-Caveat Lector-
William Shannon wrote:
Check out an excellent book called " The God Part of the Brain " and
another called " Belief and Make Believe."
J2
>
> http://washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/nation/science/A10767-2001Jun16.html
>
> Tracing the Synapses of Our Spirituality
> Researchers Examine Relationship Between Brain and Religion
>
> By Shankar Vedantam
> Washington Post Staff Writer
>
> Sunday, June 17, 2001; Page A01
>
> 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.
> Using powerful brain imaging technology, researchers are exploring what
> mystics call nirvana, and what Christians describe as a state of grace.
> Scientists are asking whether spirituality can be explained in terms of
> neural networks, neurotransmitters and brain chemistry.
>
> What creates that transcendental feeling of being one with the universe? It
> could be the decreased activity in the brain's parietal lobe, which helps
> regulate the sense of self and physical orientation, research suggests. How
> does religion prompt divine feelings of love and compassion? Possibly because
> of changes in the frontal lobe, caused by heightened concentration during
> meditation. Why do many people have a profound sense that religion has
> changed their lives? Perhaps because spiritual practices activate the
> temporal lobe, which weights experiences with personal significance.
>
> "The brain is set up in such a way as to have spiritual experiences and
> religious experiences," said Andrew Newberg, a Philadelphia scientist who
> wrote the book "Why God Won't Go Away." "Unless there is a fundamental change
> in the brain, religion and spirituality will be here for a very long time.
> The brain is predisposed to having those experiences and that is why so many
> people believe in God."
>
> The research may represent the bravest frontier of brain research. But
> depending on your religious beliefs, it may also be the last straw. For while
> Newberg and other scientists say they are trying to bridge the gap between
> science and religion, many believers are offended by the notion that God is a
> creation of the human brain, rather than the other way around.
>
> "It reinforces atheistic assumptions and makes religion appear useless," said
> Nancey Murphy, a professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological
> Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. "If you can explain religious experience purely
> as a brain phenomenon, you don't need the assumption of the existence of God."
>
> Some scientists readily say the research proves there is no such thing as
> God. But many others argue that they are religious themselves, and that they
> are simply trying to understand how our minds produce a sense of spirituality.
>
> Newberg, who was catapulted to center stage of the neuroscience-religion
> debate by his book and some recent experiments he conducted at the University
> of Pennsylvania with co-researcher Eugene D'Aquili, says he has a sense of
> his own spirituality, though he declined to say whether he believes in God,
> because any answer would prompt people to question his agenda. "I'm really
> not trying to use science to prove that God exists or disprove God exists,"
> he said.
>
> Newberg's experiment consisted of taking brain scans of Tibetan Buddhist
> meditators as they sat immersed in contemplation. After giving them time to
> sink into a deep meditative trance, he injected them with a radioactive dye.
> Patterns of the dye's residues in the brain were later converted into images.
>
> Newberg found that certain areas of the brain were altered during deep
> meditation. Predictably, these included areas in the front of the brain that
> are involved in concentration. But Newberg also found decreased activity in
> the parietal lobe, one of the parts of the brain that helps orient a person
> in three-dimensional space.
>
> "When people have spiritual experiences they feel they become one with the
> universe and lose their sense of self," he said. "We think that may be
> because of what is happening in that area -- if you block that area you lose
> that boundary between the self and the rest of the world. In doing so you
> ultimately wind up in a universal state."
>
> Across the country, at the University of California in San Diego, other
> neuroscientists are studying why religious experiences seem to accompany
> epileptic seizures in some patients. At Duke University, psychiatrist Roy
> Mathew is studying hallucinogenic drugs that can produce mystical experiences
> and have long been used in certain religious traditions.
>
> Could the flash of wisdom that came over Siddhartha Gautama -- the Buddha --
> have been nothing more than his parietal lobe quieting down? Could the voices
> that Moses and Mohammed heard on remote mountaintops have been just a bunch
> of firing neurons -- an illusion? Could Jesus's conversations with God have
> been a mental delusion?
>
> Newberg won't go so far, but other proponents of the new brain science do.
> Michael Persinger, a professor of neuroscience at Laurentian University in
> Sudbury, Ontario, has been conducting experiments that fit a set of magnets
> to a helmet-like device. Persinger runs what amounts to a weak
> electromagnetic signal around the skulls of volunteers.
