The book uses Zen Buddhism as the opening wedge for an extraordinarily wide-ranging exploration of consciousness.

The evolutionary neurological foundations of religious experience are detailed. Human beings have been burying and preparing their dead for the Hereafter for more than 100,000 years. These behaviors and beliefs are related to activation of the amygdala, hippocampus, and temporal lobe, which are responsible for religious, spiritual, and mystical trancelike states, dreaming, astral projection, near‐death and out‐of‐body experiences, and the hallucination of ghosts, demons, angels, and gods. Abraham, Moses, Muhammad, and Jesus Christ, and others who have communed with angels or (...) gods display limbic system hyperactivity, whereas patients report religious hallucinations or out‐of‐body experiences when limbic structures are stimulated or excessively activated. It is postulated that limbic and temporal lobe structures account for the sexual and violent aspects of religious behavior and also serve as a “transmitter to God,” and that the evolution of these structures made spiritual experience possible. (shrink)

I argue that people do not and cannot have religious experiences that are perceptual experiences with theological content and that provide some justification for the belief in God. I discuss William Alston's resourceful defence of this idea. My strategy is to say that religious perception would either have to be by means of one of the ordinary five senses or else by means of some special sixth religious sense. In either case insoluble epistemological problems arise. The problem is with perceiving (...) God as God, which we need to do if reasons to believe in God are to be generated. To do so, we would have to perceive the instantiation of His essential properties – being all-knowing, all-powerful, and all-good. But perceiving the instantiation of these properties of God, even by some special sixth religious sense, is impossible. Hence, God cannot be perceived either by the ordinary five senses or by a sixth religious sense. Religious perceptual experiences are a myth. (Published Online February 17 2004). (shrink)

How should philosophy approach religious experience? Can philosophy do more than describe religious experience without discussing its object? Can religion make genuine truth claims? These are some of the questions raised in these essays.

Religions are complex, and any attempt at defining religion necessarily falls short. Nevertheless, any scholarly inquiry into the nature of religion must use some criteria in order to evaluate and study the character of religious traditions across contexts. To this end, I propose understanding religion in terms of an orienting worldview. Religions are worldviews that are expressed not only in beliefs but also in narratives and symbols. More than this, religions orient action, and any genuine religious tradition necessarily is concerned (...) with normative behavior, whether ethical or religious in character. Such an understanding of religion has several advantages, one of which is its natural relation to current forms of the science‐religion dialogue. Not only can the findings of cognitive science and related areas inform us about the nature of religion; scientific discoveries also prove to be important for any religious synthesis that attempts to construct a worldview for the twenty‐first century. (shrink)

I hypothesize that people engage in religious practices, in part, because such practices activate the frontal lobes. Activation of the frontal lobes is both intrinsically rewarding and necessary for acquisition of many of the behaviors that religions seek to foster, including self‐responsibility, impulse and emotion modulation, empathy, moral insight, hope, and optimism. Although direct tests of the hypothesis are as yet nonexistent, there is reasonably strong circumstantial evidence (reviewed herein) for it. Recent brain‐imaging studies indicate greater anterior activation values and (...) increased blood flow to frontal sites during prayer and meditation. Regular prayer is positively correlated with better overall mental health. Religiosity is correlated with higher levels of self‐monitoring, empathy, and moral insight and other positive behaviors and negatively correlated with depression and impulsive and risky behaviors. Independent data show that self‐monitoring, empathy, hope, and moral insight are all selectively associated with intact frontal function, whereas depression, impulsiveness, and drug and alcohol abuse are associated selectively with frontal dysfunction. If religious practices do indeed preferentially activate and stimulate development of the frontal lobes, (a) religious practices should be considered as possible adjuncts for some patients in treatment for mental health disorders, and (b) the frontal lobes (rather than the temporal lobes) should be considered the major brain site that supports the core components of religious experience. (shrink)

Spiritual life is made possible by the evolution of a human neuropsychology that requires social interdependence for its development. Extensive neuroplasticity requires experiential shaping throughout life. The evolution of frontal cortex hypertrophy suggests that much of this shaping is produced by a socially constructed virtual reality, extending beyond immediate experience. Prefrontal colonization makes possible the social scaffolding of neuroregulation, including the emotional attachments necessary for moral life. Cognitive independence from immediate environments enables symbioses with external memory systems, producing novel forms (...) of socially constituted experience and making possible the transformative effect of religious systems upon individual biologies and psychologies. (shrink)

Consideration of the amazing organized intricacy of human cortical anatomy entails a deeper appreciation of nature that is fully consistent with a mature religious spirit. A brain seems at first glance to be a mere lump of grayish claylike stuff, but facts of basic neuroanatomy compel us to consider that this particular kind of stuff may really contain all the richly tangible and richly ghostly inner essences of emotion, thought, and behavior. Humans are the “college graduates” of evolution. The human (...) cortex is 3,400 times the volume of, yet only slightly thicker (about 3 millimeters) than, that of the mouse. This remarkable sheet is as thin as a graduation‐day “mortarboard” cap, but its 2,600 square centimeter area is four times as large (about 20 × 20 inches if a square; both metric and English units used deliberately). Zooming in, there are about 50 billion cortical neurons; though named after “pyramids,” they are more like tiny “magic trees,” with branches and roots so long and fine that there are 1 or 2 miles of these electrically scintillating fibers within each cubic millimeter of cortex. Cortical neurons communicate intimately: viewed from above, beneath a single square millimeter 100,000 nerve cells intertwine; each such neuron makes 5,000 or more connections with others. These and many additional amazing facts about brain tissue, together with some conjectures about dense connectedness in the mathematics of graph theory, help to bear out the groundwork prepared by such pioneers as Ralph Wendell Burhoe that the spirit and knowledge of science might rejoin that of religion. If it takes enchanted matter to contain consciousness, this is a kind of enchantment that science may well be able to penetrate for eventual thoroughgoing understanding. Inevitable by‐products will be greater reverence for nature and greater awe at the mystery of nature's origin. (shrink)

In recent years, interest in the scientific basis of religious experience has resurged. In particular, research and publications by V. S. Ramachandran and by Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg have sparked considerable curiosity and debate over the reality and basis of religious experience. This article puts such research into a broader context and examines the extent to which scientific research supports or undermines particular religious and theological claims. I argue that such experiments show that religious experience has some biological basis (...) and is not simply a product of cultural suggestion. At the same time, such experiences are not completely self–interpreting, so that cultural context, including theological claims, are needed to make sense of such experiences. By itself, scientific research does not prove or disprove the reality of religious experiences generally, but it does shape how we think of the possibilities and interpretations of such experiences. (shrink)