Is God a logical contradiction?

[John 6IX Breezy]

"...and the inference is further justified by examining its brain activity and seeing that it is similar to ours when we feel pain."

I keep thinking about your statement above; and I think its important to warn you about fMRI studies. We can approach this in several ways. The first is to keep in mind that such studies have an alarming rate of false positives; somewhere between 10% are false positives and 30% are questionable (Eklund, et al., 2016). Here's an >article< that shows you can find brain activity in the head of a dead fish if you don't use the appropriate corrections, and many studies get published that don't make the appropriate corrections.

There's quite a bit if professional contention in the cognitive sciences, particularly between psychologists and cognitive neuroscientists, but also in-house between molecular neuroscientists and cognitive psychologists (cognitive neuroscientists are usually the ones doing fMRI studies). In short, many cognitive scientists looks down on fMRI studies. There's two reasons for this. The first has to do with the scientific credibility of such studies (e.g. Cluster Failure). The second my professor calls "seducing the public." People tend to think something isn't scientific unless they see pretty brain pictures with colors; and when they see it they exaggerate the implications. This affects the type of studies that get funded; it even affects the type of studies that major journals like to publish. I recommend reading a review by Cacioppo and colleagues (2003); its fairly simple introduction to fMRI and issues surrounding it.


References:

Eklund, A., Nichols, T., Knutsson, H. (2016). Cluster failure: Why fMRI inferences for spatial extent have inflated false-positive rates. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, p. 7900-7905.

Cacioppo, J., Bernston, G., Lorig, T., Norris, C., Rickett, E., Nusbaum, H. (2003). Just because you're imaging the brain doesn't mean you can stop using your head: A primer and set of first principles. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, p. 650-661.