RELIGION, BELIEF, SACRED VALUES

Heidi M. RavvenHamilton College

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.–David Hume

Introduction1

For what purposes do scholars bring together religion

and the neurosciences? How do they envision the fruit that

such an endeavor might bear? Are religion and science two

separate realms, one embraced by faith and the other by

reason, faith offering us meaning and values, and science,

by contrast, a glimpse into the workings of strictly

material processes of motion and particles, of chemical

transformations and geological formations, and the like? Are

the two, then, separate complementary imperiums with little

or no overlap, or instead, rival kingdoms –or something else

entirely? Are the brain sciences being brought in to

explain religion, and if they are to try, what are they to

1 I wish to thank Katie Givens Kime of Emory University and my student, Sarah Izzo of Hamilton College for bibliographical advice.

search for? Moreover, do the new brain sciences pose a new

challenge to religion, undermining the validity of its

claims? Is there a faith and values location or function of

the brain distinct from others that can be found and

identified? What commitments about religion and values, on

the one hand, and about the relation of science and

religion, on the other, inform and drive the various

research agendas and are they independently justified or

part and parcel of a particular, and perhaps even

unexamined, theological outlook? At the same time, are

there presuppositions about the nature, limits, and aims of

the practice of the brain sciences, or science more

generally, that inform and narrow the search for neural

correlates of religious phenomena? Are such presuppositions

justified and ought they, too, to be subjected to critical

examination? Further, ought religion to be treated as a

natural kind that can reward a cross-cultural investigation

into a universal human brain process, albeit expressed in

culturally diverse and nuanced ways, or ought research into

the neuroscience of religion be engaged in as a search for

apples in one cultural context and for oranges in another,

so to speak? How have the practitioners of the new field of

neuroscience of religion answered these questions in order

to pursue their research projects and agendas? Is there one

dominant approach or are there multiple approaches that

answer these questions in different ways? Are those who

engage in investigating the relations of neuroscience and

religion, belief, and values aware of these questions and do

some or all address them forthrightly in order to defend the

approach they take or are many of the projects driven by

hidden, unexamined, and undefended presuppositions about

religion and/or about the brain? Which projects fall into

the latter camp and how are we to assess their value?

In another context, the current neuroscientifically

informed philosophical debates about free will and moral

agency, Bruce Waller has developed a relevant distinction,

and it is one that I think could help guide us in the

present context as well. Waller proposes that the

literature on rethinking free will in the light of the new

brain sciences can and ought to be divided into two

different kinds of projects and endeavors. The first consists

in those who take an insider perspective and set as their aim

to reinterpret, recast, and reclaim free will in the light

of the new brain and other sciences. Theirs is a project to

refine and redefine the concept of free will in order to

defend and bolster its centrality as the basis and criterion

of moral responsibility and culpability within present

Western legal and social institutions, from courts to

schools, to churches and families, and on and on. Those

engaged in this endeavor recruit the new brain sciences in

the service of defending free will. The alternative approach in

bringing the new brain sciences to bear upon the concept of

free will, according to Waller, is that of the outsider, who,

looking in, calls into question the entire ‘free will

system’, as he puts it.1 This second category of

philosophers sets as their task the examination and

independent evaluation of the validity and coherence of the

concept and social practices of free will from the

standpoint of the new brain sciences to the extent that they

are relevant.

The analogy I wish to propose is to draw a distinction,

within the neuroscience of religion field, between projects

and investigations within and defined by given theological

frames and apologetic purposes (whether acknowledged or

unacknowledged), on the one hand, and those spurred from

outside a theological frame of any kind. The former set as

their agenda the defense, redefinition, and refinement of

religion (or a given religion) in the light of the new brain

sciences. This approach is reminiscent of that of medieval

theologians of the three Abrahamic religions, who recruited

the tools of Greek philosophy to defend and put their

religious traditions on a more secure foundation, in the

process translating, transforming, and modernizing their

religions into then contemporary forms of rational argument.

In this approach, shaped significantly by Augustine,

philosophy (reason) was to be utilized as the ‘handmaiden’

of religion, and the resulting literature is generally

classified as religious or theological ‘apologetics’. The

alternative approach sets as its task, instead, the

investigation of religious ideas, practices, language,

social structures, personal experiences, etc., either from

the standpoint of discoveries already made in the new brain

sciences or of projects specifically developed to

investigate just such data. In this approach, religions and

religious phenomena become the objects of scientific

investigation and the standard scientific methods of the

observation and collection of empirical data of the widest

range of variety and complexity form the basis for

subsequent analysis and conclusions.

The internal approach, which I have suggested is

fundamentally ‘apologetic’, recruits science in the interest

of defending, bolstering, and also often of refining and

modernizing some notion or form of religion. This approach

can also be identified as driving scholarly projects that

set an independent ‘religion’ and its advocates and

practitioners, in dialogue with the practitioners of an

independent ‘science’ –on the analogy of interfaith dialogue

—since no attempt to scientifically investigate religion is

engaged in but instead the aim is largely to translate

religion into (respectable and defensible) scientific terms

and, on the other hand, to delineate the contribution

religion can make to scientific understanding. The external

approach, in contrast, subjects religion, as object of study,

to scientific and detached scholarly methods of

investigation. We shall see that both these quite distinct

approaches and agendas have found their place in the extant

literature on Religion and Neuroscience. And sometimes,

perhaps far too often, the two distinct and quite different

purposes and agendas have been muddled and the resulting

claims and conclusions of questionable value.

