Neurotheology, by Andrew Newberg (introduction)

NEUROTHEOLOGY HOW SCIENCE CAN ENLIGHTEN US ABOUT SPIRITUALITY

ANDREW NEWBERG

Introduction

If Neurotheology Is the Answer, What Is the Question?

THE QUESTIONS

Can we determine why some people are devoutly religious whereas others are complete atheists? What research can explain both the beneficial and detrimental effects of religion on the health and well-being of individuals, societies, and all of humanity? How can we explain the tenacity of religion in virtually every culture and age? How might we determine if religious people are crazy in a particular way or just the same amount of crazy as everyone else? What perspective can we take to understand the profound impact of spiritual and mystical experiences on a person’s life? Is there a path we might take that can provide novel insights into the nature of our world and the nature of reality? What new field of scholarship may dominate our world over the next century?

Perhaps each of these questions can end with a single answer: neurotheology. As someone involved in the field of neurotheology for the past twenty years, I feel like we are at the very beginning stages of acquiring a type of knowledge that just might revolutionize our understanding of ourselves and our world.

I started my journey as a child, asking many questions about the nature of reality and how we, as humans, can understand that reality. I initially realized the importance of the human brain as the part of ourselves that helps guide our experiences, emotions, and thoughts toward an understanding

2 INTRODUCTION

of the world. But as I began to study the science of the brain, I started to realize that there were some important limitations. Science seemed to have trouble nailing down our subjective experiences of the world. In fact, since all our thoughts and feelings occur in the mind, how can a scientific observer ever truly “know” what a person thinks or feels? And when it comes to consciousness, that mysterious self-reflective understanding of our own mind, science struggles even more. So I started to spend time thinking about these issues in what might be called a philosophical meditation. I pondered how my own mind, and brain, was trying to understand reality. In the midst of my personal reflections, I came to understand the importance of different experiences of reality and different states of consciousness, even mystical ones. It was this combination of philosophical and scientific investigations that ignited my personal interest in a more interdisciplinary approach to the big questions. I also realized that such an approach mirrored how humanity itself dealt with the world.

For thousands of years, the history of humanity has been guided by two primary forces. One is science and technology. It is believed that the evolutionary expansion of the human brain primarily supported the development of tools, which enabled humans to survive more effectively than any other animal on the planet. And since our first flint rock, we have continued to use science to explore and navigate through our world. From the first hearths, to the cultivation of land, to the wheel, to the printing press, to the automobile and the computer, the force of science has perpetually advanced humanity and human knowledge.

The second primary force in human history has been religion and spirituality, also a method for trying to understand our world, but from a radically different perspective than science. Religion and spirituality have existed within human societies from ancient times, from the first burial rites, to the pyramids, the Upanishads, the Bible, the Quran, and to the present day. Religion has played an essential role in the development of every civilization on Earth. Today, many describe themselves as spiritual but not religious; thus it seems that spirituality is reflected in many people’s goal of connecting to the world in a meaningful way.

As many have pointed out, the problem with religion and spirituality on one hand and science and technology on the other is that they seem generally oppositional to each other. One is empirical; the other is doctrinal. One is objective; the other personal or social and cultural. One trusts humans

3 INTRODUCTION

to figure out the world; the other trusts God. And in many instances, the oppositional relationship between religion and science seems validated; for example, evolution versus creationism, cosmology versus theology, and moral reasoning versus moral doctrine. In each circumstance, there seems to be little room for mutual interaction. Today, many of the same arguments persist with no clear end in sight.

However, these two forces do not necessarily have to be oppositional, as has been pointed out by a number of scholars.1 In ancient times, they were intimately intertwined. The building of many of the great religious structures, such as Stonehenge and the Egyptian pyramids, was based on highly developed engineering and guided by the mathematical and observational analysis of astronomical cycles. It seems that for human cultures until the Middle Ages, an understanding the universe was tantamount to understanding God. Since that time, especially since the Enlightenment, there has been a growing gap between religion and science.

Where will this opposition lead? One possibility seems to be the inevitable loss of one of these forces. In our current time, it is not clear which might ultimately win. While science has advanced to staggering heights, there are still billions of individuals who insist on adhering to religion.

Many conflicts around the world have a strong religious component. And if we are to give credence to evolutionary theory, whichever force, science or religion, ultimately results in persistent adherence and followers will be the one that survives.

