a few years ago, researchers noted that when some people with temporal lobe epilepsy had a seizure, they also had what seemed to be a mystical or religious experience. The media quickly dubbed areas...

a few years ago, researchers noted that when some people with temporal lobe epilepsy had a seizure, they also had what seemed to be a mystical or religious experience. The media quickly dubbed areas in the temporal lobe of the brain the ‘god spot’ and speculated that belief in a deity is a natural function of this area in the brain. More recently it has been demonstrated that mystical or religious experience is not correlated with any one localized spot, but is correlated with activity in several brain areas (Beauregard and Paquette 2006).

Researchers have sometimes tended to regard religious belief as ‘simple’ faith, but the reality is probably much more complex. any belief system (whether belief in a deity, a political ideal or a philosophical concept) involves many elements: knowledge and memory of concepts involved in the belief, understanding of the meaning of the concepts, the decision to accept certain concepts as truths, and application of the concepts to facets of the individual’s life and of the world; it is reasonable to assume that there are also emotions that are associated with a faith or belief. given this partial list of elements involved in religious belief, is it realistic to suppose that all aspects would reside in one small area of the brain?

Suppose for a moment that there is a ‘god spot’. how would one account for atheism? What if a surgeon had to excise this area of the brain because an individual had a tumour there? Would the postoperative person now be an atheist? What about agnostics? Would their ‘god spots’ be considered to be malfunctioning?