From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Aug 13 2003 - 23:11:52 EDT
The data from various fields are open to
interpretation in a way that seems to me
non-definitive. Persinger's attempts to artificially
create religious or mystical experiences are used by
Persinger (an atheist) to argue that religion is "all
in the head", but that conclusion is not at all the
only one for a variety of reasons:
1. Just because any experience can be induced --
e.g., the smell of burnt toast -- doesn't mean that
the real experience doesn't exist. E.g., there is
such a thing as burning toast despite the fact that
even in the absence of burning toast I can be induced
to think I smell burning toast.
2. The data on the connection between epilepsy and
religious experience is both tenuous and open to
multiple interpretations, not least of which is that
there are *very* different characteristics associated
with the experiences due to epilepticly induced
"psuedo-religious" experiences and ostensibly *real*
or at least non-epileptic religious experiences in the
perception of the experiencing person.
3. All communication from God, assuming He exists, is
necessarily mediated in *some* physical manner (unless
one is a dualist to such an extent that mind and body
have *no* connection at all), so it is not surprising
that certain areas of the brain would be active *if*
someone is having a genuine religious experience. It
seems to me that advocates who start from the belief
that there is no God, such as Persinger, have a nice
little "heads I win, tails you lose" argument going --
a) either there is something that happens in the brain
when someone claims to have a religious experience
that can be measured in some sense and then in
"nothing buttery" fashion one can say that "it's all
in one's head" and that nothing happened but this area
of the brain being activated, ascribing causality and
totality to the brain function, ignoring the fact that
higher levels of explanation are required to make any
conclusions and further ignoring that the same thing
can be said about the cogitation required by the
researcher to conduct her research, or b) nothing
observable happens in the brain during a claimed
religious experience and then, of course, there is no
evidence of anything happening in a religious
experience and so, it doesn't exist in fine Vienna
Circle fashion of what passes for logical positivism
these days among many atheistic scientists.
So, it seems to me that the data are always going to
be equivocal especially when one looks *only* at what
is happening in the brain and ignores the qualitative
differences in perception of the experiencers between
say Persinger's induced "religious" experiences, an
epileptic-related "pseudo religious" experiences, and
a religious experience that the person perceives to be
genuine.
IIRC, the religious experiences measured by D'Aquili
and Newberg on one hand and Pesinger on the other are
quite different not only qualitatively but in which
areas of the brain are activated. This points up
another issue:
4. What qualifies as religious experience? For
example, none of these studies as far as I am aware
get to something as general as a sense of the
numinous. D'Aquili and Newberg looked at
contemplatives from two different traditions -- who
IIRC had somewhat different (although many of the
same) areas of the brain activated. Persinger's
experiment had different effects on the brain. So,
one questions what is properly religious experience?
In practical every day life, almost any experience can
be religious for the believer. So, I think there is
perhaps a problem with labeling things as religious or
non-religious experiences. Especially since those
labelings are first person stories, and the brain
function being observed is a third person story, if
you will.
I find it exceedingly silly that Persinger or others
claim to explain totally the bases for belief in God
because they can induce something in the brain that
sometimes give impressions similar to how some people
describe some types of religious experiences. It
really seems to me to be the worst sort of hyperbole
(of course that is part and parcel of selling books
and some of the academic publishing game these days).
I do not have it in front of me, but it seems to me
that Fraser Watts deals with this issue somewhat in a
general overview fashion in one of his chapters in
Psychology and Theology (or vice-versa, I forget which
comes first in the title).
Malcolm Jeeves I am sure has written or said something
about these issues too given his work in neuroscience
and psychology, but I don't recall having read
anything about it written by him off hand.
BTW, what evidence is there or on what basis would one
say that God has hard-wired only humans to perceive
Him? I wouldn't presume that to be the case, and the
pan-experientialists and process theologians certainly
wouldn't either (although I do not fall into those
categories).
I hope to hear more about the fruits of your
literature search. This issue kicked around in my
head for a little while and the above thoughts are the
rather meager fruits of my thinking and reading about
it (made even more meager by the ensuing passage of
time after having thought about it).
Perhaps in the process I have become overly
uncharitable to the zealots like Persinger who go in
with an outcome they want to prove (if you read what
he has said in many places it is quite clear that is
the case), especially when even his experimental data
is so open to interpretation and cannot possibly be
definitive about the claims he is making. I am always
wary of those who make claims that are obviously not
completely supported by their data and use broad
sweeping language to cover those facts up and
hyperbole becomes tiresome after a while. By
contrast, D'Aquili and Newberg are both rather honest
about the equivocality of the data and its inability
to say whether God exists.
--- EckertWAIII@aol.com wrote:
> Does anyone have any thoughts on the strengths or
> weaknesses of the
> hypothesis that there is an area of the brain that
> causes most/many humans to believe
> in God and to have spiritual experiences?
>
> I've read the books, "The 'God' Part of the Brain"
> and also "Why God Won't Go
> Away: Brain Science & The Biology of Belief" and the
> hypothesis sounds
> compelling. In "The 'God' Part of the Brain", the
> author suggests that such an area
> of the brain predisposing people to God supports the
> notion that no
> mind-independent God exists. However, in "Why God
> Won't Go Away: Brain Science & The
> Biology of Belief", the authors leave the question
> open and even seem to lean
> somewhat toward the notion that the existence of
> such a brain area may provide
> evidence that God does exist and, among all of the
> animal life on Earth, has
> hard-wired human beings alone to be aware of His
> existence and to be able to
> experience Him directly.
>
> Personally, I am open to the possibility though
> still skeptical. I am just
> starting an intensive literature study of this
> question which, for me as a
> neuroscientist, is a very fascinating place of
> intersection between science and
> religion/faith.
>
> -Bill
> --
> William A. Eckert III, Ph.D.
> Senior Research Scientist
> Inspire Pharmaceuticals, Inc.
> Durham, NC
>
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