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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