Pop Neuroscience and spirituality: "Dear God, please don't exist, so I can get lucrative assignments, and maybe tenure, teaching easily digested rot .

Here's another gem from the treasure house of New Scientist (Andy Coghlan, "Dear God, please confirm what I already believe", 30 November 2009),

God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues.

"Intuiting God's beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one's own beliefs," writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

The researchers started by asking volunteers who said they believe in God to give their own views on controversial topics, such as abortion and the death penalty. They also asked what the volunteers thought were the views of God, average Americans and public figures such as Bill Gates. Volunteers' own beliefs corresponded most strongly with those they attributed to God.
.

So is the cart pulling the horse, or is the horse pulling the cart? The researchers claim that they have demonstrated that we "map" God's beliefs onto our own. The idea that we might adopt the beliefs that we think God wants us to have is not under consideration.

When the researchers asked different volunteers to prepare speeches in which they took the opposite view from their professed one, we are informed that the volunteer's views of God's beliefs changed.

Of course, that could not be because they had, for the first time, needed to grapple with opposing arguments, could it? Anyway, much neuroscience handwaving in evidence here.

Ryan Sager at TrueSlant goes along for the ride.

Materialism and popular culture: The human brain as a machine?

The Immanent Frame, an interesting blog, offers "Spiritual Machines: an interview with John Lardas Modern" (October 5, 2009) by Nathan Schneider:

John Lardas Modern, an assistant professor of religious studies at Franklin & Marshall College, draws on the Beat poets, phrenologists, prison reformers, and Moby-Dick to show why taking technology seriously forces us to think differently about the boundaries of religion. He spoke recently with Nathan Schneider about the ambiguity of agency in the age of technology and the porous border between the material and the spiritual.

I'm completely unconvinced myself, because I think we are far more like oceans than machines. And remember, as an oceanographer told me last May, 97% of the ocean is unexplored.

There is also an interesting article by Michael Hout and Claude S. Fischer on unchurched believers:

Hout and Fischer discuss their statistical findings concerning the growing number of "unchurched" or "unaffiliated" believers in the United States.

For more commentary on the growth of the "no religion" population, see "Religious 'Nones' and the future of American Religion," our overview of relevant opinions and analyses collected from around the Web.

This is an important question, and I am glad Hout and Fischer are raising it. Religious Nones are not usually materialist atheists; they are simply people who do not identify with a religious denomination. Materialist atheism is rare in North America, apart from some university faculties, which are having a hard time making their case.

Identification with a religious denomination means less than one might think. I once bought a book about moving to a rural area in Canada, in which I was - reasonably - informed that one was expected to identify with a religious denomination in those parts, but was in no way expected to believe or attend church.

The author assumed that I would be reassured on hearing this. Uh, no.

I was alarmed. The church might well be full of hypocrites, liars, schemers, and poseurs.

Oh well, whoever said it would be easy? Onward!

Hack gets mail: Physicist writes on abuse of spirituality to promote causes

British physicist friend David Tyler writes, in response to "Help wanted ads: God wanted - only for climate change - no other responsibilities"

I sent the following feedback comment to The Telegraph regarding this article:

Lord May thinks that it might be time for religion to take a more prominent role in addressing climate change, saying: “A supernatural punisher maybe part of the solution.” But Christianity is not about constraining people with rules and regulations, enforcing compliance by the use of threats. Rather it is about responding to a loving God. It is about inward transformation. Christians care about the world around us because it is God’s creation, and we are to be responsible stewards of living things and the planet itself. Lord May thinks that the supernatural punisher solution leads to "rigid, doctrinaire societies, but it makes for co-operation." This is exactly wrong.

Co-operation has to come from within – external enforcement may bring uniformity but, as communist societies have demonstrated, the people are crushed. To change thinking about the environment, it is necessary to help individuals see that the planet and its life forms have a value. Secular environmentalists do this by treating mankind as parasitic, but Christian environmentalists do it by stressing that this is God’s world and we have responsibilities as stewards. I wonder whether Lord May, as a prominent atheist, is willing to allow this message to become more widespread in our society.

