Can science really change a Christian's faith in God? Psychologists claimed they were able to do just that, simply by targeting the brain with magnets.
Experiments conducted by Dr. Keise Izuma from the University of York in England and Colin Holbrook from the University of California, Los Angeles, allegedly altered their test subjects' beliefs in God using a procedure called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).
The 38 participants in the experiments, who have an average age of 21 years old, were subjected to this procedure and were asked to think about death.
Half of them formed part of a control group and received a low-level "sham" procedure that did not affect their brains.
The other half received sufficient energy through TMS to lower the activity in their posterior medial frontal cortex.
This part of the brain, which is near the surface and just a few inches up from the forehead, is associated with detecting problems and triggering responses that address them.
The participants were then asked several questions on their religious beliefs, including those that pertain to the following statements: "There exists an all-powerful, all-knowing, loving God"; "there exist good personal spiritual beings, whom we might call angels"; and "there exists an evil personal spiritual being, whom we might call the devil."
The subjects of the experiment, who admitted to having significant religious beliefs before TMS, were found to have 32.8 percent less belief in God, angels, or heaven after the procedure.
"As expected, we found that when we experimentally turned down the posterior medial frontal cortex, people were less inclined to reach for comforting religious ideas despite having been reminded of death," Dr. Izuma explained, as quoted by WND.com.
Aside from religious beliefs, the researchers also claimed to have positively altered the participants' perceptions about immigrants.
After being subjected to TMS, the participants were told to read a positive essay and a critical essay about the United States written by a Latin American immigrant.
They were then asked to rate how much they like the essay's authors and his views. It turned out that they were 28.5 percent more positive toward an immigrant before they were subjected to TMS.
"People often turn to ideology when they are confronted by problems," Dr. Izuma explained. "We wanted to find out whether a brain region that is linked with solving concrete problems, like deciding how to move one's body to overcome an obstacle, is also involved in solving abstract problems addressed by ideology."