But what if there were an alternative? What if there were a way in which science and religion could come together, in small yet complex ways,2 that might lay the foundation for greater cooperation in the future? Is it possible that science and religion could interact sufficiently to help bring all of humanity closer to a deep and fulfilling understanding of ourselves and the world? What would this approach look like?

Neurotheology might just be such an approach. After all, the two forces of science and religion are both products of the human brain. However, we must be careful in interpreting this statement. Physical, chemical, and biological processes exist outside the brain and enable the universe to work.

But it is the human brain that helps us create the experiments, interpret the results, and make meaning of scientific findings. While electromagnetism and materials science, for example, relate to the external world, it is the human brain that used information from these fields to invent the telephone

4 INTRODUCTION

and discover the Big Bang. And even if there is a God that exists outside the brain, enabling the universe to work, it is the human brain that enables our beliefs and helps create meaning out of those beliefs. The brain enables us to conceive sacred stories and rituals that we can follow and incorporate into our lives. In addition, we might consider the mind–body or mind– brain problem from a neurotheological perspective. We have a brain and body that are deeply tied to our mental processes—our thoughts, feelings, and experiences—but these mental processes represent a subjective mind that feels like it is more than merely a collection of neurotransmitters and electrical signals in the body. Whether there is a mind or consciousness that actually extends beyond the brain is another story. Neurotheological studies of altered states of consciousness associated with spiritual practices might shed new light on the mind–brain relationship.

No matter how one looks at it, the brain is essential for both science and religion. And this just might be the intersection we need to more fully understand ourselves and our world. Perhaps by combining science and religion in the field of neurotheology, we can expand our understanding of consciousness and whether consciousness exists outside the physiological processes of the body. Of course, studying the brain while praying, meditating, or believing in God is no easy task. The methods and techniques required push scientific discovery to its limits.

Understanding complex brain processes that link beliefs, experiences, emotions, and behaviors can teach us a lot about how the brain works.

And understanding the brain might provide new insights into the even knottier problem of how our brain interacts with our consciousness.

Scientifically, we can also study the relationship between religion and health, both good and bad.

Neurotheology can also contribute to our understanding of religion and spirituality. We might come to understand how and why the human brain labels something as religious or spiritual. We might comprehend the differences and similarities between religion and spirituality. Neurotheology can delineate specific brain processes that restrict or enable specific ideas and beliefs about God, morality, death, meaning, and purpose.

Neurotheology might (emphasis on might) even be able to do something that few other fields can. It might be able to forge a new path, through a combination of scientific and spiritual means, that can help people find meaning, purpose, and wisdom in their lives.

5 INTRODUCTION

OVERVIEW OF THE BOOK

I must state from the outset that the field of neurotheology is far too broad for it to be fully described within the pages of one book. And within neurotheology are entire fields themselves, such as the psychology of religion, or the study of spirituality and health, which would also require many volumes to fully describe.

This book is an attempt at a reasonably thorough, and user-friendly, tour of neurotheology as it currently stands. I will argue that (1) neurotheology is in fact a viable field of scholarship that is different from, but incorporates, many other disciplines; (2) no other field comprises all of neurotheology, and it is therefore a truly unique multidisciplinary domain; (3) while a great deal of research has already occurred, neurotheology is still in its infancy and has a virtually unlimited future; (4) neurotheology represents a kind of puzzle with many different pieces that provide important information, pieces such as psychology, the use of entheogenic substances, neardeath experiences, prayer, mystical experiences, health, and theology; and (5) neurotheology has an opportunity to help science, religion, and all of humanity. My hope is that this book will stimulate discussion among scholars from many relevant fields and research domains, as well as the public at large. Hopefully, it will present neurotheology in its multidisciplinary glory with many ideas and perspectives interwoven throughout, always maintaining that the answers are extremely challenging to determine, even using the most complex approaches.

In chapter 1, we will consider that neurotheology starts with the basic premise that the brain is what helps us to have all our thoughts, feelings, and experiences, including those that are religious and spiritual. But this notion also creates a fundamental problem for the brain: We are forever trapped within the workings of our brain. We look out at the world, and our brain processes all kinds of information, and we hope that the picture that our brain provides us of the external world is accurate. However, we can never evaluate for certain if our beliefs and ideas about the world are accurate because they are always processed by the very thing—the brain— that we are trying to evaluate. Somehow, we would have to escape our brain, observe the external world purely objectively, and then compare that observation to our subjective experience of the world to determine if there is a one-to-one correspondence.