It never appeared!

Tyler's letter never appeared? Well, where's that feather I use to knock myself over, to "defy the law of gravity"?

Why are people always borrowing my feather these days?

Lord May, who may have utter contempt for spirituality, may merely want to sell propaganda. Of course the environment is important, unless we think it clever to saw off the branch on which we sit. But environment ideas proposed by government must be evaluated on their merits, not on the propaganda.

I am sorry to say that many local ideas have not worked out well. For example, the Toronto "green bin" plan was a disaster because just anything that went bad in someone's fridge does not become good compost merely because it is sealed in a green bin.

Good compost is healthy local plant materials returning to the earth whence they sprang, helped along by shovelsful of dirt that contain the essential decomposing bacteria.

As a gardener, I would never consider using most "green bin" contents as compost - and the City didn't either, I see. After all, we have some valuable topiaries that winter in the High Park greenhouses and summer as centrepieces in our park flowerbeds. They deserve real compost, not poison. But then most plants do.

Toxic "green bin" contents might help kill aggressive weeds, but boiling water poured into a nuisance plant's root system is far safer. Once water stops boiling, it's just water, evaporating or flowing downhill. As for the "green bin" contents, I would incinerate them.

And no, I am not a fan of using spirituality to promote whatever current cause has got the attention of government.

Spirituality: If you want to ride the carousel, go to the circus

God's carousel could be fun, but it is not the way to grow up as a mature human being.

All who read this blog must know that I take spirituality very seriously.

And then there is, as a friend writes, "I saw Jesus in my spaghetti ... or was it Mother Theresa in a cinnamon bun?" He is referring to this story, "Pictured: Haunting face crying a river of tears as glacier melts into the sea" by Alex Millson for UK's Daily Mail (03 September 2009).

These people aren't alone, of course. Some have seen Darwin in a tree trunk and others have seen Kemal Ataturk in a hillside shadow. Or the Virgin Mary in a piece of toast.

We can see anything we really want to. Sometimes we will see double, other times, stars. Is this any way to acquire wisdom?

Mario Beauregard and I pointed out in The Spiritual Brain that traditional spiritual advisers have strongly warned against making a big deal out of visions where you see sights and hear voices, and dream dreams:

Walter Hilton, writing in the early fifteenth century, advised the mystic who experiences any type of vision to “refuse it and assent not thereto.”46 John of the Cross later offered the same advice, explaining, “That which properly and generally comes from God is a purely spiritual communication.”47 Stace* follows this up, noting that “a genuine mystical experience is nonsensuous. It is formless, shapeless, colorless, odorless, soundless.”48 (p. 194)

*W. T. Stace was speaking for traditions other than the Christian one, but his observations are consistent with it.

Basically, it is easy to fool oneself and - contrary to popular lore, Freud did not discover this fact; it was well known to spiritual directors for centuries, if not millennia.

If our spirituality is making us better people, we should pursue it. If it is making us look for strange events instead, well ...

.

Sightings: Andrew Newberg explains the psychological benefits of spirituality

In "Faith and the Brain" (Religion & Ethics Newsweekly, July 17, 2009), Bob Abernethy interviews Andrew Newberg, author of How God Changes Your Brain on spirituality and emotional health:

DR. NEWBERG: We’ve learned that being religious or spiritual has a very profound effect on who we are, has a very profound effect on our biology and on our brain, and what we’ve found more recently is that not only does it have a profound influence on who we are, but it actually can change our brain and to change ourselves over times.

[ ... ]


SEVERSON: But Newberg has made another discovery, a controversial one, that our belief system, how we view God, can make a huge difference in how it affects our well being. If we believe in a loving God it can have a positive effect, even prolong our lives. But believing in a judgmental, authoritarian God can produce fear, anger, and stress, and that’s not healthy.

