God and I Think. . . .

Nicholas Epley has been investigating for years the connection between what people believe themselves and what they think God believes. By and large, however you ask the question, people think God agrees with what they think. Now Epley has done an intriguing study using MRI to investigate what brain areas are active when people think in different ways. Ed Young:

While sitting in an fMRI scanner, 17 people had to state how they, God or an average American would feel on a list of social issues, including universal health care, stem cell research, euthanasia, abortion, sex education and more. As before, their answers revealed a closer match between their beliefs and those they ascribed to God, than those they credited to the average Joe or Jill.

The brain scans found the same thing, particularly in a region called the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC) that's been linked to self-referential thinking. The mPFC is more active when we think about our own mindsets than those of others. Epley found that it was similarly abuzz when the recruits thought about their own attitude or God's, but lower when they considered the average American.

The results suggest that similar parts of the brain are involved when we consider our own beliefs and those of God - Epley thinks this is why we end up inferring a deity's attitudes based on those we hold ourselves.

One always suspected as much, but it's so nice to know it's true. . . .