Does Religious Belief Atrophy Your Brain?

LOL! This story from Scientific American which theorizes that deep religious belief results in atrophy in the hippocampus portion of believers' brains is too funny in some ways. It certainly dovetails with my view that far right Christian conservatives are mentally challenged and abhor thinking - indeed, they want a sheep like existence where they are told what to do and what to think with absolutely no thought process involved. It also may help to explain the growing idiocy in the Republican Party as well. According to Wikipedia, the hippocampus plays important roles in the consolidation of information from short-term memory to long-term memory and spatial navigation. It is also one of the first regions of the brain to suffer damage; memory problems and disorientation appear among the first symptoms. The symptoms also would seem to describe the Tea Party crowd as well. Here are some story highlights:
*
“Religious factors and hippocampal atrophy in late life,” by Amy Owen and colleagues at Duke University represents an important advance in our growing understanding of the relationship between the brain and religion.
*
In this study, Owen et al. used MRI to measure the volume of the hippocampus, a central structure of the limbic system that is involved in emotion as well as in memory formation. . . . The study by Owen et al. is unique in that it focuses specifically on religious individuals compared to non-religious individuals. This study also broke down these individuals into those who are born again or who have had life-changing religious experiences.
*
The results showed significantly greater hippocampal atrophy in individuals reporting a life-changing religious experience. In addition, they found significantly greater hippocampal atrophy among born-again Protestants, Catholics, and those with no religious affiliation, compared with Protestants not identifying as born-again.
*
The authors offer the hypothesis that the greater hippocampal atrophy in selected religious groups might be related to stress. They argue that some individuals in the religious minority, or those who struggle with their beliefs, experience higher levels of stress. This causes a release of stress hormones that are known to depress the volume of the hippocampus over time.
*
[A] person might perceive God to be punishing them and therefore have significant stress in the face of their religious struggle. Others experience religious struggle because of conflicting ideas with their religious tradition or their family. Even very positive, life-changing experiences might be difficult to incorporate into the individual’s prevailing religious belief system and this can also lead to stress and anxiety. Perceived religious transgressions can cause emotional and psychological anguish. . . . And all of these phenomena can have potentially negative effects on the brain.
*
To me, Christianists clearly demonstrate an atrophied mindset when it comes to thinking. And just as they unthinkingly claim to follow the Bible, they latch onto other precepts that they clearly do not understand. A case in point? Bob Felton at Civil Commotion notes the Tea Party's bizarre admiration of Ayn Rand. In contrast to the Tea Party/Christianist/GOP resistance to thinking, Ayn Rand believed that “To think or not to think” is a moral question, and that the moral answer is “to think.” Obviously, this crowd may need to engage in more thinking and less blind obedience to mindless dogma. We were endowed with intelligence and an ability to reason. One of the biggest sins is to refuse to use this innate gift.