The Believer S Brain

About 90% of people have faith in a supreme being, but our yearning for the divine, and whatever it promises, involves a large divergence in mental states and behaviors. Some adhere to doctrine, supplication, and fastidious religious practices; others have a strong sense they are part of something greater and more universal. However, all religious and spiritual paths are mediated by complex brain networks. When different areas of the brain are stimulated, a person can have a variety of experiences, but there is no specific ‘God spot’ where stimulation enhances religiosity or spirituality. Functional brain imaging shows that there are specific areas of the brain that ‘light up’ when subjects perform certain religious activities, but imaging only provides anatomic correlations, not functional explanations. The Believer's Brain takes a step beyond these singular methodologies, providing converging evidence from a variety study methods of how humans’ brain networks mediate different aspects of religious and spiritual beliefs, feelings, actions, and experiences. Although the book reveals how our brain is the home to the religious and spiritual mind, understanding this gift will not diminish our spirituality or our love or our belief in a supreme being, but will increase appreciation of the apparatus that mediates these mental states.

About 90% of people have faith in a supreme being, but our yearning for the divine, and whatever it promises, involves a large divergence in mental states and behaviors. Some adhere to doctrine, supplication, and fastidious religious practices; others have a strong sense they are part of something greater and more universal. However, all religious and spiritual paths are mediated by complex brain networks. When different areas of the brain are stimulated, a person can have a variety of experiences, but there is no specific ‘God spot’ where stimulation enhances religiosity or spirituality. Functional brain imaging shows that there are specific areas of the brain that ‘light up’ when subjects perform certain religious activities, but imaging only provides anatomic correlations, not functional explanations. The Believer's Brain takes a step beyond these singular methodologies, providing converging evidence from a variety study methods of how humans’ brain networks mediate different aspects of religious and spiritual beliefs, feelings, actions, and experiences. Although the book reveals how our brain is the home to the religious and spiritual mind, understanding this gift will not diminish our spirituality or our love or our belief in a supreme being, but will increase appreciation of the apparatus that mediates these mental states.

The Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths. Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.

I believe God is a whole-brain God. He intends for you to be a whole-brain believer. His desire is for you to surrender your entire brain to the leading of the Holy Spirit. Most of us have powerful beliefs that, left unaddressed and ignored, prevent us from attaining the goal of becoming whole-brain believers. We are loyal to our belief systems and dont even consciously register that we have one. Many of our beliefs interfere with our ability to fully embrace an essential truth about God. His primary expectation is for each one of us to enter into a loving relationship with Him. When He created you, He fell in love with you. His love for you is more intense than you are capable of imagining. And He desires that you choose to love Him back.

Kasih is a robotic child drawn into a project to discover her secrets, and into a war that threatens all humanity, including her own. The murder of her family by Union troops in Bandung leaves the rebels’ robotics experts, Losana Maraiwai and Wei Dingxiang, with nobody to explain Kasih’s design but Kasih herself. She is not what anyone expected. In Darwin, Dingxiang suspects a magic trick may explain away her human-like artificial intelligence. In Beijing, Union politician Gabriel da Costa fears an extinction-level technology. Both sides of the war see a weapon that might win it. But Kasih is not strong, fast, or even particularly coordinated. She tries in vain to make sense of her father’s death, and of a world ready to dismantle her and repurpose her technology. And she cannot escape the Union’s plans. The rebels, including Kasih’s original rescuers, Paul Kanner and Debra Hall, are powerless in the face of a new army of robotic soldiers based on her design. The Union has created monsters, whose cold efficiency unleashes wholesale destruction. They threaten the world’s only chance for freedom, and perhaps its very survival. Neither Kasih nor Dingxiang understand why Kasih herself is not like them. Kasih must fight back against the fate others have determined for her, and for the world, and Dingxiang needs her ingenuity to solve the very conundrum that her existence represents. For Kasih to save her human friends, she must help them destroy her own kind.

What's in a name? In our culture, parents often select names for their children that are popular or have a nice ring to them. But our heavenly Father bestows on His children names that carry far more meaning and significance. In fact, the Bible reveals many labels believers have that indicate calling, position, and giftedness in Christ. In this devotional study, Dr. John Koessler shows that the names Christ gives to His followers contain more importance and richness than we often realize. Written in a fresh and compelling style, Names of the Believers will encourage and inspire Christians to live up to the names God Himself has given them. Names of the Believers follows the Names of God, Names of Christ, and Names of the Holy Spirit trilogy designed to help Christians better understand the glory, majesty, and power of the triune God.

For a serious book of philosophy, where better to begin to canvass various philosophical concepts and arguments than in relation to what is so familiar to every one of us –– the fact that we all have many and varied beliefs. The book is an introduction of philosophy, indeed intended as an introductory textbook. The author, as he wrote it, had both the teacher and the student in mind. He hopes it will prove a worthy contribution in the college, seminary and university classroom, both interesting and serious. \ As well as thirteen clearly written chapters introducing the various topics, it is also provided with helpful summaries, tutorials, and work sheets. In considering belief we raise raises many of the central problems philosophers have discussed: knowledge, truth, justification, rationality, meaning, explanation, self deception, interpretation, reality, cause and effect, personal identity, theories, laws, hypotheses, the self, survival, God. Since belief is a universal phenomenon, it has unfortunately become common to understand the unqualified term ‘believer’ of the religious person. It seems strange to ask the question, ‘Are you a believer?’ outside the religious context. But we do when we are thinking of a particular theory or ideology or political attitude. We sometimes want to know whether she is ‘one of us!’ The author sometimes finds it convenient to illustrate his exposition by referring to religious beliefs. One does not have to be a religious believer to see that it is relevant and indeed interesting to do so. The history of philosophy provides many classical examples of such discussion. The book is of wide general interest. As well as doing service in the classroom, it will also prove its worth within other contexts. It will serve the aims of serious discussion groups, as well as providing a basis for regular and earnest individual study. We hope also that it will find a place with inquiring people of religious faith.