Neuroscientific Explanations of Religious Experience are Not free from Cultural Aspects (original) (raw)
Related papers
Studies in Psychology / Estudios de Psicología, 2019
Abstract The current article is a critical review of the neuropsychological study of religious experience. First, we analyse the philosophical and theological roots of the term and its characterization as a sui generis and unique phenomenon. We subsequently describe the adoption of the concept in psychology, as well as the emergence of alternative approaches that emphasize the role of categorization of experiences as religious. We then move on to explore how both approaches have influenced the neuropsychological study of religious experience, consequently producing different models: sui generis, attributional and others that consider the variety of factors and the heterogeneity of experiences associated with religious practices. Resumen El presente artículo es una revisión crítica del estudio neuropsicológico de la experiencia religiosa. Comenzaremos analizando las raíces filosóficas y teológicas del concepto, y su caracterización en tanto fenómeno sui generis y único. Proseguiremos describiendo el traslado de dicha concepción a la psicología, así como el surgimiento de una concepción crítica al modelo sui generis, a través de enfoques alternativos que enfatizan en el rol de la categorización de las experiencias en tanto religiosas. Veremos cómo ambas concepciones son trasladadas al estudio neuropsicológico de la experiencia religiosa, produciendo distintos modelos sui generis, atribucionistas, así como otros que contemplan la variedad de factores y heterogeneidad de experiencias relacionadas a las prácticas religiosas
Challenges Facing the Neurological Study of Religious Behavior, Belief, and Experience
Method & Theory in the Study of …, 2008
Th e neurological study of religious behavior, belief, and experience faces many challenges related to research conception, experimental design, and interpretation of results. Some of these problems are common to other types of neurological study of behavioral and cognitive phenomena. Others are distinctive to the specifically religious domain of behavior, belief, and experience. Th is paper discusses eight of these problems and three key strategic principles for mitigating them. It then proposes an eight-step framework for research into the neurology of religious behavior, belief, and experience that implements the three strategic principles and addresses all eight of the problems.
Neuroscience of Religion Review
Neuroscience of religion is the attempt to describe and explain religious thought and behavior at the level of the brain. Unlike Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), which mainly seeks to model the cognitive mechanisms involved in religious thought and behavior, and Evolutionary Psychology of Religion (EPR), which attempts to uncover the selection pressures that may have led to those mechanisms (see chapter XX), Neuroscience of Religion aims to identify the neurobiological substrates of such mechanisms.
THE NEUROSCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGIOUS AND SPIRITUAL PHENOMENA: OR WHY GOD DOESN'T USE BIOSTATISTICS
With the rapidly expanding field of neuroscience research exploring religious and spiritual phenomena, there have been many perspectives as to the validity, importance, relevance, and need for such research. In this essay we review the studies that have contributed to our current understanding of the neuropsychology of religious phenomena. We focus on methodological issues to determine which areas have been weaknesses and strengths in the current studies. This area of research also poses important theological and epistemological questions that require careful consideration if both the religious and scientific elements are to be appropriately respected. The best way to evaluate this field is to determine the methodological issues that currently affect the field and explore how best to address such issues so that future investigations can be as robust as possible and can become more mainstream in both the religious and the scientific arenas.
Religion and Neuroscience: An Integrative Literature Review to Decode the Dive.
NeuroQuantology|, 2021
The comparative study of religion and neuroscience has gained increasing attention in recent years, as researchers seek to understand the neural mechanisms underlying religious beliefs, practices, and experiences. This integrative literature review provides an overview of the current state of research in this field, with a reference to the emerging discipline of neurotheology. A comprehensive search of electronic databases was conducted, and articles were reviewed and analyzed thematically for their relevance, rigour, and theoretical contributions to the study of religion and neuroscience. The findings suggest that religious beliefs, practices, and experiences are associated with specific neural pathways and brain regions, including the prefrontal cortex, anterior cingulate cortex, and parietal lobes. Neurotheology, a field that seeks to integrate neuroscience and theology, has contributed to our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying religious experiences, including meditation, prayer, and mystical experiences. However, the study of religion and neuroscience is not without its challenges, including the potential for cultural bias and the limitations of neuroimaging techniques. Despite these challenges, this integrative literature review provides valuable insights into the complex relationship between religion and the brain and highlights the potential contributions of neurotheology to our understanding of religious experience and spirituality.
