology, can be understood better by exploring OCD and identifying neural mechanisms associated with these repetitive behaviors.*
01:02:09 🔄 *Stereotypes reduce uncertainty in organisms by repeating behaviors, often displayed in groups to signal non-threat and encourage cooperation. Brain circuits involved in rituals include the mesocortical dopaminergic circuit,salient circuit, default mode network, and executive control network.*
01:04:11 🚻 *Harvey Whitehouse's modes of religiosity theory distinguishes between imagistic and doctrinal rituals, linked to sexual conflict. Males, in task-oriented groups, prefer imagistic rituals, while females in low-trust situations form coalitions with doctrinal rituals emphasizing loyalty and rules.*
01:08:10 👑 *Kings and queens in certain monarchies were considered supernatural agents, embodying divine powers, often treated with reverence and rituals. This historical perspective could provide valuable data for understanding supernatural legends.*
01:10:18 🗣️ *Religious language exhibits a decentering process, reducing markers of agency in linguistic analysis. Language in religious contexts sets the bounds of thinkable thought, operating at the boundaries and, in mystical states, expanding language horizons.*
01:13:43 🤝 *Religion promotes groupishness by fostering in-group cooperation and out-group antagonism. It enhances loyalty within the group by displaying religious markers while potentially fueling animosity toward outsiders.*
01:15:09 📚 *The book discussed is "The Cognitive Neuroscience of Religious Experience: Decentering and the Self." Dr. McNamara's work can be found on Amazon, and there's a website called "Cognitive Neuroscience of Religion" with additional resources.*
Made with HARPA AI
everything i ever wanted to know, i learned thanks to Ricardo Lopes
Fascinating though as C.H. says "religion poisons everything. " The neurology is interesting, though, like any mental disorder. :-) D.A., J.D., NYC
I wish he could show results from experiments and human brain recordings rather than saying it's in our genes. I cannot fallow when he jumps from the genes to the cognitive processes.