Faith and Disbelief

When it comes to religion, believers and nonbelievers appear to think very differently. But at the level of the brain; is believing in God different from believing that the sun is a star or that 4 is an even number? While religious faith remains one of the most significant features of human life, little is known about its relationship to ordinary belief. Nor is it known whether religious believers differ from nonbelievers in how they evaluate statements of fact.

In the first neuroimaging study to systematically compare religious faith with ordinary cognition, UCLA and University of Southern California researchers have found that while the human brain responds very differently to religious and nonreligious propositions, the process of believing or disbelieving a statement, whether religious or not, seems to be governed by the same areas in the brain. The study also found that devout Christians and nonbelievers use the same brain regions to judge the truth of religious and nonreligious propositions. Sam Harris, who recently completed his doctoral dissertation in the lab of Mark Cohen, a professor of psychiatry at the UCLA Staglin Center for Cognitive Neuroscience, was a lead author on the study. Jonas Kaplan, a research assistant professor at the USC's Brain and Creativity Institute, was the co-lead author.

The study involved 30 adults - 15 committed Christians and 15 nonbelievers - who underwent three functional MRI (fMRI) scans while evaluating religious and nonreligious statements as "true" or "false." The statements were designed to produce near perfect agreement between the two groups during nonreligious trials (e.g., "Eagles really exist") and near perfect disagreement during religious trials (e.g., "Angels really exist"). Contrasting belief and disbelief yielded increased activity in the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC), an area of the brain thought to be involved in reward and in judgments of self-relevance. "This region showed greater activity whether subjects believed statements about God, the Virgin Birth, etc., or statements about ordinary facts," the authors said.

The case for belief being content-independent was further bolstered by the fact that while the trial statements accepted by religious believers were rejected by nonbelievers, and vice versa, the brains of both showed the same pattern of activity for belief and disbelief. A comparison of all religious with all nonreligious statements suggested that religious thinking is more associated with brain regions that govern emotion, self-representation and cognitive conflict in both believers and nonbelievers, while thinking about ordinary facts is more reliant upon memory retrieval networks. Activity in the brain's anterior cingulate cortex, an area associated with cognitive conflict and uncertainty, suggested that both believers and nonbelievers experienced greater uncertainty when evaluating religious statements.

The study raises the possibility that the differences between belief and disbelief may one day be reliably distinguished by neuroimaging techniques. "Despite vast differences in the underlying processing responsible for religious and nonreligious modes of thought," the authors write, "the distinction between believing and disbelieving a proposition appears to transcend content. These results may have many areas of application - ranging from the neuropsychology of religion, to the use of 'belief-detection' as a surrogate for 'lie-detection,' to understanding how the practice of science itself, and truth-claims generally, emerge from the biology of the human brain."

Harris is the author of two New York Times best-sellers, The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation which have been published in more than 15 languages, and is the co-founder and CEO of The Reason Project. His writing has appeared in Newsweek, the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, the Times of London, the Boston Globe, the Atlantic and many other journals. Other authors on the study included Cohen, Susan Bookheimer and Marco Iacoboni of UCLA; and Ashley Curiel of Pepperdine University. The authors report no conflict of interest.

Neotribal Festival

This is the first thing you learn about festival: to get there, you must leave here. You must, in other words, cross over, out of the ordinary world. Maybe you haul your tent to a glade in the middle of nowhere, and maybe you just hand some guy your ticket. But either way, you must cross a threshold. Without even noticing it, your normal body armor starts to slip away, as you instinctively recognize that the strangers around you are not quite so strange anymore, for even if they look strange, which could easily be the case, they are no longer judging you in the same way that people in the mundane world do. They are more likely to be friends you just haven't met yet, fellow conspirators of joy.

The anthropologist Victor Turner used the word liminal to describe the passageway between the known and the unknown, the path that takes you to a nomadic territory that lies in-betwixt and in-between. Turner was interested in traditional rites of passage, those tribal ceremonies that guide participants through the process of social transformation - from childhood to adulthood, say, or from novice to shaman. Such rites are important inspirations for today's neotribalists as well, both consciously and not. For though the festival rarely marks its participants with the obvious cuts and tattoos of a puberty rite, it does hold out the potential for real change, and this potential lies in the liminal: the deeply felt sense that the normal rules are suspended or warped, that a possible world is emerging, and that a new self can rise to greet it.

