Why We Believe What We Believe

         ***Disclaimer: this blog post contains discussion on religion and the psyche of how our brain believes it. This is not me saying religion is psychological. I am a Christian and fully believe in Jesus Christ, my post just explains how we are able to process the belief of something like religion. This belief system could also fit with fairytales, horoscopes, and other things of the supernatural world. I am also not a licensed psychologist, just a student of psychology who likes to research topics of question. ***


 We believe in things such as religion, fairytales, horoscopes, fortunes, and many other things on a daily basis. I do it, you do it, we all do it. But why? From the very beginning of my interest in psychology when I was in junior high, I remember one specific question that always arose when I though of the psyche of the brain "Why do we believe what we believe?".
          I have read and researched many APA articles and searched in many books that I  own and I have found one online that I would like to share. The article that I would like to share information from is from the APA website itself, it is titled " A reason to believe".
          In this article it talks about the three main components on our cognitive reasoning of believing. This article is based on believing in religion. The three large components of our cognitive reasoning of belief in something like religion are predisposition, neural, and pro-social.
          In some ways doctors believe it is predisposed that we believe the earth was created for our use and to justify that reason means that there is some great creator that created this world just for us and that is constantly watching over us. This stems from the belief that someone or something is behind everything that happens in our lives on a daily basis. It gives us answers to the unknown and as a human or any species for that matter, we thrive off needing answers to justify or explain unknown phenomenon in our world. As the article states, it is better to think the rustling of leaves in the woods is a predator rather than ignore it and risk death.
          Obviously our beliefs come from the way we think and the way we think is neurological, therefore there is going to be a neurological explanation to believing in something. As there is a spot in the brain for anxiety and fear and happiness, there is also a spot that has been found to be the "God Spot". It is actually in the same part of the brain involved in deciphering people's emotions and intentions. This has to do with theory of mind. This spot lights up when people talk about religion and it also happens when people pray. Believing in religion causes less ERN spikes (error-related negativity) - ERN spikes happen when we make mistakes which cause anxiety. This article talks about a study done on Buddhist and how they were able to show that Buddhist have a better and stronger attention system due to the meditation for their religion that they do on a daily basis. It makes people calmer because it explains the unknown.
          Social organization is an important part of society, especially in todays world. How is social organization carried out? How does it organize us into groups and tell us right from wrong? Religion itself allows us to be social, when you believe in a religion, you're automatically categorized into that group. Like if you believe in Christianity, then you are a Christian, and you are in that group, same goes for Catholicism , Buddhism, Hinduism, etc. When you are in these groups, you socialize with the same type of people and you create a mini community inside this big whole category of the world! Each category, or community, has their own set of morals and values, but most are essentially the same; Do no harm, play fairly, be loyal, respect authority, live purely (Azar, 2010). These morals are what keeps each community organized and united. Although this separation and organization and unity within each community or religion can keep the peace separately and give us things to live by as humans, it can also cause distrust between outside groups which can pose a problem.
          If it weren't for how our brains psychologically processed things, would we be able to wrap our minds around the fact that there is an amazing God(s) (whichever one you believe in) watching over us and protecting us? It is always interesting to wonder and discover and as humans, that is what we live for, curiosity. That is purely what this blog post is for, curiosity and interest. So thank your brain for the amazing things it allows you to do, and thank God for making our brains work that way!