There is no "god centre" or specific place for the "god concept" anywhere in the brain. Religious beliefs, including concepts of religious entities, are complex phenomena, that emerge through parrallel processing and storage across many brain regions, e.g. involved in semantics and higher order cognition, etc.

I'm not sure what you mean, when you say "does it generalize out?" The many elements involved, draw on many complex mappings e.g. for personhood, which means that they are both highly general and can be recruited for highly specific congitive processes/content.

This is just speaking from a general cognitive neuroscience standpoint. A few scholars in "neurotheology" might think otherwise, though.

Hi, earlier it was thought that a specific region of the temporal lobe is responsible for religious experiences (aka. God spot), but more recent works has showed that the situation is more complex and a network of brain areas is related to these kind of feelings and concepts (you might want to look at Dr. Beauregard's site: http://www.nourfoundation.com/speakers/mario-beauregard-phd.html). Best,

There are a lot of very interesting studies on the neurological origins of God and yet I do not believe that there has been any firm conclusion as of yet. As mentioned in other responses, it has been proposed that the temporal lobe is strongly related to God experiences but at this time there is no specific area thought to be exclusively responsible for these experiences. The “God-Helmet” experiment conducted by Dr. Michael Persinger was an interesting attempt at locating this God-spot (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=104291534). There are also studies looking into why epileptic seizures create/mimic spiritual experiences. This may actually be where the idea of the temporal lobe connection came from.

I think that “neurotheology” gets dismissed to quickly by the “real” neurosciences. Interdisciplinary discourse is the only real way to open up and truly understand questions like this.

I agree with Andreas Ljeberoth, from the Aarthus University, about the absurd hypothesis that the idea of GOD is localized somewhere in the brain. And, what's about the concept of LOVE, or, worst!, HATE, or, better, SEXUAL DESIRE, ecc? Also Agoston Torok agrees with the greater complexity of the brain function! (THANK'S GOD!!!)

I am referring to the observations of Damasio (i think) wherein people who have suffered a particular trauma to an area of the brain became immediately obsessively religious. And I suspect that sexual desire begins in the amygdala and opens out to include more aesthetic considerations.

Must be very different areas in people who obtain their profit from god and religious services and the ones who are fooled to pay for those services. I would guess, high-order regions in the former and something subcortical in the latter :) These two groups should be studied with fMRI do discover the difference.

I thought That God was located in my heart but I see that some new findings by Johnson et al. (2014) shed more light on this question. Their abstract:

Religious symbols are used throughout the world to evoke specific meaning in adherents. However, it is unclear if the impact of symbols is based upon their meaning or the inherent effect of the visual symbols on the brain. There has never been a study that has assessed the impact of religious symbols, of both positive and negative emotional content, on the brain. In addition, it would also be important to correlate the neurophysiological effect of various religious symbols to specific measures of a person’s perspective on religion. Using functional magnetic resonance imaging to study 20 healthy subjects from different religious backgrounds, we found that neural activation in the primary visual cortex was significantly suppressed in response to religious negative symbols compared with neutral and nonreligious negative symbols. No such deactivation was observed for religious positive symbols. Subjects’ scores on the Quest scale, an index of religious and spiritual orientation and belief, correlated significantly with activity in the primary visual cortex for negative symbols, but not for positive symbols. In addition, scores on the Beliefs About God Assessment Form (BAGAF), that measures the adaptability of a person’s religious beliefs, correlated significantly with activity in the amygdala and insula when observing religious symbols. These findings suggest an early stage visual mechanism underlying the interaction between processing of visual religious symbols and both spiritual quest and adaptive religious beliefs. In addition, the emotional nature of a person’s beliefs appears to interact with the emotional perceptions of different symbols.

Reference;

Pilot study of the effect of religious symbols on brain function: Association with measures of religiosity. Johnson, Kyle D.; Rao, Hengyi; Wintering, Nancy; Dhillon, Namisha; Hu, Siyuan; et al. Spirituality in Clinical Practice 1.2 (Jun 2014): 82-98

"The God concept" seems far too simplistic to me. It has to be enlarged. Here are some accepted concepts about God:

In the Christian Bible there are two names, YHWH and a more commonly used one. There are many descriptions of God there too, a lot of qualities go into the Jewish tradition's understanding of what God  - by what he presents himself as, how he is described in books of the Bible, and by his doings.

Hebrews also worshiped the Queen of Heaven, God's wife. That is "Mrs. God".

The Christian's God is triune by decree (Nicean, as far as I remember). Jesus as God, God's Son, one with God of old, and so on - these are ideas that followers of old settled on, event though textual criticism has many things different. Bart D. Ehrman shows how forgery was made use of, with doctrines crowning it.

In Hinduism there is a henotheistic way of thinking, according to F. Max Müller - that is, god after god is regarded as a funnel of the Most Sublime.

Further, God is referred to by thousand names and descriptions in various works.

The Bhagavad Gita uses appellatives for Sri Krishna, the God-descension (avatar of Vishnu) in the work.

Not one God, but many. And with goddesses it is similar. There are for example ten Hindu goddesses that all are regarded as manifestations of the Shakti.

Gods and mates reflect abstract conceptions through iconic art.

In the philosophical sphere in Hinduism, there is Brahman ("All-God", much like Pan in Greek lore,  at the back of the "trinity" of Brahma, Visnu and Siva (with consorts).

Other God-concepts in Hinduism are "Being-Consciousness-Bliss" , or Sat-Chit-Ananda. There is also Sat-Tat-Aum - and so on, on and on.

I guess you get my point: The God-concept is vast and generously treated. It is not one thing, it means many things and many different things to many.

Kind regards

Tormod Kinnes

Actually God is located in every cell more exactly in the DNA. Study it carefully. Do you think this was an accident? A big bang?

The structure of DNA in the nucleosome core

Timothy J. Richmond & Curt A. Davey. Nature 423, 145-150 (8 May 2003)

The 1.9-Å-resolution crystal structure of the nucleosome core particle containing 147 DNA base pairs reveals the conformation of nucleosomal DNA with unprecedented accuracy. The DNA structure is remarkably different from that in oligonucleotides and non-histone protein–DNA complexes. The DNA base-pair-step geometry has, overall, twice the curvature necessary to accommodate the DNA superhelical path in the nucleosome. DNA segments bent into the minor groove are either kinked or alternately shifted. The unusual DNA conformational parameters induced by the binding of histone protein have implications for sequence-dependent protein recognition and nucleosome positioning and mobility. Comparison of the 147-base-pair structure with two 146-base-pair structures reveals alterations in DNA twist that are evidently common in bulk chromatin, and which are of probable importance for chromatin fibre formation and chromatin remodelling.

I'll revert to my post above, and add: ideas go along with neural networks in the brain also. Ideas of God and the Divine are functions of a complex character, and seem to me to involve several parts and "layers" of the brain - and differently in different people, depending in part on one's upbringing.

As for God in the DNA, it goes along with the cardinal idea of the immanence of God. That is God in one aspect, as told of in various traditions.