Re: A "God" Part of the Brain?

From: Dr. Blake Nelson (bnelson301@yahoo.com)
Date: Wed Aug 13 2003 - 23:11:52 EDT

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    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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