[ ... ]

SEVERSON: Newberg believes the number one activity that can exercise your brain and enrich your life is faith.

Dr. NEWBERG: When you have those kind of positive, optimistic beliefs in the world, in God or religion, depending on the person, that that really, over the long haul, seems to be the thing that really provides a benefit for us in terms our mental state and in terms of our physical health and well-being.

SEVERSON: As for his own faith, he describes himself as a searcher who is still searching. For Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly, I’m Lucky Severson in Philadelphia.

Psychology: Don't think about it, and you probably won't do it

In a New Yorker article titled admirably simply, "Don’t!" The secret of self-control,
Jonah Lehrer reflects on what investigators have learned about how children develop self-control:

At the time, psychologists assumed that children's ability to wait depended on how badly they wanted the marshmallow. But it soon became obvious that every child craved the extra treat. What, then, determined self-control? Mischel's conclusion, based on hundreds of hours of observation, was that the crucial skill was the "strategic allocation of attention."

In other words, focus of attention.

Instead of getting obsessed with the marshmallow - the "hot stimulus" - the patient children distracted themselves by covering their eyes, pretending to play hide-and-seek underneath the desk, or singing songs from "Sesame Street." Their desire wasn't defeated - it was merely forgotten. "If you're thinking about the marshmallow and how delicious it is, then you’re going to eat it," Mischel says. "The key is to avoid thinking about it in the first place."

In adults, this skill is often referred to as metacognition, or thinking about thinking, and it’s what allows people to outsmart their shortcomings. ... Mischel’s large data set from various studies allowed him to see that children with a more accurate understanding of the workings of self-control were better able to delay gratification. "What's interesting about four-year-olds is that they're just figuring out the rules of thinking," Mischel says. "The kids who couldn’t delay would often have the rules backwards. They would think that the best way to resist the marshmallow is to stare right at it, to keep a close eye on the goal. But that's a terrible idea. If you do that, you’re going to ring the bell before I leave the room."

In the adult world, this need for focus of attention is one key reason for the millennia-old practice of religious retreats.

People often say they are going to make more time from their work day to think about the meaning of life. But do they? No, because they can't. They can't stop looking at the In Tray, the way many kids looked at the marshmallow.

Now just put that same person in a room with a chair, a desk, and a work by a serious spiritual writer - and NO phone, e-mail, or visitors - and many people begin to see key patterns in their lives that they had never noticed before. The trick is, as the kids discovered, to lose sight of the marshmallows of life.

Psychology: Hard times make you gullible about religion?

Here's a classic in New Scientist-style codswallop about spirituality:

WHILE many institutions collapsed during the Great Depression that began in 1929, one kind did rather well. During this leanest of times, the strictest, most authoritarian churches saw a surge in attendance.

This anomaly was documented in the early 1970s, but only now is science beginning to tell us why. It turns out that human beings have a natural inclination for religious belief, especially during hard times. Our brains effortlessly conjure up an imaginary world of spirits, gods and monsters, and the more insecure we feel, the harder it is to resist the pull of this supernatural world. It seems that our minds are finely tuned to believe in gods.

You can guess where the article goes from there.*

Anyway, the reality is that in hard times, some believe more and others less. It depends on how the individual chooses to interpret hard times: Forced awareness of opportunity? Character discipline? Testing? Punishment? Mere accident? Proof no one "Out There" cares?

All these attitudes and many others are quite possible. Which attitudes dominate? ... that depends on temperament and culture.

*I notice New Scientist is still using Michelangelo's graphic of God bringing Adam to life ... they don't update much, do they?

Religion: Yes, faith is good for you

Here's a short YouTube of the skinny on one aspect of The Spiritual Brain, which I worked into a chapter of Hot Apple Cider.



Hey, if you want to know about the Canadian Christian community, do NOT waste your time on Canadian lit queen Margaret Atwood's diseased fantasies about "Gilead."