Hence the distinction between internal versus external

perspectives offers a way to sketch the rough landscape of

the current state and array of academic treatments of

neuroscience and religion. While the academy has often seen

as its mandate and raison d’etre the ‘science’ of all things,

taking natural science as the model of investigation to be

applied and carried out not just upon the natural world but

also upon the full range of phenomena of the universe and

the human universe—social, literary, historical and all the

rest—, we find that theology, and not just the academic (or

‘scientific’ in a broad sense) study of religion and

religious phenomena, retains a vital place in it. Hence it

is perhaps not surprising that we find that the

preponderance of treatments of neuroscience and religion

turn out to be apologetic in purpose rather than openly

investigative.

Surveying the Landscape I: Standard Approaches to Science and Religion,

the Neurosciences and Religion

Two large compendia of scholarly essays, editor Volney

P. Gay’s Neuroscience and Religion: Brain, Mind, Self, and Soul and

editors Patrick McNamara and Wesley J. Wildman’s Science and

the World Religions, position their respective enterprises

solidly within what I have identified as internal,

apologetic projects. Both begin with essays that set forth

overarching purposes that govern the projects that were

commissioned by the editors for the various contributors.

Volney P. Gay, a professor at Vanderbilt University where he

is director of the Center for the Study of Religion and

Culture, puts forth the claim, one that drives the

interdisciplinary discussions to follow in the volume, that

religion and science address a common question: “How does it

all fit together.” This question he asserts “is both

religious and scientific.” Without further argument, Volney

goes on to delineate the problem as one of scale: While

different sciences and social sciences engage in the search

for knowledge at different scales—the micro, the meso, the

macro, and the cosmic—religion or theology is engaged in the

search at every scale. Hence scientists and religionists,

thus sharing in the pursuit of a common epistemic aim and

project, can engage in fruitful interdisciplinary dialogue,

the presumption being that each can contribute insightful

and important perspectives from separate but equal arenas of

understanding, the integration of which will further a broad

understanding of ‘how it all fits together’.2

In a similar vein, the three-volume exhaustive

compendium assembled by Patrick McNamara, Associate

Professor of Neurology and Psychiatry and director of the

Evolutionary Neurobehavior Laboratory at Boston University

Medical School, and Wesley J. Wildman, professor of

Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics at Boston University, set

as their aim the reconciliation and integration of

religious/theological and scientific perspectives.3 Their

stated modus operandi in bringing together a wide range of

essays was to recruit “experts with scientific and religious

backgrounds” to “present readers with powerful tools that

enable them to think through the challenge of integrating

science with their religious belief and spiritual

practices.” Hence this project, too, --one which is broader

than Volney’s in including a wider range of science and

scientists—is largely an internal religious or theological

one, aimed at reconciling religion and science with the hope

of bolstering and perhaps transforming religion both via

science and in the face of new scientific challenges.4 McNamara

and Wildman developed a specific technique to fulfill this

overall agenda by requiring every contributor to write “each

essay [a]s an integrative reflection on a vital existential

and practical issue, drawing on multiple relevant sciences

and engaging at least two religious traditions.” “All of

our authors,” they point out, “are convinced that there can

be fruitful cooperation between science and religion on a

host of topics.”5 The contributors were also asked, “to

deploy a bio-cultural theoretical approach to the subject

matter –that is, an approach that unites biological

perspectives (evolution, neurology, cognitive science, etc.)

