Nuns prove God is not a figment of the mind

The article that I chose was, ‘Nuns prove God is not a figment of the mind’, the hypothesis of this study was that there was a ‘God Spot’ in the brain, meaning that there was circuit of nerves that were activated when a religious experience was encountered. The Nuns involved underwent a brain scan using an fMRI, whilst the brain scan was undergoing they were asked to relive a religious experience that they had once had. Rather than showing a specific point in the brain that was triggered during a religious experience it was shown that numerous parts of the brain are activated during a religious experience, this discredited the hypothesis.

I don’t think the title of the article is accurate as it is quite confusing, the title, ‘Nuns prove God is not a figment of the mind’ implies that Nuns have proven God’s existence, also, that there is a god centred part of the brain which, in this study, as been said to be false. Also, this can be seen as quite a biased study it focused only on the brains of nuns, religious figures, who already claim to have a religious connection with God as opposed to people who do not have a religious connection with God.

The conclusions that were implied by the report and the headline were that there had been a ‘God Spot’ in the brain, within this study it has been said that there isn’t just one part of the brain allocated for religious experiences, but that numerous parts of the brain are triggered.