Neuroscience has now shown us that when someone's views on religion or politics are challenged, their brain becomes active in regions associated with personal identity, threat response and emotions. Religious beliefs are important to our identity, to our sense of who we are. They are part of our social selves as well and can define who we spend time with and how they relate to us.

And let's not forget that your views on religion are also tied to your views on an afterlife and whether or not what you do here matters in regards to what's going to happen to you when you die. So this is why people (tend to) get unbelievably upset when you challenge them on topics like this. If it helps, you can think of it this way too: it’s like they’re on a raft in the middle of the ocean, and they think their raft is buoyant, but here you are, saying things that threaten to pull out the logs, and they’re afraid they’re going to fall in and drown.

To be clear, they don't consciously think any of this; they just react that way because of the part of the brain that's currently engaged.

In any case, when the brain considers something to be part of itself, whether it’s a body part or a belief, then it protects it in the same way.

Furthermore, neuroscience has also long since proven that logic and emotion actually operate in two different areas of the brain. That’s why if you try to reason with someone who’s in an emotional state, or try to reason with someone about an emotional, political, or religious issue, it never works out well. It’s because you’re literally trying to talk to a part of the brain that isn’t capable of logically handling the issue at hand. You need to get this person's brain to operate from a rational place, not an emotional one, if you want them to hear anything you have to say.

Otherwise, one of two things will happen.

The first is that the part of their brain that deals with emotion will attempt to justify/rationalize why it thinks how it does because that’s what you’re asking for it to do. And that’s the last thing you want because the rationalizations won’t make any sense. How could they after-all though when the part of the brain that doesn’t rationalize (the emotional part) starts to attempt to rationalize?

Despite this paradox, the rationalizations will make sense to the emotional part of their brain because emotion doesn’t care about whether or not something is logical, and therefore it will only reinforce the exact feelings and thoughts about the issue that you don’t want to reinforce.

The other thing that can happen if you try to engage them logically is that the logical part of their brain will actively look for (more) reasons to support what they think because they do not want to be wrong. All that part of their brain knows is that they feel a certain way, and no one likes feeling a certain way without knowing why (remember the raft analogy).

Their brain thinks, “Only crazy or stupid people hold views that don't make sense. A normal, smart, rationale person, which I obviously am, can explain why they think a certain way.” So, in alignment with that thought process, the logical part of their brain will start to analyze the situation in a backwards way.

It starts off with a vested-interest type conclusion (“I am right, I'm smart, and I'm going to prove it”), and then will find or even invent new ways to justify their view. What you wind up with are absurd reasons meant to support a view that was in all likelihood not based on much to begin with.

Hopefully now you understand why it’s important that you refrain from having the first thing you do in response to someone like this be attempting to engage them logically on any level.

So, if the first thing you do isn’t supposed to correct their misunderstandings and misinterpretations, what should you do? The answer can be found in part 2 of this article series: The Apologetics Of Neuroscience Part 2.