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Since getting outside our brain seems virtually impossible, we are left with doing the best we can to interpret the world in a way that works best for us. Some of us have come to a religious or spiritual perspective, whereas others have come to one that is more scientific. The ultimate question is whether we can ever tell which is correct. While neurotheology may not answer the question directly, it can teach us a great deal about how our brain considers religious and spiritual ideas and how such ideas become an essential part of so many people’s lives. By starting with a full understanding of this neurological prison, we can set the stage for neurotheological discourse to try to unravel the ways in which we approach the world, both spiritual and nonspiritual.

In chapter 2, we will start with the most basic definition of neurotheology as a field of study linking the neurosciences with religion and theology. It is important to understand that both the “neuro” and the “theology” components must be considered broadly; neurotheology includes anthropology, cognitive neuroscience, neurology, psychology, and sociology on one hand and beliefs, myths, religion, rituals, spiritual practices, spirituality, and theology on the other. As a highly diverse, multidisciplinary field, neurotheology has the greatest opportunity to address basic questions related to human experiences of religion, spirituality, and reality itself. We will also emphasize that neurotheology is not just about science explaining religion, but how the two can potentially come together to allow for a fuller understanding of the human person and human belief systems. This chapter will consider the full breadth of neurotheology from the esoteric wonderings of how the human brain enables us to think theological thoughts to the practical implications of using meditation for stress management. In the end, this chapter seeks to demonstrate the full possibilities of the field of neurotheology.

All chapters in this book rely to some degree on the neurosciences and how they can help shed light on specific religious and spiritual concepts, and we will spend chapter 3 reviewing some of the most relevant neuroscientific data regarding the brain’s functions as they might pertain to religious and spiritual phenomena.

In chapter 4, looking at religion from the perspective of neurotheology, we begin by focusing on religion itself. We will consider the basic constituents of religion, focusing on the ideas, beliefs, emotions, and experiences that people have. Each constituent can be related to specific brain

7 INTRODUCTION

processes, which can thus provide a new perspective on how to understand the various aspects of religion. We will explore basic definitions of religion and characteristics of various religions in terms of how brain processes may have shaped their doctrines and practices.

Paralleling chapter 4, chapter 5 turns to the broader concept of spirituality. In this chapter, we will consider the basic constituents of spirituality, including various practices, feelings, and experiences. We will relate these different constituents to brain processes to arrive at a perspective on the nature and basis of spirituality. We will also explore the relationship between spirituality and religion. And we will explore how various spiritual beliefs and experiences result in life-changing effects that pervade a person’s life, including vocations, relationships, and values.

Chapter 6 begins by considering the physical evolution of the human brain and how it coincided with the development of religious and spiritual beliefs. We will consider the evolutionary arguments put forth to explain how religious and spiritual beliefs may have arisen. By reviewing specific brain structures, such as the frontal or parietal lobes, we will explore how certain elements of religions, such as a sense of surrender or a sense of connectedness, may have come about and resulted in adaptive beliefs and behaviors. We will explore the possible ways in which religion and spirituality may be adaptive from an evolutionary perspective. Arguments related to a religion’s ability to help humans control their environment, provide a stable social structure, and elaborate a system of morals will be considered. We will further consider whether the theory of evolution as currently understood contrasts with religious beliefs and how. An important point is that while religion and science may be at odds over certain points (e.g., evolution versus creationism), there may be other ways in which they can be compatible in relation to evolutionary theory and the development of religion itself.

Chapter 7, on neurotheology and psychology, will review the psychological components of religion and religious beliefs. We will consider the relationship between various models of the psychology of religion and consider the cognitive, emotional, attachment, and social elements of religion and how these elements relate to certain brain processes. We will explore the relationship between religion and mental health, a field with an extensive scientific literature base. An understanding of this relationship may help us determine whether religion is actually good for the brain and psyche.

8 INTRODUCTION

We will also consider whether religion is really a delusion and if so, what that might mean. Another important topic we will examine is religion when it is associated with negative psychological states such as those of individuals who use religion as a basis for their violent acts. Neurotheology may have a great deal to contribute to the study of religious violence.

As chapter 8 will discuss, one hypothesis over the years has been that religious beliefs and experiences represent some type of brain pathology.

