Now I know why we say "Bappa Morya...!"

We are born believers. Human beings are programmed by evolution to believe in God because it gives them a better chance of survival, researchers have claimed. The idea has emerged from studies of the way children's brains develop and of the workings of the brain during the religious experiences. Researchers suggest that during evolution groups of humans with religious tendencies began to benefit from their beliefs, perhaps because they tended to work toegther better and so stood a greater chance of survival. Richard Dawkins has long argued that religious beleifs results from poor education and childhood "indoctrination". But research has also proved that children have a natural intutive thinking about supernatural existence without the "indoctrination". As they grow up they overlay these beliefs with more rational approaches but the tendence to illogical supernatural beliefs remains as religion. These findings are by Prof. Bruce Hood, professor of developmental psychology at Bristol University. Even hardcore atheists have their own set of paranoia and idiosyncrasies to avoid bad luck. In short superstition is also hardwired in our brain.

Dr. Hood's work is supported by other researchers who have found evdence linking religious feelings and experience to particular regions of the brain. They suggest people are programmed to get a feeling of spirituality from electrical activity in these regions. Prof. Andrew Newberg of Radiology at the University of Pennsylvania, has used brain-imaging techniques to show that such feelings are invoked by activity in "belief networks" operating across the brain. This supersedes the earlier concept of a "God spot", activated during meditation or prayer. "The temporal love interacts with many other parts of the brain to provide the full range of religious and spiritual experience", he adds.

This mechanistic view of religious experience is reinforced by separate research carried out by Micheal Persinger of Laurentian University, Ontario, who has used powerful magnetic fields to induce visions and spiritual experiences in volunteers.

Experts also belief that religion is in part because it helps people to bond. Though I am not expert, but based on Astrophysical data, such as

• Universe has been for 13.5 billion years.
• Our nearest star and only source of energy, Sun has been for 5 billion years.
• Our planet, Earth (& also Moon to cause the seasons, tides, ocean currents etc and keep Earth from wobbling) has been for 4.5 billion years.
• Life on Earth has been for 3.5 billion years.
• Modern Human beings on earth have been for 200,000 years.
• Culture, civlization and religious belief systems pertaining to theory of creator has been only for the past 5,000 years.

... I always ask this question why then the Creator took so many years to create the only being , known as of now in all the life form to identify the Creator in Mathematics, Basic Science, Religion etc . ? Somewhere something is missing terribly. But the evidence suggested by the Scientists(Basic Scientists & Social Scientists) makes one thing clear, we are programmed to believe there is God and one who doesn't believe so, has probably a brain software from Microsoft :-)