Radio Free Monterey
Toon of the Day

There is a god part of the brain whether the religious chose to acknowledge it not.  The right frontal lobe of the cerebral cortex exhibits greatly increased neural activity during prayer, sermons, thought about beliefs or gods, or even when given verbal spiritual and supernatural terms and words to process.   It doesn't matter which god, which religion, what kind of prayer, or meditation, its all the same; a spot of the right brain fires off like a cancer of activity accomplishing nothing except false solace and perceived, yet temporary, relaxation to the body.  Its a powerful feeling and becomes drug like.  The captoon at the left only displays a few of it's symptoms as they manifest to the public. Most of these symptoms affect all of us, because believers are in every community.  Narrowed vision that believes there is a supernatural universe impedes our scientific and technological progress.  Guilty sinners crack under their burden and commit heinous crimes against the innocent that they can justify, rightly or not, as an act of redemption through the supernatural entity or a god.  Cult dependency combines with strange rituals to aid and comfort those involved in feeding their right frontal brain spots.  Group compliance becomes an affirmation that the believer is not crazy.  The fathers the believers never knew, or wish they had, are easily replaced by icons and drawings of the all powerful "father of us all."  At it's extreme; loud thoughts from the subconscious lend certainty that there exists a separate self within.  The god part of the brain's thoughts, trained over time to emit spiritual garble, become the voice of him, or her, or it (a god).  Belief in the supernatural is not healthy for children and other living things. 

James G. Mason

see my atheism web site:  Atheism - It's Not What You Believe