and cultural analysis (history, sociology, economics,

etc.).”6

In conclusion, McNamara and Wildman remark that the

contributing “authors showed that scientific and religious

perspectives do connect and can influence and constrain each

other,” in particular providing “a moral foundation that

science alone cannot furnish, which … requires some account

of values that goes beyond science.” All in all, the editors

conclude that, “these essays collectively demonstrate the

fruitfulness of adopting the perspective of world

religions.”7 Moreover taken as a whole they exhibit the

intellectual fruitfulness of the full range of possible

religious and non-religious perspectives and worldviews,

which the editors delineate as four: 1. “supernatural

personalism”; 2. “meta-personalism”; 3. “Religious

naturalism”; and, 4. “Secular Scientific Humanism.” “As a

collection, these essays,” they hold, “also demonstrate that

all four classes of interpretations of reality and human

life are intellectually robust. None of them simply

collapses under scrutiny, and none of them can easily

dismiss the others.”8 Nevertheless, there is a

presupposition and intellectual commitment shared by the

editors and the contributors, and that is of a “dipolar

metaphysics.” That is the claim that reality or the

universe is both material and spiritual, each representing a

polar extreme. This “dipolar metaphysics supplies the

resources needed to explain both inanimate matter and

conscious beings.”9

The overall re-definition of religion the editors

propose is an epistemic expression of the metaphysical

matter-spirit dualism that is the foundational

presupposition running through all three volumes: It is to

“treat the human person as bio-culturally endowed with the

capacity to perceive things of ultimate value when triggered

or supported by religious settings and traditions.”10

Religion is treated as fundamentally a cognitive phenomenon,

as Volney, too, presupposed and did. Moreover, the

characterization of religion as a basic cognitive capacity

is an attempt at not only a redefinition of religion and

human religiosity but also an attempt to validate it by

recruiting a neuroscientific claim in its defense, namely,

that there is a discrete encapsulated cognitive brain

capacity, a product of evolution, which is dedicated to

spiritual perception, and hence religiosity or spirituality

is a hardwired brain capacity in humans. The validity of

this claim depends on both the plausibility of this

redefinition of religion in the light of the independent

empirical investigation of the phenomena of religion, on the

one hand, and the strength of the brain science that

underlies the explanation, which latter can be assessed with

reference to relevant neuroscientific discoveries and to the

conflicting literature on modularity and evolutionary

psychology. The dust has not settled at all on the

neuroscience underlying such a bold and bald claim, and it

is hardly uncontroversial.11 And the essentialist reduction

of religious phenomena to innate perceptions of value is

highly questionable and perhaps begs the question. The

contemporary version of metaphysical matter-spirit dualism

(the ‘dipolar metaphysics’) relies, instead, on the strength

of philosophical analyses and arguments and also on the hold

of millennia long traditions. Yet the claim of ‘dipolar

metaphysics’ is circular, presupposing what it sets out to

prove insofar as it posits a spiritual dimension only

accessible to religious cognition, a position that the

invoking of science and scientific methods of investigation

serves to obscure and at the same time defend.

The compendia of McNamara and Wildman and of Volney

address new challenges to religion posed by the brain

sciences and by other, especially biological sciences, and

are intended as anticipatory as well as concurrent responses

to these challenges. Their common purpose is to grapple

with the question: How can religion remain a meaningful

contributor to lives well lived and the understanding of the

world in the face of increasing evidence challenging the

validity of what seems to be, on the face of it, its

internal claims and presuppositions? Hence, how can

findings of the sciences that appear to challenge religion

come to be, instead, internally contributory to it? How can

religion be bolstered by refining its purposes and beliefs

in the light of the contemporary sciences? These are

theological questions and agendas, as old as the challenge

posed by classical Greek philosophy and science. The editors

are walking well-trodden paths of response nuanced by the

inclusion of both innovative multicultural and

multireligious perspectives and also by the need to confront

and integrate contemporary and recent scientific discoveries

and methods especially from the new brain sciences.

Falling into the same category of response is

neuropsychologists Malcolm Jeeves and Warren S. Brown’s

Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion: Illusions, Delusions, and Realities about

Human Nature. This is a volume in the Templeton Science and

Religion series. The Series Editors, J. Wentzel van

Huyssteen & Khalil Chamcham, state their purpose as asking

their authors to open doorways “to a world of ‘interaction’

or ‘harmony’ between science and religion,” which they

define as “two views of life and the world.” We have been

placed squarely in the intellectual universe of a Double

Truth Theory, of two ‘imperia’. Jeeves and Brown identify

themselves in the Preface as “enthusiastic scientists” who

“are also both active Christians,” and who are engaged in

“sharing the challenges that scientific discoveries pose for

some traditional Christian beliefs.” In the first chapter,

they state that the purpose of their book is to “explore the

dialogue between a religious worldview and the rapidly

accumulating new results from human neuroscience and

psychology.”12 The challenge they had already identified in

the Preface expresses the fear that spirituality or religion

could be completely explained –or explained away-- in

natural terms by scientists: “Is the human mind, including

religion and religious experience, to be reduced to nothing

other than the outcome of the rules governing the

functioning of neurons and their molecular structures?”13

The implication is that this volume, too, embraces a

‘dipolar’ metaphysics undergirding a presupposed epistemic

claim that there are fundamentally two ways of encountering

and making sense of the world, one through a religious lens

and the other through a scientific one. Hence the two

epistemic approaches can be placed on equal footing in

dialogue, in separation, in conflict, and in reconciliation

–and these are the exact terms proposed by the editors of

the Templeton Science and Religion series. But this playing

field, while seemingly neutral since it allows for a range

of possible relationships between the two, is all but

neutral and open ended, for it presumes the difference and

equality of two rival standpoints, two worldviews, the

religious and the scientific. But stating and framing the

problem in this way is not neutral but in fact stakes out a

particular position within a Christian theological tradition

and landscape, a position classically represented by St.

