Religiosity and larger frontal lobes

Graphic of cerebral lobes. Light brown section of the graphic depicts the area of the frontal lobe. (Click on graphic to enlarge)

According to Scientific American:

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Several studies have revealed that people who practice meditation or have prayed for many years exhibit increased activity and have more brain tissue in their frontal lobes, regions associated with attention and reward, as compared with people who do not meditate or pray.

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Reluctance of Western atheists to engage in meditation

Atheist Greta Christina wrote: "A lot of atheists, humanists, and other nonbelievers are leery or dismissive of meditation and mindfulness."

Atheist Greta Christina wrote at the website Humananist.com:

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A lot of atheists, humanists, and other nonbelievers are leery or dismissive of meditation and mindfulness. Some see it as an irretrievably religious or spiritual practice, and want no part in it. Others are put off by the faddish, overused, buzzword quality of the practice and the terminology. And I can understand that. For years, I stayed away from trying this stuff out, for exactly those reasons. I was interested in the practice—I had friends who did it, and who seemed to get a lot out of it. But I couldn’t find anyplace to learn that didn’t base their teaching on Buddhism or some other religion. And I’m too ardent an anti-religionist to “take what you need and leave the rest,” the way many nonbelievers do with religion. After all, I literally wrote the book on angry atheism. For me, trying to learn meditation in a Buddhist center would be like trying to learn meditation in a room full of fingernails scraping on blackboards.

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Although many atheists in the Western World are reluctant to meditate, in the East nontheist Buddhists often practice meditation.

Functions of the frontal lobe

Graphic of a Human brain showing the four major lobes of the cerebrum. Below the cerebral cortex are the cerebellum, pons, olive, and medulla oblongata.

Healthline.com declares about the frontal lobe:

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The frontal lobe is the part of the brain that controls important cognitive skills in humans, such as emotional expression, problem solving, memory, language, judgment, and sexual behavior. It is, in essence, the “control panel” of our personality and our ability to communicate. It is also responsible for primary motor function, or our ability to consciously move our muscles, and the two key areas related to speech, including Broca’s area. The frontal lobe is larger and more developed in humans than in any other organism.

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The Centre for Neuro Skills says about the frontal lobes and their function:

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The frontal lobes are considered our emotional control center and home to our personality. There is no other part of the brain where lesions can cause such a wide variety of symptoms (Kolb & Wishaw, 1990). The frontal lobes are involved in motor function, problem solving, spontaneity, memory, language, initiation, judgement, impulse control, and social and sexual behavior. The frontal lobes are extremely vulnerable to injury due to their location at the front of the cranium, proximity to the sphenoid wing and their large size. MRI studies have shown that the frontal area is the most common region of injury following mild to moderate traumatic brain injury (Levin et al., 1987). There are important asymmetrical differences in the frontal lobes. The left frontal lobe is involved in controlling language related movement, whereas the right frontal lobe plays a role in non-verbal abilities. Some researchers emphasize that this rule is not absolute and that with many people, both lobes are involved in nearly all behavior.

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Education writer Regina Bailey indicates concerning the frontal lobes:

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The frontal lobes are one of the four main lobes or regions of the cerebral cortex. They are positioned at the frontmost region of the cerebral cortex and are involved in movement, decision-making, problem solving, and planning. There are three main divisions of the frontal lobes. They are the prefrontal cortex, the premotor area and the motor area. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for personality expression and the planning of complex cognitive behaviors. The premotor and motor areas of the frontal lobes contain nerves that control the execution of voluntary muscle movement.

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The health writer Molly McAdams writes about the function of the frontal lobes:

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Higher-level thinking is supported by the frontal lobes. Activity in these lobes allows us to reason, make judgments, make plans for the near and far future, make choices, take action, solve problems and generally control our living environment. Without fully functioning frontal lobes, you may have intelligence, but you wouldn’t be able to put it to use.

