Prefrontal brain lesions reveal magical ideation arises from enhanced religious experiences.
Peace and conflict : journal of peace psychology : the journal of the Division of Peace Psychology of the American Psychological Association May 1, 2018 Wanting Zhong, Frank Krüeger, Marc Wilson et al.
Magical ideation—beliefs about causality that lack empirical bases—was positively correlated with religious experience in Vietnam veterans with penetrating traumatic brain injury (pTBI), but not in healthy controls. Lesion mapping indicated that prefrontal cortex (PFC) lesions were associated with increased magical ideation scores, and this relationship was mediated by religious experience. The findings suggest that suppression of the PFC opens people to religious experiences, which in turn increases magical ideation.