Buy this indispensable book instead.

(Note: Atwood didn't have the guts to write the Gilead garbage about Canada. Because she knew that her fellow citizens - a great many of whom are devout Christians - would smell the horse dung.

So she set the story in the southern United States, which we seldom get a chance to visit.

In reality, we traditional Canadian Christians, Jews, and Muslims are world leaders in freedom of expression.

I am ashamed of the fact that so few literati (mere government-funded glitterati?) have bothered to notice that. But I do not care, because it is true anyway, and they will soon find out, if they haven't already.)

Spirituality: Michael Gerson on Andrew Newberg's new "How God Changes Your Brain" book

In "A Searcher With Faith in Mind" in the Washington Post, Michael Gerson comments (April 15, 2009 ) on Andrew Newberg and Mark Waldman's new book, How God Changes Your Brain:

Using brain imaging studies of Franciscan nuns and Buddhist practitioners, and Sikhs and Sufis -- along with everyday people new to meditation -- Newberg asserts that traditional spiritual practices such as prayer and breath control can alter the neural connections of the brain, leading to "long-lasting states of unity, peacefulness and love." He assures the mystically challenged (such as myself) that these neural networks begin to develop quickly -- a matter of weeks in meditation, not decades on a Tibetan mountaintop. And though meditation does not require a belief in God, strong religious belief amplifies its effect on the brain and enhances "social awareness and empathy while subduing destructive feelings and emotions."

Gerson does comment, however,

"How God Changes Your Brain" has many revelations -- and a few limitations. In a practical, how-to tone, it predicts "an epiphany that can improve the inner quality of your life. For most Americans, that is what spirituality is about." But if this is what spirituality is all about, it isn't about very much. Mature faith sometimes involves self-sacrifice, not self-actualization; anguish, not comfort. If the primary goal of religion is escape or contentment, there are other, even more practical methods to consider. "I didn't go to religion to make me happy," said C.S. Lewis, "I always knew a bottle of port would do that." The same could be said of psychedelic drugs, which can mimic spiritual ecstasy.

Yes, that is a basic problem. To transform one's life, one must begin by wanting to know what is right and true, not what feels good. And to be fair to Newberg, he has emphasized elsewhere that one must work on meditation to see any results. Or, as I would say,

Neural Buddhists: The Buddha does not drop two grand for meditation gear and then forget it all two weeks later and take up tennis - and expect to see any lasting or important inner changes.

But this is one book I have got to get. Here's more on it.

Society and values: Forget teaching about right and wrong where sex is concerned?

From Britain's Sunday Times (February 22, 2009), we learn

Parents told: avoid morality in sex lessons

Jack Grimston

PARENTS should avoid trying to convince their teenage children of the difference between right and wrong when talking to them about sex, a new government leaflet is to advise.

Instead, any discussion of values should be kept “light” to encourage teenagers to form their own views, according to the brochure, which one critic has called “amoral.”

Well, such a view is amoral by definition, so the critic is redundantly stating a fact.

But several questions come immediately to mind:

- Was the doctor who implanted at least eight embryos in the "octomom" harming children by causing them to be born in dangerous circumstances? Or was that just a commercial transaction?
- What about people who claim to be sterile or using contraceptives, who in fact aren't? Or commit paternity fraud?

- What about the people who don't disclose sexually transmissible diseases to potential sex partners?

Of course teens differ with their parents about when, how, and with whom it is right to have sex, but I see no good coming from avoiding "the difference between right and wrong" in discussing the question.

It's all the difference in the world, actually.

Are the people who think avoidance is a good idea prepared to accept responsibility for all the consequences?

Religion and health: Practising believers feel most in control

A study of 1800 Americans by University of Toronto sociology prof Scott Schieman finds that religious beliefs and devotion are linked to a sense of personal control.