Thomas Aquinas:

For Thomas [Aquinas] theological discourse begins withwhat God has revealed about Himself and His action in creating and redeeming the world. The world is understood inthat light. Philosophical discourse begins with knowledge ofthe world. If it speaks of God what it says is conditioned by what is known of the world. But even given the distinction between the two, Aquinas suggests here that there are in fact elements of what God has revealed that areformally speaking philosophical and subject to philosophicaldiscussion—though revealed they can be known and investigated without the precondition of faith. In other

words, even something that is as a matter of fact revealed is subject to philosophical analysis, if religious faith is not necessary to know it and accept it as true. So it may happen that concerning certain subjects, as for example the nature of God, the nature of the human person, what is necessary for a human being to be good and to fulfill his or her destiny, and so on, there can be both a theological and a philosophical discussion of those subjects, providing for a fruitful engagement between the theological and the philosophical. For this reason, Thomas' theological works are very often paradigms of that engagement between theological and philosophical reflection.14

(my emphasis)

What the editors and authors of the volumes that we

have been examining have staked out is not neutral and a

strictly academic investigation but instead occupies a liberal

Christian theological position on the relation between

Christian belief claims and the discoveries of the natural

sciences (historically encompassed by ‘philosophy’). Their

approach is to globalize and naturalize to a certain extent

a liberal Christian epistemology and fit other traditions

within its worldview and presuppositions. In this there is

a generosity and openness to both other religious traditions

and to the practice of natural science (and philosophy),

which nevertheless, at the same time, presumes an

unreflective Christian hegemonic framing of both what

religion is, that is, of what counts as religion –namely,

epistemic belief content largely about the nature of the

world and the place of the human person with it. And it

also presupposes the overall metaphysical significance and

status of religion and science-philosophy –namely, that they

are equal and independent sources of knowledge, historically

defined as nature and revelation, but now disguised as a quasi-

rational and quasi-secular and quasi-natural, yet

(seemingly) unassailable metaphysical claim of a ‘dipolar’

metaphysics. But this approach, while seemingly neutral and

fair-minded –giving each side its due and other religions

their legitimate place and voice within the array—in fact,

reproduces a (liberal) Christian theological worldview

rather than sets it as the object of investigation along

with all other religious traditions and phenomena.

For, to take just one counterexample, Jewish medieval

philosophy following in the Arabic Islamic medieval

philosophical tradition, did not embrace a double truth

position but largely embraced a position of the identity of

philosophical-scientific knowledge and that made available

through religion. They largely followed the position of

Averroes and Alfarabi concerning the status and purpose of

revelation (faith) versus reason, namely, that religion (or

what they termed ‘prophecy’ or revelation) was a product of

the human imagination (a rather primitive and bodily yet useful

human capacity) and served a mimetic and figurative

(artistic and educative) function, and for many following

Alfarabi, a political one as well, while Thomas and the

Christian theological tradition more generally retained and

encapsulated an arena of supernaturalism and hence

attributed to religion a status as exalted rather than

mundane. The demotion of nature from its classical Greek

heights and its replacement with the elevation of ‘spirit’

above and beyond nature, and a concomitant relegation of

‘nature’ to physical processes alone, has been attributed to

Augustine in the 4th century.15 Alexander Altmann, in a

seminal essay on the difference between Thomas’s and the

Judaeo-Arabic and Arabic medieval philosophical accounts of

‘prophecy’, sums it up thus:

It is remarkable that Thomas Aquinas could adopt a great many points from Maimonides’ theory of prophecy, notwithstanding the radical difference in their fundamental outlook, which may be summed up in the antithesis between ‘natural’ and ‘divine’ prophecy[.]16

In contrast to Aquinas, “Maimonides’ stipulation that links

prophecy to the Divine Will is not meant to annul its

natural character; it only corroborates it. For the natural

happening is thereby legitimized, as it were, as divinely

preordained[.]”17 In this alternative Western religious

encounter with philosophy-science, the divine was held to be

expressed most completely and deeply in nature rather than

in prophetic (biblical and Koranic) texts, and hence

science, rather than posing a challenge to religion was

instead held to be its truest and consummate spiritual practice!

This was certainly Maimonides’ belief, as he expressed it in

his characterization of Moses as the greatest philosopher

(scientist) of all time.

The essential difference between Maimonides and Thomasis here, as elsewhere, the difference between natural and divine prophecy. In Maimonides’ view even Moses’ prophecy was the natural result of a specific disposition which, though unique, was still natural. The highest possible degree of perfection that is natural to the human species, he says, must necessarily be realized in at least one particular individual ([Guide] 2:32). Moses was that individual. Hence Moses is no exception to the general rulethat prophecy is a natural phenomenon … [H]e considered the attainment of [Moses’s] exceptional rank to have the naturalresult of his dispositions and mode of life.18

For Maimonides, the fulfillment of the human person was the

integrated perfecting of the two crucial human natural

capacities of intellect (theoretical reason) and imagination

(the embodied capacity for gifted teaching and

sociopolitical leadership), thereby producing the Platonic

Philosopher-King (Moses) and the vision of the ideal city or

commonwealth (the constitution delineated in the Torah).