Every summer, tens of thousands of participants descend upon dozens of festivals and gatherings, great and small. The names of these clans and crews are legion: hippies, ravers, pagans, crusties, free spirits, burners, seekers, travelers, eco-warriors. They gather together to dance, to escape, to hold ritual and to craft a visionary culture based on community, creative self-expression and a celebratory earth wisdom. Labels are always dangerous, but an honest name for the scene is neotribal. These are the new tribes, recreating and reinventing patterns of organic culture that are inspired by the premodern past but designed for a high-tech planet hurtling through a period of unprecedented global change.

In festival culture, everyone is part of the picture - physical arts like poi and hooping are widely practiced, crafters make and sell art and ritual craft; and people treat fashion as an invocation and a performance. Everyone, in fact, is performing - not posing so much as actively participating in a collective game whose goal is beauty, wonder and transport. Festivals can be a wild time, but for many participants, the festival is also a vital space of cultural invention. Within the environs of the gathering, half sacred and half imagined, another possible world appears. Despite the variety of festivals and clans, certain values come to the fore: community over consumerism, the power of the feminine, the wisdom of consciousness exploration and the ethical call to develop a hands-on harmony with the earth. Some of these values grow out of countercultural movements generations old, others are modeled on the folkways of other times and places - sometimes with respect and sometimes with a hasty hunger. Like all ideals, neotribal values are rarely realized in full and are more complex and contradictory than they initially appear.

People have gathered in ritual celebrations throughout recorded history; and no doubt back through the depths of prehistory as well. At the same time, and despite the tremendous differences in human cultures, anthropologists recognize a shared language of the festival. People wear special attire, sometimes donning masks or fancy headgear; and sometimes painting their bodies. They drink and eat and dance, often with great exuberance and for hours or even days on end. Intoxicants are taken, if they have them, and maybe the spirits show up and join in the dance. Emile Durkheim, who believed that religion was fundamentally a social process, called the energy raised by such gatherings "collective effervescence." And though this powerful group buzz is invariably dedicated to the gods of earth and sky, it often generates its energies through the more secular strategies of a party. These entwined goals are key to the modern neotribal festival, whose exuberance bubbles up in the space between sacred and profane, ritual and fete, ceremony and celebration.

In his book The Eternal Return, the historian of religion Mircea Eliade described how certain rituals allow mythic time to erupt inside mundane history. In particular, Eliade talked about annual tribal ceremonies that stage the recreation of the cosmos. The idea, which is found throughout primal societies, is that by ritually returning to the chaos at the beginning of things, and then reenacting the emergence of our ordered world, the cosmos itself is renewed. Such ceremonies give us an insight into the deep impulses of the festival, within whose electronic noise and psychedelic chaos stir new forms of living and being together on this planet. The cutting edge festivals today are green and sustainable, with workshops on alternative fuel and carbon footprints rounding out the music and dance. Even more vitally, the infrastructure of the festival itself is becoming an experiment in right planetary living. This isn't just global warming window dressing. This represents an intuition, welling up from primal memory perhaps, that the festival is a foundation of world renewal.

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Spiritual Nomad

There is a significant phase that occurs in the process of initiation for many people that is referred to as the "Spiritual Nomad." Often, when one reaches this transition phase of spiritual evolution, it can be so painfully unnerving to the personality/ego that it not only devastates one's self esteem; it also severely undermines our confidence to manifest even the most basic needs for our survival. It is precisely our "root" fears of survival that are being shaken to the core and unpeeled from us during this process. We are being prompted to work toward clearing these fears and perfecting our trust and surrender. So it is extremely important to understand the dynamics of why this occurs and actually how entirely common it is.


This will help you avoid the pitfall of allowing yourself to dwell in feelings of humiliation, shame and embarrassment by this externalization of forces that transform your world into what appears to be a great "sacrifice." This is a crucial part of some of our development and we need to realize that many people have already undergone, or are currently working through this phase of spiritual development. This is a temporary phase. So if you know anyone who is presently working through this, do be sure to acknowledge their courage, strength and bravery to surrender to divine order and align to their soul's purpose. Send them love. This is the truth of what they are doing and it is to be honored and acknowledged. We need to be more conscious of supporting those being recruited and the new initiates awakening to reinforce the divine purposes of awakening transformation on this planet. We are moving incredibly swiftly - forward.

So what is a "Spiritual Nomad"? Some questions to define "The Spiritual Nomad": are you currently jobless, juggling jobs, possibly homeless and relationship-less... much to your own bewilderment because you are an incredibly talented, skilled and loving being? You may even have assorted credentials to your name. Do you feel invisible - like no one will hire you, love you or even recognize you? And, really, for no apparent reason (it feels like you have a mark on your forehead)? Are you unable to do anything as you did in the past to earn a living or live as you once did? Are you a healer or working as a mentor, teacher, trainer or therapist; running around trying to find a way to translate this into cash or a means of support?

