Sex, Drugs & Education: The Spiritual Perspective. Neurotheology: This Is Your Brain On Religion. Principles of NeurotheologyBy Andrew B. NewbergPaperback, 284 pagesAshgateList price: $29.95 "Neurotheology" is a unique field of scholarship and investigation that seeks to understand the relationship specifically between the brain and theology, and more broadly between the mind and religion. As a topic, neurotheology has garnered substantial attention in the academic and lay communities in recent years. Several books have been written addressing the relationship between the brain and religious experience and numerous scholarly articles have been published on the topic.
The scientific and religious communities have been very interested in obtaining more information regarding neurotheology, how to approach this topic, and whether science and religion can be integrated in some manner that preserves, and perhaps enhances, both. In short, for neurotheology to be successful, science must be kept rigorous and religion must be kept religious. 1. 2. 3. 4. Dr. Andy Thomson - Why We Believe in God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith. Out of Body Experience. LSD as a Spiritual Experience - Deepak Chopra. Map. Neuroscience. Neurotheology With God In Mind - Neurotheology Article - Clinically Psyched Neurotheology - Hyper-religiosity | Clinically Psyched.
Addressing the general meeting for the “Society of Neuroscience” in 1997, Dr. Ramachandran made comment that “there is a neural basis for religious experience.” Ramachandran’s radical statement catapulted neurotheology well into the public eye. The aim of neurotheology is to question and “explore theology from a neurological perspective…helping us to understand the human urge for religion and religious myth” (Newberg, D’Aquili & Rause 2001, p177). Neurotheologians address this through varying scientific methods. Newberg and D’aquili(2001, pp3-10) explored the relationship between brain function and spiritual experience in Tibetan Monks and Franciscan Nuns as they engaged in deep meditation and prayer.
Newberg et al, 2001, (p40) describes the state achieved during meditation as ‘Hyperquiescence’, a state of “extraordinary relaxation”. More contemporary examples may be noted in two specific cases. Dr. Not all limbic hyper-activation is the result of temporal lobe epilepsy. References. O.A.K.: HOW THE BRAIN ‘CREATES’ GOD. Tests of faith | Science. First for some figures. Last year, an ICM poll found 85% of Americans believe that God created the universe. In Nigeria, 98% claimed always to have believed in God, while nine out of 10 Indonesians said they would die for their God or religious beliefs. Last month, a survey by the market research bureau of Ireland found 87% of the population believe in God. Rather than rocking their faith, 19% said tragedies such as the Asian tsunami, which killed 300,000 people, bolstered their belief.
Polls have their faults, but if the figures are even remotely right they illustrate the prevalence of faith in the modern world. Faith has long been a puzzle for science, and it's no surprise why. By definition, faith demands belief without a need for supporting evidence, a concept that could not be more opposed to the principles of scientific inquiry. So why do so many people believe? Psychological tests Boyer has run on children go some way to proving our natural tendency to believe.
Further reading. In the Media: "Tracing the Synapses of Our Spirituality" - Researchers Examine Relationship Between Brain and Religion - By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post - Sunday, June 17, 2001. Tracing the Synapses of Our Spirituality Researchers Examine Relationship Between Brain and Religion By Shankar Vedantam, Washington Post Sunday, June 17, 2001 In Philadelphia, a researcher discovers areas of the brain that are activated during meditation. At two other universities in San Diego and North Carolina, doctors study how epilepsy and certain hallucinogenic drugs can produce religious epiphanies.
And in Canada, a neuroscientist fits people with magnetized helmets that produce "spiritual" experiences for the secular. The work is part of a broad effort by scientists around the world to better understand religious experiences, measure them, and even reproduce them. What creates that transcendental feeling of being one with the universe? The research may represent the bravest frontier of brain research. "It reinforces atheistic assumptions and makes religion appear useless," said Nancey Murphy, a professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. Animals can have spiritual experiences just like humans. Neuropsychology of Human Religious Behavior.
By Abbas Sadeghian, PH.D. Photo: View of Jerusalem's holly sites Throughout the history of psychology, the topic of human religiosity has been referred to as a learned behavior. In other words a person's religion is the final outcome of the person's interaction with his environment. Therefore the assumption is that if you are born in a Christian country, you are going to be a Christian. Theoretically, since the person has been exposed to his religion from early childhood, it would be quite unlikely that he would choose a different religion or have the desire or the need to practice something else. Although, the followers of great religions of the world do not like to admit this historical fact, an honest historian would admit that my ancestors' conversion from Zoroastrianism to Islam was only achieved by sword. The same is true for natives of South America becoming Christians.
