Hi everyone, it's Dr. Nigro again. Our next episode of Psychology Unplugged. Thanks as always to all of our listeners. I appreciate the opportunity to do this every week. And I will give my contact information out as I do at the end of the episode. Just if you try to get a hold of me through Buzzsprout,

I can see the message, but there's no way that I can reply to it. But again, I will give you

the contact information at the end of this episode. So a few days ago, it just happened to

it was in my office. I wanted to listen to...

The first episode I did, this back in 2020, I think, or 2021 maybe.

And it's like five or seven minutes, but I mentioned as one of the topics I wanted to explore the podcast at some point, besides, you know, the science and psychopathology aspect of psychology was incorporating religion and spirituality.

And I had taught a course on this, and I pulled some notes from it.

I thought it'd be an interesting topic to cover, which is essentially this episode is

the psychology of God and more or less like what happens when divinity meets the mind and can explore like some

psychological foundations neurocognitive underpinnings existential implications of the

concept of god really cross-belief systems. But this is in no way

a theological or doctrinal analysis. This is not a sermon. It's just about a deeply human inquiry

into why and how we as humans formulate beliefs about a higher power.

And whether you're religious, spiritual, spiritual but not religious, agnostic, atheists,

whatever category may fall into, really the goal of this episode is to explore the function of belief,

not the validity of any particular theology. And for those you who follow the podcast,

I was born and raised Catholic, Catholic grammar school, all boys Catholic high school in Chicago. I was an altar boy. I still

know the prayers in the incantations, but I think as I've gotten older, I'm proud to say that

I do believe in God. I consider myself more spiritual than religious. I think people

struggle with, because they equate the two, where religion is a, it has form. Spirituality is your

own personal connection to something bigger than ourselves

and i could say you know throughout my i still say my prayers in the morning and sometimes julie

...