{"id":91,"date":"2005-07-12T13:23:20","date_gmt":"2005-07-12T17:23:20","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2005\/07\/12\/and-now-we-know-why-god\/"},"modified":"2007-02-13T20:21:58","modified_gmt":"2007-02-14T00:21:58","slug":"and-now-we-know-why-god","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/2005\/07\/12\/and-now-we-know-why-god\/","title":{"rendered":"And now we know why God"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a> …is a middle-aged, stern man: see Why ‘imaginary voices’ are male<\/a>.<\/p>\n

A university research team says it has discovered why most people “hearing voices” in hallucinations say they hear male voices.<\/p>\n

Dr Michael Hunter’s research at the University of Sheffield says that male voices are less complex to produce than female.<\/p>\n

As such, when the brain spontaneously produces its own “voices”, a male voice is more likely to have been generated.<\/p>\n

Among both men and women, 71% of such “false” voices are male. <\/em> [More…<\/a>]<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Sean Coughlan, the article’s author, goes on to elaborate that the voices are not only male, but usually sound “middle-aged” and “derogatory.” Hmmm… “thou shalt not….!!” The female voice is too complex for the brain to duplicate as an auditory hallucination.<\/p>\n

It seems God also does not sing. He’s not a singer, for “melodiousness” is a feature of the female voice, which the brain finds too complex to reproduce accurately. This might explain why God has not been a Broadway singing sensation, along with why She is not “heard” as female.<\/p>\n

On a different note (pun), I’ve been neglecting the blog, but even though God gave me a cussing out about it, I realise in my saner moments that this is perhaps simply the way things have to be right now… Real life has a way of intruding, even upon the voices in one’s head.<\/p>\n

PS: my thanks go to my son, for immediately making the “hearing voices” and “that’s why God is male” connection. He’s the one who showed me the article, too.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

…is a middle-aged, stern man: see Why ‘imaginary voices’ are male. A university research team says it has discovered why most people “hearing voices” in hallucinations say they hear male voices. Dr Michael Hunter’s research at the University of Sheffield says that male voices are less complex to produce than female. As such, when the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":311,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[600],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-91","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-yulelogstories"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/311"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=91"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/91\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=91"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=91"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.blogs.harvard.edu\/yulelog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=91"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}