Brain Belief – Common Questions, 6

Brain Belief – Common Questions, 6 Are “myths” beliefs?  The human brain—left frontal lobe especially—continually tries to come up with reasons for everything. When it cannot understand what happened, it tries to create what it believes is a plausible reason. Many ancient myths were created in an attempt to explain natural phenomenon. Thus an angry “god” lives in a volcano. Or a drought occurred because the “god” of rain is mad because it didn’t receive enough gifts. Studies have shown that the human brain (child and adult) is very susceptible to deceptions and illusions including magic shows, haunted houses at Halloween, slight-of-hand card tricks, and so on. Furthermore, the human brain lacks a well-developed capacity to distinguish the accuracy of its own beliefs. Adult brains are particularly vulnerable in terms of maintaining self-deceptive beliefs. What about beliefs that have been “proven”? (more to come)