That surprised Schieman:

“One might think the most devout religious practitioners would feel a lack of personal control in their lives because they have such faith in divine control,” says Schieman. “Surprisingly, we found the opposite. It’s those who believe in God but don’t dedicate much time to practicing religion who feel the least in control of their lives.”

It's not really hard to understand, though. If people think they should be doing something and are doing it, they will feel that they are in control. However, if they think they should be doing something but are not doing it, they will feel that they are not in control. And they're right, too.

I cannot find the abstract online at the journal, Sociology of Religion, which seems to be moving to a new publisher.

Ah well, in the meantime, another one for the "Religion spoils everything" files ...

See also:

See also:

Albert Einstein College of Medicine: Religious practice prolongs life, unexplained factor cited

Adopting a dog better for your health than pills?

Religion and health: Some teens more, not less, depressed due to religion?

Albert Einstein College of Medicine: Religious practice prolongs life, unexplained factor cited

According to this Eurekalert press release:

November 19, 2008 -(BRONX, NY) - A study published by researchers at Yeshiva University and its medical school, Albert Einstein College of Medicine, strongly suggests that regular attendance at religious services reduces the risk of death by approximately 20 percent. The findings, published in Psychology and Health, were based on data drawn from participants who spanned numerous religious denominations. The research was conducted by Eliezer Schnall, Ph.D., clinical assistant professor of psychology at Yeshiva College of Yeshiva University, and co-authored by Sylvia Wassertheil-Smoller, Ph.D., professor of epidemiology and population health at Einstein, as an ancillary study of the Women's Health Initiative (WHI). The WHI is a national, long-term study aimed at addressing women's health issues and funded by the National Institutes of Health.

The researchers evaluated the religious practices of 92,395 post-menopausal women participating in the WHI. They examined the prospective association of religious affiliation, religious service attendance, and strength and comfort derived from religion with subsequent cardiovascular events and overall rates of mortality. Although the study showed as much as a 20 percent decrease in the overall risk of mortality for those attending religious services, it did not show any consistent change in rates of morbidity and death specifically related to cardiovascular disease, with no explanation readily evident.

The study adjusted for participation of individuals within communal organizations and group activities that promote a strong social life and enjoyable routines, behaviors known to lead to overall wellness. However, even after controlling for such behavior and other health-related factors, the improvements in morbidity and mortality rates exceeded expectations.

"Interestingly, the protection against mortality provided by religion cannot be entirely explained by expected factors that include enhanced social support of friends or family, lifestyle choices and reduced smoking and alcohol consumption," said Dr. Schnall, who was lead author of the study. "There is something here that we don't quite understand. It is always possible that some unknown or unmeasured factors confounded these results," he added.

Here's the study, published in Psychology and Health, the official journal of the European Health Psychology Society.

As Mario and I discussed in The Spiritual Brain, for a long time, the links were unexplored, due to a tendency among researchers to doubt their existence. Starting in the early 1970s, that assumption was challenged by a growing body of research that shows that an active spiritual life really does improve physical health. Today, that is an uncontroversial view among health researchers (though not, perhaps, popular with certain best-selling atheist writers … ).

Obviously, a complex of factors must be cited in a study that involved nearly 100 000 women, whether or not they "exceeded expectations." How about:

- cultural respect for older people, which is normal in religious groups

- specific teachings that promote a healthy lifestyle

- practical help with daily living (for example, religious-sponsored retirement homes, including volunteers who help with daily activities)

- the good mental health effects of prayer, meditation, and volunteering

- the reduced fear of death (which, ironically, may contribute to longer life by preventing dangerous panic episodes)

- a sense of continuity ("After I die, others will continue the jobs I know are important.")

Now what about that “unexplained” factor?

Was it faith? Was it hope? Studies capture what they can capture. We needn’t be concerned that a researcher can’t point to faith or hope on a lab slide. What we can point to is the favourable effect of spirituality on our bodily health, even if not all the factors are easily separable from each other.

Spirituality: Addiction as a false spiritual quest?

