Sapolsky on the belief in God

A big dilemma that I always had is why would anyone with even a bit of common sense ever believe in the existence of God (a 2003 Harris Poll reveals that 90% of Americans believe in God and 84% also believe in life after death). In my opinion, simply stating that an invisible man who lives in the sky and spits fire at us every time he gets mad doesn’t make any sense, should be enough to convince every remotely intelligent person that God doesn’t exist. Or as Sapolsky humorously says: “the god concept gets mighty infuriating when you spend your time thinking about, say, untreatably aggressive childhood leukemia”. Michael Shermer, in his book How We Believe, shows that there exists a negative correlation between someone’s level of religiosity and level of education. However, this correlation surely doesn’t imply causation since even very intelligent people (namely Einstein who referred often to God in his scientific work, and even my academic supervisor, a PhD) do believe in God.

I neither have the will nor the energy here to try refuting all extra-biblical proofs believers claim to have of God’s existence (the Bible being nothing but a collection of manuscripts whose contents have been misinterpreted, mistranslated and altered hundreds of times and thus believing in it makes as much sense as believing that Madame Bovary, The Great Gatsby or Tarzan are actually real), such that there must have been something before nothing, the apparently intelligent design of the universe, occurrence of unexplainable phenomena and near death encounters. I spent endless time debating these things with my religious friends, whose arguments always rest on a non-rational basis, and I do not wish to go trough it again here. Instead I would like to refer to Robert Sapolsky’s answer to the 2005 Edge World Question: “What do you believe is true even though you cannot prove it?” His answer is the “unjustifiable belief that there is no God”. He very amusingly argues that instead of believing without requiring proof, it is more justifiable not to believe without requiring proof. So for instance, if I claim that tofu spaceships are responsible for the crop circles, everyone would agree that you have more reasons not to believe me without requiring proof than I have reasons to believe it without requiring proof. Sapolsky’s idea basically amounts to the logical fact that if someone believes in something as extravagant as the existence of God, it rests on his shoulders to prove his claim rather than on everyone else’s to disprove it.

As to the sticky question why do so many people believe in God, I still am not satisfied with the multitude of answers I came across. I read only some books and scripts on the subject (namely Shermer’s How We Believe) and was never fully convinced by the proposed explanations. My modest opinion is that because we live in a very religious world where well 90% of people believe in God, so much media attention is attributed to the church and the pope (regarded as a superior being who must live in a palace and wear a crown), we celebrate Christmas and Easter and refer to God commonly in the everyday speech (“oh my god”, “please god”, “god help us” and god knows what else), it is uneasy for most people to say that they don’t believe in God.

Robert Sapolsky is a neuroscientist and his main interests include research of stress and neurological diseases in primates. Some of his books on animal and human behavior include:
A Primate's Memoir
Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers
Monkeyluv

His complete answer to the Edge World Question can be read here.

The Edge World Question for 2006 is “What is your dangerous idea?” and was proposed by Steven Pinker. You can read his always interesting and stylishly written answer here.

Remotely controlled rat

Just recently I came across an article in the May 2002 issue of Nature where a team from the State University of New York describe their implementation of a remotely controlled rat. Electrodes are implanted in the somatosensory cortical (SI) and medial forebrain (MFB) areas of the rat's brain. Electrodes in the SI area stimulate sensory cells associated with the left and right whiskers, whereas stimulation of the MFB serves as a reward cue. Sending electrical pulses to the SI electrodes gives the rat a feeling of encountering an obstacle as would be naturally sensed by the right or left whiskers, compelling it to steer in the opposite direction. Stimulation of the reward MFB area follows correct steering and encourages the animal to respond as desired. Continuous stimulation of MFB while the rat is in motion also encourages it to proceed moving in its current direction. As described in their publication, the research team was able to remotely displace the rat in a simple slalom course as well as in a more naturally occurring three-dimensional obstacle course (watch the video here). Implanted electrodes can be stimulated from a laptop computer located as far as 500 meters away. This is achieved by a microprocessor-based, remote-controlled microstimulator placed in a backpack mounted on the animal.

I find this an extremely interesting study since it doesn't use brain stimulation in its traditional application of discovering functional mechanisms of the nervous system, but it is rather used to induce desired subject behavior. Using as such animals instead of expensive hardware as platforms for robotics can surely beneficially replace mobile machines. Potential applications include search and rescue of survivors, clearing mine fields, pest control, military surveillance and mapping of remote areas, otherwise dangerous and difficult to perform by human workers.

The authors assure that the rats don't suffer in any way and no cruelty is involved in their manipulation. Of course, animal rights proponents and other tree hugging hippies will never be convinced, and oppose such applications by the habitual virtue of their divine ability to determine what is moral and what isn't.

Article reference:
Sanjiv K. Talwar et. al. Rat navigation guided by remote control. Nature, 417: 37-38, 2002.

Article describing the detailed technical implementation:
Xu S et. al. A multi-channel telemetry system for brain microstimulation in freely roaming animals. J Neurosci Methods, 133: 57-63, 2004. (read abstract here)

Related articles on the web:
National Geographic article.
BBC News article.

Back in black

Back from hiatus after almost half a year, you can expect again regular posts on this blog about this, that and the other.