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Is Spirituality All in Your Head?
By
Daniel C. Peterson and William J. Hamblin
A
recently emerging field of religious study is known as neurotheology—“the
study of the neurobiology of religion and spirituality.” Neurotheology
is a new movement; the first major book on the subject was
published in 1998. As such, its findings should be viewed
as quite tentative. But they are nonetheless provocative. Psychologists
and neurologists are attempting “to pinpoint which regions
[of the brain] turn on, and which turn off” during religious
experiences. Or, to more accurately describe the view of some
of its practitioners, in what are perceived as religious
experiences.
In
their experiments, neurologists scanned the brains, among others,
of a man engaged in Tibetan meditative practices and of Catholic
nuns engaged in mystical prayer. They discovered that during
these experiences the prefrontal cortex of the brain was highly
active, while the superior parietal lobe—which governs orientation
in time and space—was relatively inactive, giving the participants
a mystical sense of being outside time and space. Their conclusion:
Religious experiences can be correlated with particular types
of brain activity. (Interestingly, in surveys of people who
have claimed to have unusual moments of spiritual insight or
awakening, it was discovered that such experiences “increase
with education, income and age,” apparently giving the lie
to claims that education somehow undermines religious belief.)
In
some ways, neurotheology is an attempt to quantify what many
secularists have been arguing for decades—that religious experiences
have no ontological basis outside human brain chemistry. Religious
experiences are real only in the sense that humans really experience
them. And, precisely as certain regions of the brain are highly
active during dreams or hallucinations, specific regions of
the brain are also active during religious experiences. Some
neurotheologians claim that religious visions are caused by
brain abnormalities such as temporal-lobe epilepsy, claiming
that Paul, among others, suffered from this malady. (Precisely
how such a diagnosis could be made on a man dead for two thousand
years is generally not explained, but it seems suspiciously
circular in its reasoning: Paul had visions. People with
temporal-lobe epilepsy have visions. Therefore Paul must have
had temporal-lobe epilepsy.)
On
the other hand, neurotheologian Andrew Newburg disagrees with
secularist claims: “It’s no safer to say that spiritual urges
and sensations are caused by brain activity than it is to say
that the neurological changes through which we experience the
pleasure of eating an apple cause the apple to exist. … There
is no way to determine whether the neurological changes associated
with spiritual experience mean that the brain is causing those
experiences … or is instead perceiving a spiritual reality.” Thus,
although some might attempt to use the findings of neurotheology
to declare the debate over the ultimate source of religious
experiences definitively over, in reality it has probably only
just begun.
Another
problem with neurotheology is that it reductionistically equates mystical experiences
with religious experiences in general. In reality, mystical
experiences are only one type of religious experience. Or,
as Kenneth L. Woodward puts it: “The chief mistake these neurotheologians
make is to identify religion with specific [mystical] experiences
and feelings.” Religion includes experiences of guilt, repentance,
obedience, service, singing, and study, as well as quiet meditation. The
gifts of the Spirit, as enumerated by Paul, may include, but
also certainly transcend, the mystical meditation studied by
the neurotheologians.
As
a final, somewhat wild, speculation, if neurologists could
have wired Joseph Smith’s brain when he had his first vision,
what would they have discovered? From Joseph’s descriptions
of his experiences, he does not fit the pattern neurotheologians
believe they have found for “religious experiences.” Joseph
did not claim to have had a sense of transcending time and
space, but claimed to have seen two real beings. Would Joseph’s
brain have demonstrated the same patterns scientists found
with meditating Buddhists or praying nuns, or would his brain
functions have been substantially different? And what, we
wonder, would they discover about the brain functions of some
of us during our weekly Sunday meetings?
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