Recently, I read Theodore Dalrymple's book, Romancing Opiates (2006), which offers a look at the real roots of addiction. He notes,

Man is the only creature capable of self-destruction , and only man decides in full consciousness to do what is bad, even fatal, for him. Freud’s death wish may be mere speculation, an abstract construct conjured from air, but no one with the slightest acquaintance with the human race could possibly conclude that human beings always pursue their own best interest by means of rational calculation. The primrose path to perdition never ceases to attract...

That, of course, is precisely why we will never understand ourselves if we try to use apes or computers as models. Picture a chimpanzee deciding "I am no good at being an ape and I feel I must end it all," and you will see what I mean. In any event, he goes on to say,

... to conceive of opiate addiction as a disease seems, after my experience with thousands of drug addicts, to me to miss the fundamental point about it: that it is a moral or spiritual condition that will never yield to medical treatment, so called.

This is a very literate way of explaining a situation often explained - as Dalrymple says - by recovered addicts in a much simpler way: "I just didn't want to live that way any more." In my view, that is a form of spiritual experience - to discover that one need not live "that way" any more.

Spirituality: Churches nobody goes to any more vs. the "ancient and ever new" ones

My friend Kathy "Five Feet of Fury" Shaidle uses the expression "churches nobody goes to any more" to describe churches that have lost all contact with spirituality and become seniors' clubs, political gatherings, and such. It works fora while and then it just stops.

One, friend Ed Sisson, explains how his church got targeted by a political organization wanting to use it for the organization's own ends. And he told me why his church said no: "It’s important to send a signal that hate loses in America."

Here's the vid in three parts:

Spirituality and the arts: High time someone said this

From Martin Beckford, the Daily Telegraph's Religious Affairs correspondent, we learn that composer James MacMillan warns of "liberal elite's 'ignorance-fuelled hostility to religion' " (01 Oct 2008)

James MacMillan, one of the conductors of the BBC Philharmonic orchestra, claimed in a speech last night that the "ignorance-fuelled" hostility to faith shown by "metropolitan arts, cultural and media elites" risks making society bland and uniform.

He also accused pop culture of inhibiting musical curiosity in the young and leading to greater conformity.

MacMillan, regarded as the pre-eminent Scottish composer of his generation, added that embracing spirituality is now one of the most radical and counter-cultural moves a musician can make.

Well, I don't know why anyone should be surprised by any of that.

MacMillan, a Scottish composer, was commemorating the 30th anniversary of the Sandford St Martin Trust, a charity that furthers radio and television programs on religion, in a lecture at the Royal Institute of British Architects.

Of the "new atheist" project, MacMillan said

The campaigning atheists, as opposed to the live-and-let-live variety, are raising their voices because they recognise that they are losing; the project to establish a narrow secular orthodoxy is failing.

Yes, exactly. Human beings are spiritual by nature. The "new atheist man" could be a Nobelist, but he is far more likely to be a bewildered soul in rehab somewhere who "don't believe in nothing!" - and doesn't have the least idea how he should live, in consequence.

Spirituality: Is this a trend? Guy tries Judaism "on spec" - discovers 7-day no-refund policy, ends as famous pulpit rabbi

In "Responding to Neo-Atheism" (American Thinker, September 21, 2008), Rick Richman - editor of Jewish Current Issues - notes that the "new atheists" are starting to get mail:

Neo-atheism has had a very successful publishing run over the past several years, with best-selling books by Christopher Hitchens ("god is not great"), Sam Harris ("Letter to a Christian Nation") and Richard Dawkins ("The God Delusion"), among others. But this year there has been an equally impressive counter-phenomenon. Three recent books, written from three widely divergent perspectives, have responded to the arguments of neo-atheism with both intellectual force and literary grace.

