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you miss the point that true mystics never claim that they are right though

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There is no definitive answer, but a reasonable explanation is that, like the structures that mediate aggression and give rise to cooperation thus lending to our success as a species, structures that predilect us toward belief in a supreme being contribute to the stability of society by way of fear.

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Diploid said:

Religion and other faith-based belief systems are widespread. Almost every culture and society has some flavor of creation mythology and God concept. The reason these ideas are so common is because they have a neurological (not mystical) origin.

First some neurology background:

One of the most ancient structures in the human brain is the amygdala buried deep inside the head in the temporal lobe of the brain. The amygdala gives rise to fear and aggression. When a lower animal wants something, it takes it through aggression triggered by the amygdala.

Humans and other higher vertebrates filter this aggression through the evolution of the cerebral cortex - the outer convoluted wrapper of the brain with a characteristic folded appearance. The cortex is where cooperation and consciousness occurs in vertebrates and where higher thinking and language occurs in humans. It is the cortex that allows wolves and humans to cooperate and in so doing, to become a successful species; where one animal could not hunt a larger animal, several cooperating could. Through mediation of the amygdala's aggression by the cortex's high functions, humans form cooperative societies and other social structures that benefit us.

This theme of an ancient part of the brain mediated by a modern part of the brain is repeated in the Thalamus. The Thalamus is a sort of switch board that controls which neuron signals are emotionally salient and which are trivial. It's the Thalamus that brings to your conscious awareness the red light at the intersection in front of you while automatically filtering out the parked cars by the side of the road.

The Thalamus also regulates the intensity of the emotional response you have to events. For example, seeing a pretty flower is cause for a smile, but seeing a loved one die is cause for a much stronger response. Causing an appropriate emotional response to stimuli is one of the Thalamus' functions.

Without the Thalamus, our consciousness would be flooded with so much information and intense emotions that we would be unable to function, and this is exactly what happens in people with temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE).

Now the beef:

When a patient with TLE has a seizure, they experience intense religious auras. They have the sensation that they are God or are being visited by God. They feel like they're one with the cosmos and often say things like "Finally, I see and understand everything". TLE seizures are runaway religious thoughts, and this ascribing enormous emotional significance to every minutia is essentially a religious experience.

In neurologically healthy people, these thoughts are regulated by the Thalamus; their religious thoughts and emotions are down-regulated to levels that allow them to function, but in patients with TLE, when the epileptic seizure occurs, the amygdala begins to fire off a cascade of signals indiscriminately. The nearby thalamus, also affected by the seizure, is unable to mediate and the result is a welling up of bizarre, inappropriate emotions about everything. A flower, or a fire hydrant, or a rock all seems as supremely important a parent or close friend and elicit inappropriate intense emotions that render the patient delusional and unable to function.

All this begs the question of why would evolution have given rise to these structures in our brain associated with religion. There is no definitive answer, but a reasonable explanation is that, like the structures that mediate aggression and give rise to cooperation thus lending to our success as a species, structures that predilect us toward belief in a supreme being contribute to the stability of society by way of fear.

This is evidenced by the way many religions have used our built-in neurological desire for a supreme being to control and subjugate us throughout history.

What do you think?

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If anything, such neurological systems speak in favour of religion.
They must have some purpuse.

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Its usefulness is in how it contributes to the stability of society and the spread of the species. Anything that makes the species more successful adds to a positive feedback evolutionary mechanism.

For example, belief in a supreme being inhibits people from committing murder for fear of going to hell. Without this inhibition, society would fall apart and we would never have achieved all that we have.

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Diploid said:

If there is some mechanism for religious experiences, it has to have a direct use.

Its usefulness is in how it contributes to the stability of society and the spread of the species. Anything that makes the species more successful adds to a positive feedback evolutionary mechanism.

For example, belief in a supreme being inhibits people from committing murder for fear of going to hell. Without this inhibition, society would fall apart and we would never have achieved all that we have.

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