Evolution, Science and Religion

Why We Believe What We Believe is written by Andrew Newberg and Mark Robert Waldmanis. Mr. Newberg is a correlate professor of Radiology and Psychiatry, an assistant professor of studies of religion, and a director of the Center for Spirituality and the Mind.

Mark Robert Waldmanis is an adjunct fellow at the Center for Spirituality and the Mind and the founder of the academic journal, Transpersonal Review. The book examines how the brain functions to comprehend beliefs and reality’s nature. It suggests a considerate, biological, well-documented hypothesis on how the human brain processes sensory information into its own exclusive visions of truth.

This book does not seek to disown people’s beliefs, but in its place determine why believing is such an important and crucial piece of a human being. It seeks to know if we are experiencing positive or negative beliefs of our own.

More often than not, people’s beliefs make them disregard the beliefs of other people even though they have the same concept of God. This is due to the brain’s nature to reject other information that is opposing to its own beliefs. The book helps people search for meaning and truth as it explores the biological aspect of believing.

One of the most original questions in religion and philosophy is about reality’s nature. Given that we only have admission to reality through our capability to conceptualize it, possibly an even more essential question might be why and how we consider the things we do.

Where do our beliefs come from, how do they begin to form, and how can we reliably match these beliefs to the reality that we are trying to understand, steer through, and merely survive in? Most citizens don’t expend a lot of time reflecting on the very nature of their beliefs. Why then do they have convinced beliefs rather than others? Individuals seem to be somewhat confident in what they believe and be likely to agree to that however they form beliefs. It is an accurate and reliable process.

This deficiency of critical distance and self-reflection makes it easier not just for errors to take place, but also for others to influence and pressure our beliefs. Books on cynical tactics and actions can help avoid this, but we can also profit from simply having an improved understanding of what beliefs really are on a biological level.

The first part of the book introduces its basic premises, by means of the case history of Mr. Wright who was stricken with cancer and is about to depart this life in a research infirmary. He was given placebo injections, and in a week, he showed instant cure and all tumors miraculously faded away, but when the newspaper information described the uselessness of the drug the patient considered he was taking, the tumors started to return.

The physician persuaded the patient that a new and improved drug was obtainable, and once more the tumors vanished. The FDA then manifested the medicinal study a disappointment, and once more, the tumors have returned and Mr. Wright died when his belief in the drug had faltered. The authors go back to this story all through the book to clarify how our beliefs can intensely manipulate the neurobiological processes in the brain.

Are we really living in this world? Is the world even real? Is our life merely a dream? People tend to hold on to religion for the comfort and security that our unsure lives may hold. They believe in many different religions even though there are so many questions unanswered and undiscovered facts yet to be explored.

The book implies that our brain has a neurological tendency to believe. It is a vital element of the human mind. People tend to have the idea that a belief that doesn’t match theirs is wrong. These are just the workings of the human brain that instinctively seek to protect itself. But people can also tend to change their beliefs once in a while.

When they get more exposed to their environment and everyone around them, they gradually mold their child-like minds within to the beliefs surrounding them. People have an enormous tendency to see what others tell them as factual; whilst not everything can be questioned to discover its truth.