He highlights agnostic mathematician David Berlinski, Catholic scholar Michael Novak and rabbi David J. Wolpe. Wolpe's case is especially interesting:

Wolpe is the senior rabbi at Sinai Temple in Los Angeles and teaches modern Jewish religious thought at UCLA, but he was -- at an important stage in his life -- an ardent atheist. He grew up in a rabbinical family, initially rebelled against a religious future and, influenced by the works of Bertrand Russell, fell into atheism during his college years. He eventually rejected Russell's views decided to try rabbinical school -- "on spec," as he told his friends. One of his brothers predicted it would be "a phase."

His new book is his seventh he has written during the phase. His first book, "The Healer of Shattered Hearts," was a lyrical summary of rabbinic Judaism that established him, in Rabbi Joseph Telushkin's words, as "the poet of Jewish theology." His mother's stroke at age 52 led him to write "In Speech and Silence," a book-length meditation on words and song in religion. His most remarkable volume, "Making Loss Matter," described a way of capturing meaning from the most painful moments of life. It was written in the midst of the cancer that struck his wife at age 31, preventing her from bearing further children.

See also:

Dismantling Dawkins's Case Against God

Atheist bigots: Avoiding serious questions and targeting ignorant religious folk

Philosophy: God is not dead yet - but some haven't gotten the memo

Neuroscience: Getting past the "You are a computer made of meat" phase

In "Faith Beyond the Frontal Lobes" (Washington Post, September 27, 2008) Michael Gerson offers a common sense corrective to rampant materialism in neuroscience. Reviewing Andrew Newberg's work with meditators, which Mario and I discussed in The Spiritual Brain, he notes,

Human beings routinely have experiences that are not commonly associated with normal consciousness yet seem more real than normal consciousness. "There is something in the brain that facilitates and rewards that type of experience," Newberg says, "and our brain desires to make sense of it."

This leads some, of course, to reductionism -- the assertion that a physical basis for transcendent experience proves there is no such thing as transcendence. It is an evolutionary joke on humanity -- perhaps useful, but not accurate -- because everything explainable is thus illusory.

But this view is not more "scientific" than other views. It involves a philosophic materialism that is entirely faith-based. We know, for example, that a complex series of physical, hormonal changes helps bond a mother to her newborn child. Does this mean that parental love is a myth? Only according to the philosophic claim that chemicals exhaust reality. Is it not equally possible that a cosmos charged with transcendence might organize itself in such a way that human beings can sense transcendence?

Yes, it is equally possible. And it is also a better explanation than reducing ideas to chemicals.

Put another way, the chemicals that help mothers bond to newborn children don't help us understand why there is a black market in babies for infertile women who have never experienced such chemicals. Nor do they help us understand Mother Theresa and her Missionaries of Charity, who provided homes for thousands of children, even though they never tried to have any children themselves.

Neuroscience can help us understand some important things about human beings, but it will be the most use if it is treated as one source of information, rather than as a reductionist explanation of the whole subject- especially when the subject is something like spirituality.

For example, Gerson notes that some people's genes might not predispose them to spiritual experiences. Perhaps, but many spiritual traditions do not emphasize personal experiences; they are viewed as a gift that can become a distraction from the main business of learning to live as a whole human being.

See also:

"Neuroscience: Getting beyond the mind-body problem

"Neurotheology": Bad neurology and bad theology?

Neuroscience: Meditation really can change the brain

Spirituality: A conventional sad tale does not transform into a spiritual memoir just because God is hat tipped

In "God's Words: The (unnecessary) rise of the spiritual memoir," Jessa Crispin offers standards:

I have a few unyielding standards for a memoir: Either your book must be exceptionally written (a trait hard to find in memoirs these days) or you must have done something exceptional. You must have traveled to the underground or the heavens and come back with fire or golden apples or at least a little wisdom. It can’t just be, “Daddy hit me, mommy got cancer” — everyone has a sad story, and it is possible to go through a trauma or experience something significant without gaining any insight. (The Smart Set, September 24, 2008)

Crispin finds that many spiritual memoirs demonstrate her case, adding

I suppose the thought process behind publishing these books is that since it’s in the air of our culture, those who are seeking will want to hear other people’s stories. But the same rules from other memoirs apply — just because you lived through something, that doesn’t mean you have anything interesting to say about it.

