Biology and Neuro-Science
Meet Spirituality and Mysticism
Andrew Newberg,
M.D., Eugene D'Aquili, M.D., and Vince Rause,
Why
God Won't Go Away : Brain Science and the Biology of Belief. Over the centuries, theories
have abounded as to why human beings have a seemingly irrational attraction to
God and religious experiences. In Why God Won't Go Away authors Andrew
Newberg, M.D., Eugene D'Aquili, M.D., and Vince Rause offer a startlingly
simple, yet scientifically plausible opinion: humans seek God because our brains
are biologically programmed to do so. Although I disagree with the
authors' bias toward eastern religions, I
particularly liked the following passages:
"This is the primary function of religious ritual - to turn
spiritual stories into spiritual experience; to turn something in
which you believe into something you can feel." (page 91).
"We believe that all mystical experiences, from the mildest
to the most intense, have their biological roots in the mind's machinery of
transcendence. To say this in a slightly more provocative way, if the
brain were not assembled as it is, we would not be able to experience a higher
reality, even if it did exist." (page 123).
The paperback version: Click
here for a link to it.
Eugene
G. D'Aquili, Andrew B. Newberg, The
Mystical Mind : Probing the Biology of Religious Experience. Building on an explanation of
the basic structure of the brain, the authors focus on parts most relevant to
human experience, emotion, and cognition. On this basis, they plot how the brain
is involved in mystical experiences. Successive chapters apply this scheme to
mythmaking, ritual and liturgy, meditation, near-death experiences, and theology
itself. Anchored in such research, the authors also sketch the implications of
their work for philosophy, science, theology, and the future of religion itself.
Jensine
Andresen and Robert Foreman (editors), Cognitive
Models and Spiritual Maps : Interdisciplinary Explorations of Religious
Experience. This
book throws down a challenge to the field of religious studies. It offers new
and exciting approaches for our understanding of religious experience, drawn
from the methods of cognitive science, neuro-psychology, developmental
psychology, philosophy of mind, anthropology, and the many other fields that
have joined together to investigate the phenomenon of consciousness.
Jensine Andresen is assistant professor of theology at Boston University; Robert
Forman is associate professor of religion at the City University of New
York.
James
B. Ashbrook, Carol Rausch Albright, and Anne Harrington,
The
Humanizing Brain : Where Religion and Neuroscience Meet. The authors raise
the question of the connection between the brain's drive to seek meaning and
reality and religion. Religion, they argue, links what is immediate in our lives
with what transcends and transforms them.
See also: Joseph Giovannoli,
The
Biology of Belief: How Our Biology Biases Our Beliefs and Perceptions.
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22, 2002:
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Journey Press
