The Science of Religion :: Spiritual History Bible Papers

The Science of Religion The cover of the latest Newsweek caught my eye as I was running out the door to class: a vaguely futuristic, androgynous ascetic was basking in the glow of an ethereal ray of light, face calm, hands uplifted to receive inspiration. In the center of this enlightening beam, the title professed, "God and the Brain: How We're Wired for Spirituality." Who could resist such an evocative article? I flipped through it - it started with some stuff about how to achieve a spiritual state (by turning off environmental fear and orientation sensors in the brain), proudly confirmed that scientists can now track brain activity of Tibetan Buddhist meditation and Catholic prayers?I was starting to grow bored and skim faster; then my eye caught, "Neurotheology is stalking bigger game than simply affirming that spiritual feelings leave neural footprints?By pinpointing the brain areas involved in spiritual experiences and tracing how such experiences arise, the scientists hope to learn whether anyone can have such experiences, and why spiritual experiences have the qualities they do" (54). The article went on to discuss how certain key religious figures from history are hypothesized to have had temporal-lobe epilepsy, a condition that yields "focused bursts of electrical activity called 'temporal-lobe transients' [which] may yield mystical experiences" (55). In order to test this, neuroscientist Michael Persinger built an electromagnetic helmet to directly stimulate the temporal lobes of the brain. The helmet produced the intended results, encouraging "out-of-body experience" and "a sense of the divine" in its users; thus Persinger concluded that "religious experiences are evoked by mini electrical storms in the temporal lobes, and that such storms can be triggered by anxiety, personal crisis, lack of oxygen, low blood sugar and simple fatigue - suggesting a reason that some people 'find God' in such moments" (55). The article moves on to suggest that people capable of "dissociation" - identified by their creativity, innovative tendencies, open-mindedness, and close in teraction of the conscious and subconscious mind - "may be genetically or temperamentally predisposed to mystical ability" (56). Finally, after boasting that scientists can both monitor and produce "spiritual" experiences in the laboratory, after defining the physical causes of out-of-body experiences and divine inspiration as malfunctions or misinterpretations of the brain, and after claiming a sort of personality-based predestination, the article concedes that "it is likely that [scientists] will never resolve the greatest question of all - namely, whether our brain wiring creates God, or whether God created our brain wiring. The Science of Religion :: Spiritual History Bible Papers The Science of Religion The cover of the latest Newsweek caught my eye as I was running out the door to class: a vaguely futuristic, androgynous ascetic was basking in the glow of an ethereal ray of light, face calm, hands uplifted to receive inspiration. In the center of this enlightening beam, the title professed, "God and the Brain: How We're Wired for Spirituality." Who could resist such an evocative article? I flipped through it - it started with some stuff about how to achieve a spiritual state (by turning off environmental fear and orientation sensors in the brain), proudly confirmed that scientists can now track brain activity of Tibetan Buddhist meditation and Catholic prayers?I was starting to grow bored and skim faster; then my eye caught, "Neurotheology is stalking bigger game than simply affirming that spiritual feelings leave neural footprints?By pinpointing the brain areas involved in spiritual experiences and tracing how such experiences arise, the scientists hope to learn whether anyone can have such experiences, and why spiritual experiences have the qualities they do" (54). The article went on to discuss how certain key religious figures from history are hypothesized to have had temporal-lobe epilepsy, a condition that yields "focused bursts of electrical activity called 'temporal-lobe transients' [which] may yield mystical experiences" (55). In order to test this, neuroscientist Michael Persinger built an electromagnetic helmet to directly stimulate the temporal lobes of the brain. The helmet produced the intended results, encouraging "out-of-body experience" and "a sense of the divine" in its users; thus Persinger concluded that "religious experiences are evoked by mini electrical storms in the temporal lobes, and that such storms can be triggered by anxiety, personal crisis, lack of oxygen, low blood sugar and simple fatigue - suggesting a reason that some people 'find God' in such moments" (55). The article moves on to suggest that people capable of "dissociation" - identified by their creativity, innovative tendencies, open-mindedness, and close in teraction of the conscious and subconscious mind - "may be genetically or temperamentally predisposed to mystical ability" (56). Finally, after boasting that scientists can both monitor and produce "spiritual" experiences in the laboratory, after defining the physical causes of out-of-body experiences and divine inspiration as malfunctions or misinterpretations of the brain, and after claiming a sort of personality-based predestination, the article concedes that "it is likely that [scientists] will never resolve the greatest question of all - namely, whether our brain wiring creates God, or whether God created our brain wiring.