Typical examples include people with schizophrenia who believe they are the Messiah and people with temporal lobe epilepsy who have unusual mystical experiences. The relationship between brain pathology and religion is a central topic in neurotheology. This chapter will review the current literature on specific cases as well as general trends. Since brain disorders affect specific structures and neurotransmitter systems within the brain, this area of research is crucial for understanding how the brain intersects with religious and spiritual phenomena. We will consider the pros and cons of considering brain pathology as the cause of religious experiences and the potential problems with over-pathologizing religion. We will also review the literature on psychedelic drug experiences and how they both shed light on the underlying biological mechanism of spiritual experiences and provide a context for the epistemological claims associated with them.

We will see what neurotheology can say about whether God is a delusion.

Ultimately, if we are trapped within our brain and peering out at the world, we have no choice but to develop myths about how the world works and our place within it. Such mythic stories are a central feature to all religions, and this topic is considered in chapter 9. Mythic stories provide a powerful sense of meaning and purpose, in addition to providing the ideological basis for a religion, but they can also play a role in scientific endeavors. Mythic stories have certain universal features in terms of establishing a problem or set of problems that must be overcome. These stories also use a variety of brain processes such as those involved in the ability to establish opposites (e.g., good versus evil), invoke emotions (e.g., love and hate), and construct abstract ideas (e.g., meaning, purpose, and morality). A review of myths will help shed light on the brain processes that underlie this crucial component of religions.

Chapter 10 examines the ritualizing brain. If myths provide the ideological content of religions, rituals enable us to enact this content. Myths provide the story; rituals help us feel myths throughout our mind and body.

9 INTRODUCTION

Rituals have certain specific characteristics, including rhythm, repetition, sensory stimuli, and body movements. Rituals are deeply embedded within the workings of the brain. In fact, mating and other rituals abound in the animal kingdom. Humans have elaborated rituals into almost all aspects of life. Thus, religious rituals might have their basis in the same physiological processes as mating rituals. Ultimately, these rituals help humans feel more deeply connected to their religious or spiritual beliefs. This chapter will consider an array of rituals from the religious to the nonreligious and explore their impact on the brain and body.

Religious and spiritual practices such as meditation and prayer have been a key focus of early neurotheological research, as we will discuss in detail in chapter 11. In part, this is because such practices are the easiest to study using brain imaging techniques and physiological measures. Religious and spiritual practices allow a researcher to select a specific time to evaluate a process that can elicit powerful experiences. This chapter will review the extensive and growing literature on the scientific study of these practices, focusing on the similarities and differences among them, both in terms of their key elements and the key brain processes involved. This chapter will help establish a taxonomy of such practices based on the elements of the practices and the experiences derived from them.

A growing number of people now consider themselves to be spiritual without adhering to a specific religious doctrine; that is, they feel spiritual but not religious. Chapter 12 will explore the differences between religious and nonreligious individuals as well as between those who consider themselves spiritual versus nonspiritual. We will review the existing data regarding differences in brain functions and neurotransmitter systems that might underlie a person’s predisposition to become religious, spiritual, or neither.

We will also explore whether neurotheology might be able to fill a unique niche that can allow people to explore spirituality without being religious and vice versa.

Chapter 13 explores a central tenet of most religions: the importance of human free will. However, several brain research studies have questioned how free will might work and whether it even exists. This has led some key thinkers to argue either for or against the existence of free will. This chapter will review the existing data on the relationship between free will and the brain and will consider a neurotheological approach to free will, as well as various religious and spiritual approaches. The question of free will

10 INTRODUCTION

has important implications for religious and moral concepts such as sin, evil, forgiveness, and morality, and each of these concepts can similarly be regarded from a neuroscientific perspective.

Mystical experiences represent perhaps the most intense spiritual experiences a person can have. In chapter 14, we will start by exploring the nature of such experiences and review the results of some brain imaging studies of practices that elicit such experiences. We will also reconsider psychedelic drug experiences and psychopathological states, this time as they relate to mystical experiences. Particular attention will be given to brain-related processes. For example, the most common element of mystical experiences is a feeling of oneness or connectedness with the universe or God, and there are areas of the brain that appear to be involved in such a feeling. But there is another particularly unique finding with regard to mystical experiences that relates to the first topic examined in this book: being trapped in the prison of our brain. Mystical experiences often bestow a perception that one has actually escaped one’s brain. While this may seem highly unlikely from a brain perspective, it raises some intriguing questions from both a neuroscientific and spiritual perspective: (1) What does it mean to get outside the brain? (2) Is this experience a real experience or a manifestation of the brain itself? (3) Does such an experience shed light on the true nature of reality? We will explore what neurotheology has to say about the importance and meaning of mystical experiences.