Interestingly, the forceful attempts to make a population atheist have never worked. Big bang in anthropology. Lectures in Neurotheology. What Your Brain Looks Like on Faith. Sam Harris is best known for his barn-burning 2004 attack on religion, The End of Faith, which spent 33 weeks on the New York Times best-seller List. The book's sequel, Letter to a Christian Nation also came out in editions totalling hundreds of thousands. Last Monday, however, the combative Californian produced a shorter (seven pages) and seemingly calmer publication that will be a hit if it reaches 10,000 readers: "Functional Neuroimaging of Belief, Disbelief and Uncertainty. " It appears in the respected journal Annals of Neurology. And Harris, 40, claims it has little if any connection to his two popular books. Believers, however, may draw their own conclusions — and may want to read his subsequent neurological studies even more carefully. The current paper recovers Harris's identity as a doctoral candidate in neuroscience at UCLA, his occupation before he commenced what he calls his "extramural affair jumping into trenches in the culture wars.
" Which, of course, a lot of people do. Large Hadron Collider rival Tevatron 'has found Higgs boson', say rumours. What does prayer achieve? | Andrew Brown. When I consider my Christian academic friends – people who are smarter, better read and harder working than I am – it's clear that Christianity is a very dangerous profession. Three have daughters who died in their 20s; another has a daughter who is a drug addict. Parents and spouses get Alzheimer's disease when they don't get cancer. I imagine they all prayed for these things not to happen. I know they all still pray. So what is going on here? What is the point of all that prayer? I wouldn't be surprised, myself, if some forms of prayer worked a bit better than chance. But since placebos don't work on third parties, that rather rules out the idea of praying for someone else's diseases, especially if they are an atheist, still more if they are a stranger.
What's done in private is, of course, another matter. The second question is whether prayer works on the pray-er as a form of pain relief. Nor, in the accounts I have, do people pray for the pain to stop. Breaking the Spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon, by Daniel C Dennett - Reviews, Books. While Dennett sees an urgent need to analyse religion as a natural phenomenon, he sees little point in pursuing the question of whether it is a supernatural one as well. He is already a convinced atheist, and a self-proclaimed "bright" - a term intended to do for non-believers what "gay" has done for homosexuals, combining positive connotations with a sense of assertiveness and commitment.
Believers, he suggests, might like to call themselves "supers", a similarly positive tag that refers to the supernatural. They are unlikely to welcome his offering, or to mistake it for a genuine token of respect. Dennett is happy to let his disdain for religion show through the framework of inquiry, insistent that it is disinterested. Though Dennett is evidently in sympathy with his English comrade, he differs crucially in strategy. To some ears this may sound like overweening scientism, a vain belief in science as a superior form of religion. The book's title looks like a clue. Creating God in one's own image : Not Exactly Rocket Science. For many religious people, the popular question “What would Jesus do?” Is essentially the same as “What would I do?”
That’s the message from an intriguing and controversial new study by Nicholas Epley from the University of Chicago. Through a combination of surveys, psychological manipulation and brain-scanning, he has found that when religious Americans try to infer the will of God, they mainly draw on their own personal beliefs. Psychological studies have found that people are always a tad egocentric when considering other people’s mindsets. They use their own beliefs as a starting point, which colours their final conclusions. Epley found that the same process happens, and then some, when people try and divine the mind of God. Religion provides a moral compass for many people around the world, colouring their views on everything from martyrdom to abortion to homosexuality.
In another study, Epley got people to manipulate themselves. Of course, many philosophers got there first. Damage to One Brain Region Can Boost “Transcendent” Feelings | 80beats. Neurosurgical patients get closer to God : Neurophilosophy. REMOVAL of specific parts of the brain can induce increases in a personality trait which predisposes people to spirituality, according to a new clinical study by Italian researchers. The new research, published earlier this month in the journal Neuron, provides evidence that some brain structures are associated with spiritual thinking and feelings, and hints at individual differences that might make some people more prone than others to spirituality.
Within each of these four groups, approximately half of the patients had tumours located toward the front of the brain in the frontal and temporal lobes, while in the rest the tumours were further back, around the junction between the occipital, temporal and parietal lobes. During formal interviews conducted prior to the surgery, they asked each of the patients about aspects of their religion-related behaviour and experiences. The authors describe their findings within this context. Related: Urgesi, C., et al. (2010).