Hence in this Jewish and Muslim intellectual tradition

(Muslims, of course, identified the utopian founder and

community with Muhammed and the Muslim polity, not with

Moses and the Torah), a this-worldly utopian sociopolitical

and intellectual philosophically or scientifically informed

community was the envisioned ideal. Religion was geared to

the education and political management of the masses whereas

philosophy-science was the province of the (intellectual)

elite, enabling them alone to fully discover, through

rigorous methods of scientific investigation, a natural

world expressive of cosmic significance. In contrast with

this naturalistic vision of the mundane, all too human

character of religion, Altmann juxtaposes the spiritual

religious ideal of a Thomas, who using many of the same

Aristotelian sources and borrowing substantially from

Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, nevertheless assimilates

them to a far different set of religious assumptions and

theological beliefs:

Thomas rejects Avicenna’s argument. The sociopolitical order, he says, will be taken care of with or without prophets. Nature will be responsible for the satisfaction of man’s need. Theprophet is not a necessity of nature. He is required to give direction toward life eternal, not to secure justice in the political order. The supernatural goal is attainable through the ‘justice of faith’ of which prophecy is the principle.19

Hence we can discern the relentless persistence of

(perhaps largely) unconscious, yet deeply held, hegemonic

Christian presuppositions about the meaning of religion,

about what kind of thing it is, and about its relation to

the natural world and to the scientific investigation of the

natural world, in the current framing of many academic

projects and volumes engaging contemporary science and

religion. Despite the best of intentions and the embrace of

broad inclusion as a methodological principle, the very

terms of analysis often reinforce and reinstate a hegemonic

Christian worldview and set of presuppositions.

Surveying the Landscape II: Broader and More Rigorous Approaches to

Science and Religion, the Neurosciences and Religion

The compendium, The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach:

Fourth Edition, in principle sets as it approach the scientific

investigation of religion as object of inquiry.20 The

editors, Ralph W. Hood, Jr., Peter C. Hill, and Bernard

Spilka, state in their Preface to the Fourth Edition that

“the domination of interpretive and conceptual discussion of

religion in psychology is gradually yielding to data-based

research and writing that are pulling psychology of religion

into the mainstream of academic psychology.” They make clear

that the aim of the volume of essays they have put together

is “to present a comprehensive evaluation of the psychology

of religion from an empirical perspective.” They further

insist that they “are not concerned with purely conceptual

or philosophical discussions of religion or with theories

that have little empirical support.” Hence they stake out

an eclectic empirical approach in contrast with the more

philosophical and theological approaches, those we have seen

continue to take have a large presence in the literature.

“We have not imposed a single theoretical perspective across

chapters,” they point out.

Moreover, the editors also state that they eschew the

favoring of particular scientific approaches over others

merely because those approaches appear to validate religion.

Hence they say that they “avoid siding unequivocally with

any of the emerging grand theories, such as evolutionary

psychology, that have been proposed to integrate the

psychology of religion,” nor do they “give exclusive

dominance to a single empirical approach, such as cognitive

science.” They insist that they “simply approach the field

from an empirical perspective, broadly conceived to include

any studies in which either quantitative or qualitative data

are germane to establishing and/or resolving questions of

fact.” Hence they aim to eschew the justificatory in favor

or the principally investigative, and remain sensitive to

the further complication that “the same empirical data can

lend credence to radically different ontological claims.”21

Moreover they cast a warning glance at the vested interests

whose funding underlies a significant proportion of the

research in the field of the scientific study of religion

and spirituality: The funding of projects in the psychology

of religion by the Templeton Foundation, principal among a

number of “splinter offshoots” of it, they comment, “often

guides the direction and prominence of research agendas.”22

Hence Hood, Hill, and Spilka point to the need to be

vigilant and alert to the skewing of research in the field

so as to assess and determine a given project’s

justificatory or apologetic, rather than principally

investigative, purposes and presuppositions. Their volume

holds out more promise of containing open-ended studies

rather than those that fall into special pleading and/or

essentialist commitments and ontological, epistemological,

and theological presuppositions.

The last compendium I wish to call attention to as

including treatments of the neuroscience of religion is The

Routledge Companion to Religion and Science edited by James W. Haag,

Gregory R. Peterson, and Michael L Spezio. 23 This volume

begins with a section, “Part I. Epistemology and History,”

which explicitly addresses underlying presuppositions in the

way that the academic field has historically engaged

religion and science together. In the first section of Part

I. “(i) Frameworks and Methods,” rather than assuming a tried and

true approach or a set of broad common presuppositions, the

editors raise and problematize the framing of the question

as the first topic of engagement, incorporating essays from

the perspectives of five different religious traditions’

encounters with science (Christian theological, Buddhist,

and the Jewish and Muslim and one from the perspective of

Native religions) and one that also addresses the history of

science. A multicultural approach is thus brought into the

very framing of the questions and not just into the range of

answers. And the editors note that, “the history of

religion-and-science scholarship has been dominated by

considerations of the compatibility or incompatibility of

tenets in Christian theology with specific scientific

theories.” Instead, they say that they “have made a

deliberate effort to expand the conversation.” Nevertheless

they also admit, with some humility, that the project

remains beholden to a Western eye (despite their best

intentions) due to the history of the academic study, which

continues into the present.