>
> Four in five people, he said, report a "mystical experience, the feeling that
> there is a sentient being or entity standing behind or near" them. Some weep,
> some feel God has touched them, others become frightened and talk of demons
> and evil spirits.
>
> "That's in the laboratory," Persinger said. "They know they are in the
> laboratory. Can you imagine what would happen if that happened late at night
> in a pew or mosque or synagogue?"
>
> His research, Persinger said, showed that "religion is a property of the
> brain, only the brain and has little to do with what's out there."
>
> Those who believe the new science disproves the existence of God say they are
> holding up a mirror to society about the destructive power of religion. They
> say that religious wars, fanaticism and intolerance spring from dogmatic
> beliefs that particular gods and faiths are unique, rather than facets of
> universal brain chemistry.
>
> "It's irrational and dangerous when you see how religiosity affects us," said
> Matthew Alper, author of "The God Part of the Brain," a book about the
> neuroscience of belief. "During times of prosperity, we are contented. During
> times of depression, we go to war. When there isn't enough food to go around,
> we break into our spiritual tribes and use our gods as justification to kill
> one another."
>
> While Persinger and Alper count themselves as atheists, many scientists
> studying the neurology of belief consider themselves deeply spiritual.
>
> James Austin, a neurologist, began practicing Zen meditation during a visit
> to Japan. After years of practice, he found himself having to reevaluate what
> his professional background had taught him.
>
> "It was decided for me by the experiences I had while meditating," said
> Austin, author of the book "Zen and the Brain" and now a philosophy scholar
> at the University of Idaho. "Some of them were quickenings, one was a major
> internal absorption -- an intense hyper-awareness, empty endless space that
> was blacker than black and soundless and vacant of any sense of my physical
> bodily self. I felt deep bliss. I realized that nothing in my training or
> experience had prepared me to help me understand what was going on in my
> brain. It was a wake-up call for a neurologist."
>
> Austin's spirituality doesn't involve a belief in God -- it is more in line
> with practices associated with some streams of Hinduism and Buddhism. Both
> emphasize the importance of meditation and its power to make an individual
> loving and compassionate -- most Buddhists are uninterested in whether God
> exists.
>
> But theologians say such practices don't describe most people's religiousness
> in either eastern or western traditions.
>
> "When these people talk of religious experience, they are talking of a
> meditative experience," said John Haught, a professor of theology at
> Georgetown University. "But religion is more than that. It involves
> commitments and suffering and struggle -- it's not all meditative bliss. It
> also involves moments when you feel abandoned by God.
>
> "Religion is visiting widows and orphans," he said. "It is symbolism and myth
> and story and much richer things. They have isolated one small aspect of
> religious experience and they are identifying that with the whole of
> religion."
>
> Belief and faith, believers argue, are larger than the sum of their brain
> parts: "The brain is the hardware through which religion is experienced,"
> said Daniel Batson, a University of Kansas psychologist who studies the
> effect of religion on people. "To say the brain produces religion is like
> saying a piano produces music."
>
> At the Fuller Theological Seminary's school of psychology, Warren Brown, a
> cognitive neuropsychologist, said, "Sitting where I'm sitting and dealing
> with experts in theology and Christian religious practice, I just look at
> what these people know about religiousness and think they are not very
> sophisticated. They are sophisticated neuroscientists, but they are not
> scholars in the area of what is involved in various forms of religiousness."
>
> At the heart of the critique of the new brain research is what one theologian
> at St. Louis University called the "nothing-butism" of some scientists -- the
> notion that all phenomena could be understood by reducing them to basic units
> that could be measured.
>
> "A kiss," said Michael McClymond, "is more than a mutually agreed-upon
> exchange of saliva, breath and germs."
>
> And finally, believers say, if God existed and created the universe, wouldn't
> it make sense that he would install machinery in our brains that would make
> it possible to have mystical experiences?
>
> "Neuroscientists are taking the viewpoints of physicists of the last century
> that everything is matter," said Mathew, the Duke psychiatrist. "I am open to
> the possibility that there is more to this than what meets the eye. I don't
> believe in the omnipotence of science or that we have a foolproof
> explanation."
--
" It is important to note that 67.9243% of all
statistics are meaningless."- Albert Weinstein
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