Neurotheology: A Science of What? (original) (raw)
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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.
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.
Neuroscientific Explanations of Religious Experience are Not free from Cultural Aspects
Journal for Interdisciplinary Research on Religion and …, 2008
We cannot disregard that the neuroscientific research on religious phenomena such as religious experiences and rituals for example, has increased significantly the last years. Neuroscientists claim that neuroscience contributes considerably in the process of understanding religious experiences, because neuroscience is able to measure brain activity during religious experiences by way of brain-imaging technologies. No doubt, those results of neuroscientific research on religious experiences are an important supplement to the understanding of some types of religious experiences. However, some conclusions drawn from neuroscientific research on religious experiences are arguable. For example, one such conclusion is that religious experiences are actually nothing but neural activity, i.e. there is nothing 'religious' to the experiences at all. Another such conclusion is that a person's religious experiences actually derive from some ultimate reality, meaning that religious experiences are real. It is the latter assertion that will be analyzed in the present paper. The question is asked whether neuroscience alone is able to affirm that religious experiences are real or whether there are, besides neuroscientific issues, also cultural-religious assumptions that underlie this conclusion.
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.
Neuroscience and Religion: Surveying the Field
Macmillan, 2016
Scientific and religious communities have long been at odds over scientific attempts to explain religious experience. Since the beginning of the modern era, a number of scientists interested in religion and spirituality have sought a rigorous understanding of how these types of experiences manifest themselves in the brain and in human behavior. According to this view, our deepest beliefs and most elevating experiences can be understood in scientific terms-in particular, in terms of neuroscience studying "brain anatomy, brain function, and brain chemistry" (Tiger and McGuire 2010, 113). Yet others doubt that science has a legitimate role in exploring the nature of religion or spirituality. From their perspective, scientists should not attempt to explain the ineffable at all, and they regard such efforts as a challenge to the values and experiences that they consider most personal and sacred. Aldous Huxley, one of the most prophetic science fiction authors of his generation, wrote in 1958, "That men and women can, by physical and chemical means, transcend themselves in a genuinely spiritual way… seems rather shocking. But, after all, the drug or the physical exercise is not the cause of the spiritual experience; it is only its occasion." As a seasoned explorer of the boundary between chemistry and spirituality, Huxley believed that the "chemical means" of spiritual experience do not invalidate the psychological value of the state itself. In that case, efforts to better understand those means is especially important for the scientific study of those experiences. It should be possible to undertake a scientific approach to religious and spiritual experience without reducing those experiences strictly to chemical reactions. And even if such reductionism were possible, other disciplines would likely still provide a valuable grammar for describing and understanding various aspects of religion and spirituality. At the same time, any social, cultural, or personal conception of the divine or of a higher power 277 COPYRIGHT 2017 Macmillan Reference USA, a part of Gale, Cengage Learning WCN 02-200-210
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.
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
Searching for Neurobiological Foundations of Faith and Religion
Studia Humana
Considering that the brain is involved in human thinking, feeling and behaviour, we must also ask the question of whether finding neural correlates of religious experience is not just a matter of time. The questions ‘if’ and ‘how’ human brain responds to or generates religious experience capture the interest of researchers from various fields of science. Their joint efforts and scientific discourse lead to implementation of bold interdisciplinary research projects, with a far-reaching goal of explaining the mystery of faith and religion. Studies conducted at the meeting point of empirical and theological sciences raise controversies and criticism. Examples include the discussions on natural and theological experiments, collectively called neurotheology.
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 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...