The multiple histories of encounters between specific

religious traditions and particular eras of science and

particular fields of science are addressed in greater detail

in the second section of Part I of the volume, “Historical

Overviews”. The editors also assure the reader in the

Introduction that they have eschewed an overall unified view

“that tries to synthesize the shared religious wisdom found

at the base of all the religious traditions included in the

volume.” “The current volume,” they hold, “does not seek

such a unified voice, nor is that its goal.” Instead it aims

“to give the diversity of voices their full expression.”

Another goal of the volume the editors set forth is to

ensure the rigor of the science introduced so that an

additional goal of the volume is to bring to both its

religious studies and scientific audience, and also to

undergraduates, popular responsible readings in various

sciences. This aim is not only to educate non-scientists

about various scientific research and findings, but also

scientists in one field about science in other fields, so as

to increase general scientific literacy across the sciences

as well as between the sciences and religious studies and

other humanities and social sciences. They explicitly

eschew “one kind of religious studies approach … that

‘protects’ religion as something distinct from, and

independent of, the sciences.” Hence the editors

specifically discourage and have tried to avoid including

any explicit apologetics or even implicit and disguised

apologetics. This volume holds great promise of fair and

open-ended treatments of science and religion broadly

conceived, in which a number of essays on the neurosciences

and religions find their place.24

Topics and Methods in the Neurosciences and Religion

In this section I will delineate the range of methods

now in use in investigating the neuroscience of religion and

I will also present a range of topics that those engaged in

Neuroscience and Religion research are pursuing. In an essay

surveying the current research in the neuroscience of

religion, Stephan Carlson remarks that, “in the expansive

field of neuroscience, across diverse scientific domains, at

multiple hierarchical levels of complexity, research

scientists are exploring religion in new ways.” These ways

engage the full range of “the study of molecules, genes,

proteins, neurotransmitters, receptors, neurons, cognition,

emotion, behavior, and complex social interactions.”25 The

initial methods were lesion-correlational approaches, which

raised the possibility and promise of neuroscience of

religion research in the 1970s. The effects of neurological

dysfunctions and diseases (Parkinson’s, Temporal Lobe

Epilepsy, obsessive-compulsive disorder, schizophrenia,

stroke, neurosurgery, autism spectrum disorders) upon

religiosity are still being investigated as are correlates

of religiosity among neurologically normal people. Current

methods and technologies employed to investigate the brain

correlates of religious experience, beliefs, and behaviors

now include fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging),

PET (positron emission tomography) and SPECT (single photon

emission tomography). fMRI (a non-invasive technique)

measures homeodynamic changes in blood, from which neural

activity may be inferred from changes in blood oxygen

levels. PET scanning is an invasive nuclear brain imaging

technique (in which a radioactive substance is circulated

through brain or body) and produces three-dimensional

pictures of functional brain processing. SPECT is also a

nuclear imaging technique, but it provides three-dimensional

information of tissue activity with a camera. There are

health risks in the latter two techniques not associated

with the first. New EEG (electroencephalography) techniques

are also being used to image unconscious and very rapid

cognitive processes. In addition there are psychophysics

techniques that can investigate the “potential relationship

between a given stimulus … and subjective perceptional

response.” A particularly common technique is semantic

priming, which is shown to quicken responses to semantically

related concepts in tests of lexical decision-making.26

The following topics, as they address the origin,

nature, validity, and effects of religion and religious

experience, appear in the literature:

- Emergence, Complex Adaptive Systems, ‘Downward’

Causal theory, Multiple Levels of Scientific

Explanation –Explanatory Pluralism in the Definition

and Naturalist Understanding of Religion and

Spirituality

- The implications of new biotechnologies for the

nature of the human

- Human Brain-Machine Interfacing and Boundaries of

the human

- The cognitive, emotional, and behavioral

distinctiveness of human religiosity and

spirituality

- Genetic Markers of Religion and Spirituality

- Neural Mechanisms of Religion, Spirituality,

Religious/Spiritual Practices

- Psychological Transformation and Integration, Self-

Transcendence

- Religious Practices, Observance, and Health and Anti

cognitive aging Outcomes

- Religiosity and Economic Behavior and Beliefs

- Religiosity and Moral (prosocial) Behavior and

Beliefs, and Enhanced Executive functioning and

delayed gratification in children and adults

- Religiosity and Political Behavior and Beliefs

- Spiritual Practices (especially Meditation) as an

Avenue to Understanding Consciousness and the First

Person Perspective

- Evolutionary Origins and Adaptive Accounts of

Religion

- Religious and Spiritual Phenotype or Human Genotype

- Social Neuroscience of Religion

- The Gene-Environment Interaction in Religion

- Heritability of Religious Experience Capacity

- The Effect of Religions and Religious Behaviors on

Genes

- Neuroimaging, neurochemistry, and genetics of

spiritual experiences

- The molecular genetics of spiritual personality and

character traits (e.g., investigation of genetic

contributions in and neurobiological correlates of

the personality trait of absorption and self-

forgetfulness)

- The comparison of the neural mechanisms of drug

induced and naturally occurring spiritual

experiences (e.g., the roles of serotonin and

hallucinogens; and various neurotransitters—

including dopamine, opiate, benzodiazepine,

glutamate, and acetylcholine)