To be of lasting interest, spiritual memoirs require great insight, great struggles, and great sanctity.

Recently, I read and reviewed Mother Teresa's Come Be My Light, and spoke about the experiences described in her letters. Now that is a spiritual memoir worth reading!

If you need a book that tries to explain religion and doesn't succeed ...

Speaking of books not to be bothered with, Amazon has just sent me a flyer flogging a “minimally revised” update of Matthew Alper’s 1996 “cult classic” “manifesto against belief in God,” The “God” Part of the Brain.

When Mario and I were writing The Spiritual Brain, we decided to begin - in Chapter 2 - by getting out of the way a couple of books that were out there and were talked about - but simply lacked substance. Alper's is one of them.

Sadly, it's being marketed alongside Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained. While we disagree that Boyer has succeeded in explaining religion, or could do so, given his premises, his work is worthy of consideration (as we said). So if you want to read a book that tries to explain religion and doesn't succeed, read Boyer, not Alper.

Note: In The Spiritual Brain, we don't try to "explain" religion or spirituality in terms of something else. Spirituality, like curiosity, is a nature and normal part of human beings that doesn't require explaining except in its own terms.

"Neurotheology": Bad neurology and bad theology?

In "God, theologian and humble neurologist", Alasdair Coles of the Department of Clinical Neuroscience at the University of Cambridge reviews recent books, Did my neurons make me do it? and The Soul in the Brain for Brain (June 23, 2008). He and I share a dislike of "neurotheology," which he describes as "bad neurology and bad theology" (and which I have described less elegantly as "neurobullshipping"):

In the 1980s, a small group of neuroscientists arrogated for itself a new field of ‘neurotheology’ which has become—not to put too fine a point on it—an embarrassment. In privatized discussions, over-interpreted accounts of poor experiments are recycled to construct grand schemes to explain religious experience.

Yuh. Mario and I discussed a number of these schemes in The Spiritual Brain, and they all have one thing in common: They aim to explain religious experiences away rather than explain them.

It is as if someone were to explain Michelangelo's Sistine Chapel in terms of infighting at the Vatican. If infighting at the Vatican in those days explained the Sistine, no one would bother with it now.

Coles also talks about another favourite subject - the apparently sudden emergence of human consciousness, especially as expressed in art, literature, music, and spirituality:

The Upper Paleolithic Revolution consisted of more than just cave paintings. Visual creativity emerged in many other ways. Burial rites become more complex. And, it is speculated, the first music was made and the first words spoken. van Huyssteen argues that the key distinction between Upper Paleolithic man and homo sapiens elsewhere and earlier hominids, was the power to construct and understand symbol, of which language of course is a part. This ability to ‘code the invisible’ allowed for storage of information outside of the gene and the start of the cultural
non-genetic inheritance. The ‘mental toolkit’ required to manage symbolic representation is the ‘ability to be conscious of being conscious’ and to search for meaning. The new humans wake up, discover they are naked and meet God.

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So it seems that, some 30–40 000 years ago in Europe, humans suddenly acquired the gifts of self-awareness, symbol, language and creativity. Which of these was the foundational event is hard to know, and perhaps need not be known. But, importantly, spirituality was part of the package.

Yes, and that spirituality seems so evident in the cave paintings! The pantings are not about animals literally, in the sense that an anatomical diagram or textbook description might be about animals. The cave paintings are about the artists' perceptions of animals, their relationship to animals, and their explorations of what it must feel like to be an animal.

Tour the caves, courtesy France's culture ministry. Also tour the Lascaux caves here (at Virtual visit) and view Altamira cave images here.

Hat tip: Stephanie West Allen at Brains on Purpose.