When the pathways between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain are damaged due to head injury, massive personality changes can result. The prototypical example is Phineas Gage, a railway worker whose prefrontal cortex was destroyed by a railroad spike. He survived, but he exhibited shocking behavior, getting into fights and choosing the pleasurable and the easy over longer-term satisfaction. One might say that the prefrontal cortex is the neurological basis of the conscience. Weak interconnections between the prefrontal cortex and the rest of the brain have been observed in criminals, sociopaths, drug addicts, and schizophrenics.[\quote] Now the way our brains evolved, limbic system is embryologically older. The limbic system is involved in the regulation of emotion. The limbic system is highly connected to both the nucleus accumbens and the prefrontal cortex. So humans are capable of deriving pleasure both from the solving of problems and through emotional reactions. So it seems to me that basically theists are theists, not because they really believe in any cognitive way, Rather because when they go into belief mode, emotions are stirred, anxieties reduced and the nucleus accumbens is stimulated. Humans are creatures of habit. So pathways are developed to bring pleasure and relief via religious activity. The religious seem to reverse interaction between the pre-frontal cortex and limbic system. Without religion, we would use these regions of the brain to regulate our behavior in order to activate rewards. In religion, you have a lot of fear wound up in the limbic system, then this fear is supposed to regulate the activity of the pre-frontal cortex to keep one from being ‘sinful’. I think we should all face the fact that we are just wired differently than theists, probably a combination of genetics and environment. If a machine could be developed to properly stimulate the Nucleus Accumben when we ‘believe’, we would all convert to whatever religion the people controlling the stimulation wished us to ‘believe’. So it seems to me it is a waist of time to argue with theists, they don’t believe in any cognitive way. They need to use music and melodic sermons and whatever techniques they can to create the emotional responses that active pleasure and reduce anxieties. They just bypass the pre-frontal cortex to get their pleasure. They are just rats pushing the lever. So what is the point of arguing with them? Essentially, we have a hardware problem. You’re trying to change their software when the hardware only gives them pleasure from ‘belief’ and not pleasure from rational thinking.  The end of religion can only come about with technology to directly stimulate the Nucleus Accumbens. This stimulation would need to be correlated with rational thought processes and bypassing emotions generated in the limbic system. So I think if the goal of this web site is to ‘fix belief in God’, it needs to become a site dedicated to the neuroscience research and developing the technology to monitor cognitive processing in the prefrontal lobes and stimulation of the Nucleus Accumbens. This technology could enable an artificial pathway between rational thinking and activation of the pleasure centers. It’s all just a big wiring problem.