We asked volunteers to report their own beliefs, God's beliefs, and the average American's beliefs on a wide variety of social issues while they were lying on their backs in an fMRI scanner. We found some clear distinctions. Major differences in neural activity emerged when people reasoned about their own beliefs and the average American's beliefs. We found the very same pattern of differences when people reasoned about God's beliefs versus the average American's beliefs. But the most amazing result of all was that we could not tell the difference in overall neural activity between people reasoning about their own beliefs versus God's beliefs. In the scanner, reasoning about God's beliefs looked the same as reasoning about one's own beliefs.
Nicolas Epley
beliefs, god