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Religious, frontal lobes and sexuality

Research indicates that religious women (especially evangelical/low church Protestant women) are more sexually satisfied than irreligious women.

Disinhibited sexual behaviour has been reported following damage to the frontal lobes, particularly the orbitofrontal region of the limbic system.

See also: Atheism and the brain and Atheism and sexuality and Homosexuality and frontal lobe injury

The role of the front lobes in sexuality

As noted above, the frontal lobe plays a role in controlling sexual behavior.

According to the 2007 medical journal article (and its abstract) entitled Neurological control of human sexual behaviour: insights from lesion studies which was published in the Journal of Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Psychiatry:

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We review the human literature examining the effects of neurological insult on human sexual behaviour. We provide a synthesis of the findings to date, and identify key brain regions associated with specific aspects of human sexual behaviour. These include subcortical and cortical regions, with the mesial temporal lobe and the amygdala in particular being a crucial structure in the mediation of human sexual drive... Disinhibited sexual behaviour has been reported following damage to the frontal lobes, particularly the orbitofrontal region of the limbic system. Kolarsky and colleagues54 examined the relationships between “sexual deviation”, age of lesion onset and localisation of lesion (temporal vs extratemporal). The authors defined two diagnostic categories: (1) “sexual deviation”, involving a deviation of sexual object (for example, paedophilia). Homosexuality was included in this category, which would now be considered inappropriate, and (2) “sexual disturbances other than deviations”, including orgasm in response to stimuli unrelated to the subject's sexual preference, hypersexuality and hyposexuality... An association between temporal lobe abnormalities and paedophilia has been reported by Mendez and colleagues.

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Denmark is the third most atheistic country in the world and the website adherents.com reports that 43 - 80% of Danes are agnostics/atheists/non-believers in God.

In 2009, Suzanne Ost reported in her book published by Cambridge University Press, that the child pornography material produced in Denmark (and Holland) still constituted the largest part of child pornography that was currently available, having been transferred into digital format and uploaded onto the internet.

See also:

• Atheism and child pornography

• Atheism and homosexuality

Various aspects related to human sexuality and religion/irreligion

Research indicates that religious women (especially evangelical/low church Protestant women) are more sexually satisfied than irreligious women. See also: Atheism and women

In 2011, The Daily Beast conceded in an article entitled Why Are Christians Having Better Sex Than the Rest of Us?, "The devout are actually having better sex than the rest of us."

Demographic data indicates that atheists have a sub-replacement level of fertility and religious conservatives have high fertility rates (Sub-replacement fertility of atheist populations. High fertility rate of religious conservatives).

On December 23, 2012, Professor Eric Kaufmann who teaches at Birbeck College, University of London wrote:

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I argue that 97% of the world's population growth is taking place in the developing world, where 95% of people are religious. On the other hand, the secular West and East Asia has very low fertility and a rapidly aging population... In the coming decades, the developed world's demand for workers to pay its pensions and work in its service sector will soar alongside the booming supply of young people in the third world. Ergo, we can expect significant immigration to the secular West which will import religious revival on the back of ethnic change. In addition, those with religious beliefs tend to have higher birth rates than the secular population, with fundamentalists having far larger families. The epicentre of these trends will be in immigration gateway cities like New York (a third white), Amsterdam (half Dutch), Los Angeles (28% white), and London, 45% white British.

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Michael Blume, a researcher at the University of Jena in Germany, wrote "Most societies or communities that have espoused atheistic beliefs have not survived more than a century." Blume also indicated concerning concerning his research on this matter: "What I found was the complete lack of a single case of a secular population, community or movement that would just manage to retain replacement level." See also: Atheism and sexuality

Eric Kaufmann has pointed out that the biblical verse to "go forth and multiply" and similar passages of Scripture has contributed to a higher fertility rate for conservative Christians and Orthodox Jews.

See also

• Atheism and the brain

• Atheism and intelligence

• Atheism and Alzheimer's disease

• Sports performance: Religious faith vs. atheism