- Investigation at the subjective-experiential,

cellular, and molecular of the cross-cultural

experience of oneness

- Neurophysiology and neural correlates of religious

experience and correlation with epilepsy, bipolar

disorder, schizophrenia, and spiritual experiences

and hallucinations

- Neural imaging of different forms and types of

meditative states (e.g., tracing neuroelectric

changes in EEG, blood pressure and cortisol

decreases, increases in theta activity and in

generalized coherence in different brain areas,

changes in breathing and heart rate, and other

physiological changes)

- Similar studies to the just above of those who had

experienced spontaneous religious conversions

- Investigation of brain activity during speaking in

tongues (glossolalia)

- Investigation through neural imaging and other

techniques of the the development of character

traits induced by various forms of meditation (e.g.,

studies of long term meditators such as Buddhist

monks and meditators)27

Carlson characterizes the research as programmatically

bidirectional with the examination of the interactions of

neurobiology and social processes. So far, “the conclusion

neuroscientists draw from these data is that humans have the

capacity to top-down influence the electrochemical nature of

their brains by changing their mental processes[,] … [and

that] spiritual experiences, thinking, and ritualistic

behavior will have both positive and negative downstream

effects on the central nervous system and the body.”

Nevertheless an overall theory of religion as a particular

brain process or region or genetic inheritance is lacking

and instead multiple findings of all kinds of phenomena are

the norm. What is emerging, instead, are broader data than

narrowly ‘religious’, Carlson maintains, for they are

“integrative explanations … that explain how the nervous

system is involved in cultural phenomena,” a category into

which the full range and variety of the phenomena of

religion and spirituality can be seen to fall but is not

confined to any standard definition of the strictly

‘religious’. 28

SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY

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Brown, P. (1967). Augustine of Hippo. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Barrett, J. L. (2011). Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology: From Human Minds to Divine Minds. West Conshohocken, Pa: Templeton Press.

Bulbulia, J & Slingerland, E. (2012) Religious Studies as a Life Science. Lieden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers.

Bulkeley, K. (2005). The Wondering Brain: Thinking About Religion with and Beyond Cognitive Neuroscience. New York: Routledge.

Carlson, S. “The Neuroscience of Religious Experience: An Introductory Survey,” Chapter 7 in Gay, V. P. (ed) (2009). Neuroscience and Religion: Brain, Mind, Self, and Soul. Lanham, MD and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books: pp. 153-173.

Clayton, P. & Simpson, Z., editors (2006). The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science. New York: Oxford University Press.

Gay, V. P. (ed) (2009). Neuroscience and Religion: Brain, Mind, Self, and Soul. Lanham, MD and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books.

Haag, J. W., Peterson, G. R., & Spezio, M. L. (2012). The Routledge companion to religion and science. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge.

Harrison, Peter, editor (2010). The Cambridge Companion to Religion and Science. New York: Cambridge University Press.

Hick, J. (2006). The New Frontier of Religion and Science: Religious Experience, Neuroscience, and the Transcendent. New York: Palgrave MacMillan.

Hood, Jr., R. W., & Belzen, J.A., (ed.) (2013). Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (second edition). New York and London: The Guilford Press.

Hood, Jr., R. W., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2009). The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach (4 edition). New York and London: The Guilford Press.

Jeeves, M. A., & Brown, W. S. (2009). Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion: Illusions, Delusions, and Realities about Human Nature. West Conshohocken, Pa: Templeton Press.

Kabat-Zinn, J. & Davidson, R. J. editors (2011). The Mind’s Own Physician: A Scientific Dialogue with the Dalai Lama on the Healing Power ofMeditation. Oakland, CA: New Harbinger Publications.

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McInerny, R. and O'Callaghan, J. (2014) “Saint Thomas Aquinas,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, First published Mon Jul 12, 1999; substantive revision Fri May 23, 2014: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/

McNamara, P. (2009). The Neuroscience of Religious Experience. New York: Cambridge University Press.

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Persons and Groups; and Volume III. Religions and Controversies. Wesport, CT: Praeger.

Patrick McNamara and P. Monroe Butler, Chapter 11. “The Neuropsychology of Religious Experience,” in Hood, Jr., R. W., & Belzen, J.A., Patrick McNamara and P. Monroe Butler, Chapter 11. “The Neuropsychology of Religious Experience,” in Hood, Jr., R. W., & Belzen, J.A., (ed.) (2013). Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality (second edition). NewYork and London: The Guilford Press: pp. 215-233

Mussachio, J. M. (2012). Contradictions: Neuroscience and Religion. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer.

Newberg, A. B. (2002). Why God won’t go away : brain science and the biology of belief (1st trade edition.). New York: Ballantine Books.

Newberg, A. B. & Waldman, M. R. (2009). How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading Neuroscientist. New York: Ballantine Books

Newberg, A.B., (2010). Principles of Neurotheology. Burlington, VT and Farnham, Surrey, England: Ashgate Publishing Company.