Neurological Approaches to Religion: An Assessment of Four New Publications
Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2008
Religion may be studied from several different angles, and is no longer private territory of theology or religious studies. It has become a copious topic for human and social sciences in the twentieth century; now is the turn of biological and cognitive sciences, applying different methodologies and their own approaches.
On the Side of the Angels? Neuroscience & Religious Experience
RERC Occasional Paper #49, 2009
Abstract ... it is the neurophysiologists today who appear, if I may use the expression, to be “on the side of the angels”. (Sir Alister Hardy) The contributions made by the biological sciences to the study of religious experience cover a broad range of topics and issues including, fasting, sex, drugs, exercise, sensory deprivation, and the healing effects of prayer to name just a few2. However, it is in the field of neuroscience that some of the most intriguing and controversial findings have recently been made. In an attempt to assess what progress has been made in the study of religious experience by the biological sciences this essay relates the recent work performed by neuroscientists Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg to ideas put forward previously by another biologist, Sir Alister Hardy.
From Brain Imaging Religious Experience to Explaining Religion: A Critique
Recent functional neuroimaging data, acquired in studies of religious experience, have been used to explain and justify religion and its origins. In this paper, we critique the move from describing brain activity associated with self-reported religious states, to explaining why there is religion at all. Toward that end, first we review recent neuroimaging findings on religious experience, and show how those results do not necessarily support a popular notion that religion has a primitive evolu- tionary origin. Importantly, we call into question an assumption—key to that account of religion— concerning a conceptual relation between ‘religion’ and ‘religious experience’. Then, we examine the conditions that must be met in order to explain religion on the basis of brain imaging findings. Moreover, we list principled reasons to be sceptical of explanations of religion in terms of the neural underpinnings of experiences. We conclude that the data from neuroimaging studies are not suited for an explanation of religion.
The neural correlates of religious experience
McNamara's claim that there is overlap between the brain sites implicated in religious experience and those implicated in the sense of self and self-consciousness rests on two postulates: (1) that the " executive Self " can be identied as a neural entity in specic regions of the brain; and (2) that the neural correlates of religious experience can be identied as a consistent set of activations in these regions. Although McNamara is clearly well informed in terms of functional neuroanatomy, he fails to make a convincing argument for his rst postulate regarding the existence of the self as a controlling entity at the neurological level. This is unfortunate because his claim that religious experience decenters the self from its control over body and cognition in order to contemplate and optimize the self rests on this assumption. Furthermore, with respect to his second postulate, since the data currently available do not afford a description of religious experience as a uniform category, it is difcult to see how this evidence can support McNamara's general understanding of the nature and function of religious experience. McNamara may be right that some religious practices are intimately related to the transformative processes of the self, but only future studies can tell whether this idea can be supported by the neurosciences. In the preface to his book The Neuroscience of Religious Experience, Patrick McNamara opens with the intriguing proclamation that his theory is based on the nding that there is " anatomical overlap between the brain sites implicated in religious experience and the brain sites implicated in the sense of Self and self-consciousness " (McNamara 2009: xi). It is this anatomical overlap that explains how religious experience can facilitate the transformative process of the self. Therefore it is fair to assume that the evidence presented in his chapters on the neurology of the self and of religious experiences are crucial for his argumentation. McNamara's notion of anatomical overlap rests on two postulates: (1) that the self can be identied in specic regions of the brain as a neural entity; and (2) that the neural correlates of religious experience can be identied as a consistent
The Neuropsychology of Religion
2002
Consider religion to be a community's (1) costly and hard-to-fake commitment (2) to a counterfactual world of supernatural agents (3) who master people's existential anxieties, such as death and deception. This intellectual framework guides a research program that aims to foster scientific dialogue between cultural anthropology, cognitive psychology and evolutionary biology regarding a set of phenomena vital to most human life and all societies (Atran 2002). The present chapter mainly concerns the third criterion of religion (3), and its implications for neuropsychology. Previous neurobiological studies of religion have focused on tracking participant's neurophysiological responses during episodes of religious experience and recording individual patterns of trance, vision, revelation and the like. This has favored comparison of religious experience with temporal-lobe brain-wave patterns during epileptic seizures and acute schizophrenic episodes. Cognitive structures of t...