A recent ChristianWeek column: Faith@Science: The God gene? Spot? Circuit? Okay, maybe a Module?

(Note: This is the column I wrote shortly after dragging myself up from finishing my work on The Spiritual Brain. It explains why notions of a God spot, gene, module, or circuit in the brain are completely ridiculous.)

Faith@Science: The God gene? Spot? Circuit? Okay, maybe a Module?

by Denyse O'Leary

Well, it's great to be back on my old coffee stool. As kind regular readers may recall, I was away coauthoring a book on the neuroscience evidence for the spiritual nature of the human, with Montreal neuroscientist Mario Beauregard. Some may wonder what that is all about, so I should perhaps say a bit about it.

If you listen to the popular science media, scientists have discovered that there is no self, no soul, no spirit and no free will. The mind itself is an illusion. Neuroscientists have also discovered that there is a God spot, God circuit, God gene, or God module in the brain. They have also discovered that, by putting on a special helmet, you can have mystical visions, and that Darwinian evolution selected cavemen who believed in religion. That is why you can't help but believe (even though, for as yet undetermined reasons, the theorist himself and his buddies apparently can help it quite easily).

Not only that, but religion can be traced to defects in the temporal lobe. Paul the Apostle, Joan of Arc, Teresa of Avila, and Th‚rŠse of Lisieux were all epileptics, and that explains their careers. Every other month, a great new discovery of this type is said to revolutionize the relationship between science and religion. Mainly by showing that there is nothing much to religion.

You think it's all nonsense, do you? Or do you worry in your heart of hearts that one or another of these concoctions might be true? Well, I spent a year examining all of them in detail (or anyway, as many as we could spot flying above the radar). It was the hardest year of my life, considering the piles of stuff I had to get through dating from 1902 through 2006 and discovered that it is indeed all nonsense.

I came away astonished by the gullibility of the popular science media in this area. There were times I howled with laughter. The only explanation for the tendency to offer credibility to any "we've found God in the genes/brain" announcement, however poorly supported, is reflexive materialism.

In a way, it makes sense. If we start out with the axiom that materialism is true and that therefore the explanation for religious or philosophical belief must be found in Darwinian evolution, we have only two choices: Either evolution selected people who believe in religion because it confers a survival advantage or it permitted their survival even though it does not confer a survival advantage. Either way, we would be predisposed to expect that research will sooner or later probably sooner uncover the evidence. As a result, if we are journalists, we may stampede to cover the flimsiest nonsense as if it were an important discovery. And then on to the next nonsense.

Meanwhile, there is good evidence for the independent existence of a mind, apart from the brain. Based on evidence, it is also reasonable to believe that people who have deep religious experiences contact something beyond themselves. That, of course, is the core of the book, which will be published in spring 2007. I'll say more closer to the time.

By the way, in my last column (January 2006), I wrote about the Catholic Church taking on Darwinism. Recently, Fr. Martin Hilbert of the Toronto Oratory wrote an excellent article in Touchstone Magazine (available online at Touchstonemag) setting out the details of how and why that happened. It has come to my attention that the Vatican is now selling holy cards in many languages at souvenir stands throughout Rome, featuring a key portion from Benedict XVI's first homily, including the sentence: "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is a thought of God." Hundreds of thousands of visitors take them home. Anyone who thinks that the intelligent design controversy is merely a dismissible product of American fundamentalism is whistling down the wind.

Forget the comfortable encomiums that we so often hear from Christian academics that there is "no conflict between faith and science." How weary I used to get listening to that! Of course there is no conflict between faith and science. But my research for By Design or by Chance? showed clearly that there is an irreconcilable conflict between Christianity and Darwinism. And this current book has deepened my awareness. Stay tuned.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, detailing events of interest in the intelligent design controversy. My most recent published book is By Design or by Chance?, an overview of the intelligent design controversy.

Mythbusters: God spots, modules, circuits, genes, memes ...

A persistent materialist folk myth of recent vintage has been that some sort of God spot, module, circuit, gene, virus of the mind, pattern of electromagnetism, seizure, glitch, or meme can explain religious belief.

Clinical neuroscience may have accidentally given these ideas a boost. But he relationship between clinical neuroscience and theorizing about the neural basis of religion has been somewhat like the relationship between NASA and Roswell.

Now, the sad part about all this silliness is that decades ago, there were some respectable naturalistic explanations for religious belief. Wrong in my view, but at least intellectually reputable. For example, in The Golden Bough(1922), J.G. Frazier helpfully elucidated the relationship between primitive cults and the desire to control nature.

Even today, in Religion explained Pascal Boyer attempts to come up with a naturalistic explanation that at least makes sense: Religious ideas are formed in the same ways as other ideas are formed but they are formed about religious subjects.

The fact that this can be treated as an original idea tells you how much nonsense has been given a free pass in recent years.

Anyway, my co-author, Mario Beauregard with the forthcoming The Spiritual Brain (Harper 2007) and his doctoral student Vince Paquette went to the trouble to study, using neuroscience tools, contemplative nuns who were recalling a mystical experience (recalling an experience activates many of the same neural pathways as were previously active):

Beauregard says that some researchers have theorized that religious experiences involve epilepsy-like seizures in temporal lobes. But the mystical condition activated dozens of brain areas involved in perception, emotion, and cognition, he and Paquette reported last week in Neuroscience Letters. The pair also conclude that although there is much overlap with the feelings of peace and love from the control condition, the mystical condition has its own signature, with "relatively different regional patterns of brain activation."

So, according to their research, people who have mystical experiences do enter an altered state of consciousness, but their experience is a complex one, as most human experiences are. There is no spot, module, or gene that simply activates it.

My other blog is the Post-Darwinist, which keeps tabs on the intelligent design controversy.