Religious Faith Can Be "Turned Off" by Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Scientists Find
Your tinfoil hats will not help you this time
Many of us hold strong religious beliefs. Religions are foundational not only for individuals; they support entire societies, preventing self-destruction by keeping perverse and antisocial behaviors in check.
Religion is an ephemeral connection between humans and God, a private and direct bond that is, paradoxically, mediated by ancient traditions and group practices in houses of worship. People believed in supernatural beings for about as long as they were human:
We can ask a question: can the invisible link between the faithful and God be severed by a third party armed with the tools provided by the latest scientific advances?
Disturbingly, the answer may be yes. Scientists led by Dr. Colin Holbrook at UCLA undertook a multi-year endeavor to discover ways to stop “religious beliefs and right-wing prejudice.” They attempted to apply direct electromagnetic stimulation to the brain to alter human beliefs, specifically turning off belief in God.
Dr. Holbrook has led extensive research on this topic for many years. He described how electromagnetic stimulation of the frontal cortex (frontal part of the brain) “experimentally decreased avowed belief in God”:
After using a purposely made device, scientists describe a significant reduction in expressed belief in positive religious ideas:
Religious belief: We next tested the effects of TMS on endorsement of religious beliefs following a reminder of death. In a marginal trend, overall avowed religious belief (including both positive and negative beliefs) was reduced in the TMS condition relative to the sham condition 2.95 vs 4.26. As predicted, this shift was driven by a significant reduction in expressed belief in positive religious ideas. Participants in the TMS condition reported an average of 32.8% less conviction in positive religious beliefs.
A Very Unethical Study: Authors Lied to Subjects
That study was extremely unethical! When recruiting study subjects, Dr. Holbrook lied about the purpose of the study (using electromagnetic waves to reduce belief in God) and offered participants $25 while promising “ostensibly unrelated” activities:
Undergraduates were recruited for a study, ostensibly consisting of a series of unrelated measures, in exchange for $25.
Now, as we know, to religious people, abandoning belief in God is blasphemy and puts them at risk of going to Hell, shunning, and so on.
If I were a study participant whose deeply held faith was endangered by reckless scientists’ electromagnetic experiments, I would be quite outraged.
Work Continues - Sponsored by the U.S. Air Force!
For years after that, Dr. Holbrook continued to work on “religious neuromodulation” and electromagnetic waves to reduce undesirable (to him and his sponsors) beliefs, such as religious faith and “prejudice.”
His 2018 work “Continuous Theta Burst Stimulation of the Posterior Medial Frontal Cortex to Experimentally Reduce Ideological Threat Responses” further develops methods to downregulate group bias and religious belief.
This is the description of how electromagnetic waves were applied:
This is how the device looks (also note the possessed look of the researcher and the sad face of the subject, as if he has a premonition):
The outcome was, indeed, a dramatic reduction of religious beliefs:
Also consistent with predictions, participants who received cTBS reported an average of 32.8% less positive religious conviction (M = 3.05, SD = 1.92) relative to the sham participants
Guess who sponsored this work?
Highly Partisan Researchers
The researchers leading the work to “neuromodulate religious beliefs” are extreme political partisans. Consider Dr. Holbrook’s 2020 article, since deleted (wonder why?) but fortunately preserved by the Internet archive:
Some pearls from this left-wing ideologue researcher:
If, as the large and growing body of evidence outlined above suggests, conservatives truly are more threat-reactive and more credulous of alleged threats, then a polarized media environment in which conservatives are inundated with disinformation about outgroup threats may set the stage for far-right extremism to flourish. Indeed, levels of conservatism track the intensity of belief in conspiracy theories.4
The author is not prone to subtleties. An idea to check if there is such a thing as left-wing conspiracy theories, threats that do exist, practices of the hysterical left-wing press credulously seeing “threats to democracy” behind every tree, and so on, do not enter his mind.
However, these ideologically obsessed experimenters work hard to develop technology to disable religious beliefs and undesirable right-wing ideologies. In doing so, they are sponsored by the United States government (Air Force).
Use of government funds to electromagnetically weaken the free exercise of religious beliefs of unsuspecting experimental subjects directly contradicts the prohibitions of the First Amendment:
Such a violation does not seem to concern anyone involved.
Final Thoughts
I am not a religious person. I am an agnostic. I tried to read holy books to see if I should adopt a particular religion. The books left a lasting impression on me and fostered my respect for religion and its role in history, but I am not ready to adopt a particular denomination. I realize that God’s existence or nonexistence is unprovable by the very definition of God.
And yet, I fully respect and support the right of every human to forge a connection with God. This link should be free of crazed science ideologues trying to meddle with it by sneaky use of electromagnetic devices and $25 bribes given under false pretenses.
The material I am discussing is nothing short of insane. If a person whom I just met told me that scientists use electromagnetic waves to turn off faith in God, I might have dismissed such a suggestion as crazy talk. It instantly evokes tinfoil hats (which would not work due to the low 50 Hz frequency of the signal) and other artifacts of mental illness.
And yet, here we are: ideologically obsessed researchers like Dr. Holbrook conduct scientific experimental studies that successfully turn off religious faith and other foundational beliefs in half the subjects. The US Government sponsors such studies. Nobody is asking questions.
Some will try to label this post a “conspiracy theory.” Far from it: it is based on existing scientific research and background information on the researchers conducting unethical experiments on religious people - experiments that likely pave the way for future large-scale human modification projects.
What About You?
The only good news I could find is that half the people did not reduce their religious beliefs after their prefrontal cortex was irradiated with 50 Hz electromagnetic waves. Their faith remained strong.
So, I want to ask my religious readers:
do you think that Dr. Holbrook’s experiments could sever YOUR ties to God?
Will those unfortunate experimental subjects whose religious ideation was successfully minimized be subject to God’s wrath, or will they be forgiven?
(question to all) Are other electronic devices, such as Facebook’s virtual reality headsets, unknowingly affecting the posterior medial frontal cortex?
Since you asked. As a militant atheist I was confronted with a hopeless certain death situation. In desperation I called out to God for help and was rescued from death immediately in a split second. This was 53 years ago. So no, I am not going for the $25.
As a psychiatrist, this study makes my blood boil. Religious belief is associated with reductions in depression and anxiety, better coping skills and improvements in overall mental health. Why on earth would you want to reduce it, other than some demonic ideological possession? Coincidentally, I just finished posting about the importance of religious belief: pairodocs.substack.com