In the concluding chapter, chapter 15, we will consider the ultimate implications for neurotheology of studying the brain functions associated with religious and spiritual phenomena. On one hand, one might argue that such research could explain away religion, thus leading to an end of faith as it is traditionally considered. On the other hand, neurotheology might lend support to specific religious or spiritual pursuits, at least in terms of their ability to help humans find a sense of meaning, purpose, value, and connectedness to a universe that so often feels separate from the brain.

One important point about this book is that it uses neurotheology as an approach to consider the many possible theories, particularly scientific ones, that can be developed to help us better explore the religious side of humanity. The ability to construct scientific experiments that help provide new perspectives on religious and spiritual phenomena is a particularly important element of neurotheological scholarship. It is through

11 INTRODUCTION

such a process that neurotheology might help answer fundamental questions regarding the nature of God, the nature of existence, and what it means to be human. Neurotheology would also encourage theological and spiritual approaches to similar questions. Ideally, according to a neurotheological perspective, scholars should take a hybrid approach that would somehow strive to incorporate the best of what science can offer and the best of what religion and theology can offer to address these questions. For the purposes of this book, we will focus more on the scientific approaches that might be taken, and we will consider potential directions for future research.

There are many individuals who hold the perspective that science can be fully compatible with spiritual beliefs. This is more typically found in those following traditions like Buddhism and in those who consider themselves spiritual but not religious. Such individuals often embrace science and recognize that science can be part of a spiritual pursuit.

The Dalai Lama once stated, “If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”3 He recognizes that spiritual beliefs might be altered by science, even if the primary tenets are still followed. And even the more theistically inclined Catholic Church maintains the well-respected Vatican Observatory, which explores the Big Bang theory, Planck time, black holes, and other astronomical phenomena. To what extent the Catholic Church might alter Church doctrine in the face of new scientific discoveries remains to be seen. Regardless, there are many examples in which religion and science can come together.

In Breaking the Spell, the philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennett takes a particularly negative view of religion, but he does make the important argument that we need to use science to help understand the natural aspects of religion, whether one is a believer or not.4 Of course, for Dennett, all of religion is a natural phenomenon. Neurotheology would acknowledge that a substantial chunk of religion is natural, particularly the elements related to the human brain that allow us to read, sing, and experience religion. An argument can be made that it is these elements that are the only part of religion that can be truly known, at least by scientific means.

That is the goal of this book: to explore how neurotheology can develop practical, scientific approaches to terrain that was previously off limits.

12 INTRODUCTION

Neurotheology should not be afraid to break the spell, as Dennett encourages. However, neurotheology would remind us that religious phenomena are often far more complicated than science can currently address. And maybe science itself will have to adjust to aspects of religion and spirituality that, at least for now, appear to transcend scientific endeavors, which also happen to be created by the human brain. These are among the many interwoven problems and questions that remain to be answered—perhaps by this new field of neurotheology.

PRAISE FOR

NEUROTHEOLOGY “A tour de force in this emerging field, Neurotheology provides a superb review of the science to date and shows the many directions the field may go in the future. This book raises profound implications for neuroscience, medicine, theology, and philosophy. Fascinating and clearly written and accessible for everyone. Truly mind-blowing.”

—HAR O L D KO E N IG , Duke University Medical Center

“This book offers the promise that neurotheology can help move us beyond the conflict between science and religion toward the truth or at least to a more unified and universal perspective on the interface between spirituality and the brain. Neurotheology covers many potential points of contact between science and religion, acknowledges the existence of complexity and the dangers of simple reductionism, and presents clear information on the capabilities and limitations of various forms of neurological assessment.”

J O H N P E T E E T , Harvard Medical School

“In Neurotheology, Andrew Newberg discusses the possibility of a fruitful dialogue between neuroscience and religion and how this sort of investigation may have a profound impact on how we see spirituality, ourselves, and life. A world expert in the neuroimaging study of spiritual experiences, Newberg proposes a nondogmatic approach to the scientific study of spirituality and successfully advocates for fruitful exchanges between science and religion.”

ALEXANDER MOREIRA-ALMEIDA , Federal University of Juiz de Fora

ISBN: 978-0-231-17904-1

C O L U M B I A U N I V E R S I T Y P R E S S / N E W Y O R K C U P. C O L U M B I A . E D U