Panksepp, Jaak and Panksepp, Jules, (2000). “Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology” in Evolution and Cognition, # 108, Vol. 6, No. 2.

Panksepp, J. & Biven, L, (2012). The Archaeology of Mind: Neuroenvolutionary Origins of Human Emotions. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Company.

Ravven, H. M., (2013). The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will. New York: The New Press.

Paloutzian, R. F. & Park, C. L. (Ed.), Handbook of the psychology of religion and spirituality (Second Edition.). New York, NY: Guilford Press.

Waller, B. “The Stubborn Illusion of Moral Responsibility,” chapter 4 in Caruso, G. D. (ed.). Exploring the Illusion of Free will and Moral Responsibility (Lexington Press, 2013): pp. 65-86.

Wildman, W. J. & McNamara, P. (2008). Challenges Facing the Neurological Study of Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience. Leiden, Netherlands: Brill Academic Publishers.

1Waller, B. “The Stubborn Illusion of Moral Responsibility,” chapter 4 in Caruso, G. D. (ed.). Exploring the Illusion of Free will and Moral Responsibility (Lexington Press, 2013): pp. 65-86.

2 Gay, V. P. (2009). Chapter 1. “Neuroscience and Religion: Brain, Mind, Self and Soul” in Gay, V. P. (ed) (2009). Neuroscience and Religion: Brain, Mind, Self, and Soul. Lanham, MD and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books: pp.1-15.

3 McNamara, P. and Wildman, W. J., editors (2012). Science and the World’s Religions, Volume I. Origins and Destinies; Volume II. Persons and Groups; and Volume III. Religions and Controversies. Wesport, CT: Praeger.

4 Two other recent major scholarly compendia on religion and science, The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, edited by Philip Clayton and Zachary Simpson (2006) and The Cambridge Companion to Religion and Science edited by Peter Harrison (2010) will not be addressed in this essay due to the limitations of space and the fear of redundancy,for they, too, principally address (largely Christian) responses to issues raised for theology by science.

5 Volume I, Origins and Destinies, p. xix6

Volume I, Origins and Destinies, p. xiv7

Volume I, Origins and Destinies, p. xx8

Volume I, Origins and Destinies, p. xxv9

Volume I, Origins and Destinies, p. xxvi10

Volume I, Origins and Destinies, p. xxix

11

See for example, Panksepp, Jaak and Panksepp, Jules, (2000). “Seven Sins of Evolutionary Psychology” in Evolution and Cognition, # 108, Vol. 6, No. 2 and Ravven, H. M., (2013). The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will. New York: The New Press. 12

Jeeves, M. A., & Brown, W. S. (2009). Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion: Illusions, Delusions, and Realities about Human Nature. West Conshohocken, Pa: Templeton Press: p. 5.

13 Jeeves and Brown, Preface pp. vii-viii.

14 “Saint Thomas Aquinas,” by Ralph McInerny and John O'Callaghan Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, First published Mon Jul 12, 1999; substantive revision Fri May 23, 2014: http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/

15 See, Brown, P. (1967). Augustine of Hippo. Berkeley: University of California Press. Especially, pp. 502-512. Also, see Ravven (2013) Chapter 4. “What Happened to Ethics: The Augustinian Legacy of Free Will,” pp. 136-183.

16 Altmann, A. (1981). “Maimonides and Thomas Aquinas: Natural or Divine Prophecy?”chapter 5, pp. 77-96, in Essays in Jewish Intellectual History. (Hanover, NH and London: University Press of New England, 1981: p. 81.

17 Altmann, p. 82

18 Altmann, p. 89

19 Altmann, p. 90

20 Hood, Jr., R. W., Hill, P. C., & Spilka, B. (2009). The Psychology of Religion: An Empirical Approach (4 edition). New York and London: The Guilford Press.

21 All quotations from Hood, Hill, and Spilka, p. xii

22 Hood, Hill, and Spilka, p. xiii

23 Haag, J. W., Peterson, G. R., & Spezio, M. L. (2012). The Routledge companion to religion and science. Abingdon, Oxon; New York: Routledge.

24 Routledge Companion, Introduction by James W. Haag, Gregory R. Peterson, and Michael L. Spezio, pp.xxi-xxxii. Quotations are taken from pp. xxii-xxv.

25 Carlson, S. (2009). “The Neuroscience of Religious Experience: An Introductory Survey,” Chapter 7 in Gay, V. P. (ed) (2009). Neuroscience and Religion: Brain, Mind, Self, and Soul. Lanham, MD and Plymouth, UK: Lexington Books: pp. 153-173: p. 153.

26 Patrick McNamara and P. Monroe Butler, Chapter 11. “The Neuropsychology of Religious Experience,” in Hood, Jr., R. W., & Belzen, J.A., Patrick McNamara and P.Monroe Butler, Chapter 11. “The Neuropsychology of Religious Experience,” in Hood, Jr., R. W., & Belzen, J.A., (ed.) (2013). Handbook of the Psychology of Religion and Spirituality(second edition). New York and London: The Guilford Press: pp. 215-233: 215-219.

27 Carlson, pp. 159-168

28 Carlson, p. 168