Do you seem to travel a lot, drive or go long distances; or sleep in several different places in short periods of time, perhaps even on your ex's couch? Do you feel confused about your purpose and identity in the world? Are there people, such as your biological family or friends, who are completely shocked or troubled by your life, attempting to offer their advice of what went wrong with you? Welcome to "The Spiritual Nomad" experience. Fun, isn't it?

This is the time in one's life where every aspect of perceived "security" in the structure of the human world is completely unstable, unknown and unforeseen. Your life in all major areas; such as relationship, money, career, residence is all abruptly halted, changed and/or terminated. You are left feeling isolated and standing in a place of total bewilderment, wondering what happened to your life, the people in it, and your former identity. This sets off every fear button you have because there is absolutely no sign of what is going on, what is coming or why it's happening. There is only a sense that some force came in, picked you up out of your hologram, and placed you into someone else's life. For a while, you may not recognize whose life it is. It is very much like the sensation captured in the Talking Heads song lyrics, Once in a Lifetime..."Where does that highway go? Am I right? Am I wrong?"

In the process of our unraveling consciousness in this human drama setting, this is one of the experiences that we have set up as "spirit" to create the experience of learning to fully surrender to transformational forces. It is a complete dismantling of our ego and ego defenses. This is the crossroads where we start to leave the world of human order and align to the Divine Order. To many of our earthly cohorts, biological families and old energy friends; it will appear as if we have stepped off the edge of a chasm into a realm of insanity. Groups will stand around shaking their heads, whispering how you have gone off your rocker, and offer lots of advice and theories about your problems and issues. As unsolicited advice starts mounting - generally suggesting that you are incompetent, "less than", unrealistic, ungrounded, living in the clouds or just purely strange - your subconscious fear programs get triggered. Maybe, just maybe, could they be right? Internal pressures increase and you feel extremely conflicted about who you really are and what the heck you are doing with your life. This sets you off on a tangent of extreme inner examination and the re-evaluation of every goal, dream, thought and idea that you have had about your role in the world. Will I ever make it? Will I ever become self actualized? Will I have the ability to create abundance in my life?

This process is designed to cultivate the incredible inner strength needed to face yourself and your deepest fears of survival. You then become intimate with the universal Law of Abundance and learn how generous the universe really is, even if it's not all manifested in order of your personal preference. You find that somehow, someway, all your base needs are being met, even though you have not the foggiest clue how it's happening or who some of the strangers are that have appeared in your life to support you - in ways you would never imagine. You learn how to receive from total strangers (an illusion, as everyone is family) or from new sources, and learn how to acknowledge and receive these new ideas of abundance of which you were not formerly aware. So, most commonly, one feels a type of embarrassment at being in the situation; yet, simultaneously, one feels gratitude for these blessings being demonstrated at the most mundane levels (or even incredibly opulent levels) of existence. Finally, at about this time, you begin to trust and realize that you really are divinely protected and supported. You can relax now (at least a little).

These experiences do cultivate a level of deep faith and trust in the transformational order, even when you do not have any external validation of "safety" - and that safety could be monetary, emotional support or a place to call "home" with a bed in it. Even when you are feeling blind and disconnected, to face this uncertainty and to find yourself "okay" with it all is a major revelation. When you realize that your deepest fears (so many of them) did not happen anyway, and, if they did... well, it really was not as bad as you once imagined it. You can face just about anything. Your personal power begins to increase and your inner conviction keeps on growing. Well, if you find yourself smack dab in the center of this process, know that there are many designs and great plans for you. But, it is important to work through all your fear, worry and obsessions. Then work to allow guidance, support and your inner sense of knowing to come to you on your path; even when it makes absolutely no logical sense. You are learning to work your higher sensory perceptions and these antennae within you are being finely tuned for your new task and mission in the world.

You cannot "make" anything happen while you are in this process. So, you must relax as best you can. You are in transition to your greater destiny. When relaxing, you are expanding, not constricting and the transformational forces can more easily work through you and for you. Know that transformational forces are working magic in your life in ways you cannot comprehend. That there really is a divine order to what is happening to you. Know that it is okay not to know. Get more comfortable with uncertainty and external chaos while you cultivate that impenetrable core of essence to show the way for you and others. Finally, know that likeminded people are out there.