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Neurotheology
God and the Brain
Greg Billock
Jan 14, 2006
Outline
• Part 1 - Neurobiology
– How to study the brain
– Functional mapping of
the brain
– Neurotheology
• Part 2 - Theobiology
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Theory of the soul
Revelation and tradition
Personal experience
Conclusions
Brain Science
• The brain is a “dog’s breakfast” of about three and a
half pounds of flesh the consistency of extra-firm tofu.
• Contains 100 billion cells
• In comparison, a cell contains some 10 billion protein
molecules
• The most complex thing we know of
How does it work?
Neurons
• Microscopically, the brain is
composed of neurons, connected
through synapses and other less
direct mechanisms
• Neurons are cells; the
brain is an organ
• The brain is bathed in an
environment of enzymes
and hormones
• It consumes 20% of the
body’s energy
• Most of the body’s internal
milieu is sensed and
regulated by the brain
Figuring out how the brain works
•
Direct imaging (fMRI, PET, SPECT, EEG)
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Study animals
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Wait for someone to have an accident
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Psychophysics
Mathematical models
Brain geography
• The brain has
different anatomical
parts (lobes)
Brain systems and regions
• The brain can be thought of as
composed of specific functional areas
• The most explored is the visual system.
Visual pathway
Functionally mapping the brain
• The brain can be functionally mapped
by imaging and injury studies.
Specific sensory regions
Speech areas
Auditory pathway
Motor cortex
Basic trick: brain-body maps
Motor homunculus
Ocular dominance -- depth
perceptions
More complex systems
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Memory
Emotion
Spirituality
Attention
Consciousness
Harder to study, but the hypothesis that the
same regional/mapping approach is valuable
has proven fruitful.
Attention system: Stroop task
FG
OG
SPL
Frontal gyrus
Superior parietal lobe
Occipital gyrus
Parietal Lobe--Spatial
Attention System
Brain activity during shifting
spatial attention
Neurobiology of cognition
• Pattern recognition: the mind is tuned to
see patterns and organize the world into
patterns
Neurobiology of cognition
• The mind automatically categorizes
(associative recall)
Neurobiology of cognition
• Causality
• Existential
• Emotional value
The Autonomic Nervous System
Regulate body milieu (including
that of the brain) through two
systems:
• Quiescent
• Arousal
Brain Science in a Nutshell
• The brain is an organ--a part of the body
• The brain is composed of interacting specialized
areas
• The brain is subject to study by several methods
such as imaging, psychophysics, animal models,
simulation
• Some brain processes are involuntary and some are
voluntary
• The brain is very complex, but probably has a
relatively small number of “tricks” like neural maps
and uses them over and over.
• The brain is plastic--it is adaptive and can learn
Putting it together--the leopard myth
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A man hears a noise in the forest
It might be a leopard!
… or perhaps the wind
Computing probabilities takes too long
Moving the man out of danger is the primary
task of the limbic system
• It takes the cooperation of the brain to
activate the motor cortex
• --> Immediate, overpowering belief in the
explanation of the leopard
Putting it together--an afterlife myth
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A close friend has been killed in an accident
A woman sits at the fire angrily wondering Why??
As the fire goes out, a puff of smoke rises to the sky.
The emotional value of the right hemisphere at the dying fire resonates
with the existential angst of the left hemisphere verbal process
The mind’s holistic operator is working with the puzzle of the death like
a Necker cube--proposing and evaluating existential solutions
If there is a synergistic activation between the emotional value
metaphor and the linguistic/logical side, the pleasure of an existential
resolution stimulates pleasure in the limbic system, causing an
activation of the quiscence system.
Simultaneous activation of the arousal and quiescent system causes a
powerfully altered state of consciousness in which the body’s systems
reinforce the conviction and freight it with body emotional response.
Because the verbal centers participate, the experience is memorizable
and communicable.
Putting it together on purpose--ritual
• Body movements -- often unusual
movements
• Rhythm -- music, dance, repetition
• Familiarity and predictability
• Smells
• Existential weight
Putting it together -- transcendence
• Newberg and d’Aquili propose several paths to
transcendent experiences:
• A path of stimulating the quiescent system by
denying any arousal until there’s involuntarily
spillover
• A path of focusing on an object such as a mantra or
an icon
• A path of vigorous activity
• All lead to the same result: de-afferenting of the
orientation (spatial attention region) area, leading to
an intense feeling of merging with the other.
Other approaches
• Drugs
• Transcranial Magnetic
Stimulation (Persinger)
• Adaptive--Social utility of
religion
• Psychiatric conditions
(temporal lobe epilepsy)
Religious models of the brain
• The soul
• Dualism
– Important to classical Christian doctrine
– At odds with a scientific approach to the
brain
• Revelation
• Spiritual experiences
The Soul
• Where is the soul--what bodily or brain
structures form the soul?
• Brain science seeks to directly examine the
neurological basis of all aspects of
experience
• If a stroke damaged the part(s) of the brain
where the soul resides, what would that look
like?
• If the soul cannot be injured, then what is it?
Dualism
• Classical Christian dualism--there is an immortal soul
• Adventists traditionally reject the doctrine of the immortal soul,
and claim adherence to “holism”
• Holism in the sense of an absence of an immaterial soul has
some obstacles:
– If there is no immortal soul, how do you explain the resurrection?
– If there is no immortal soul, how do you explain the incarnation?
• In response, Adventists typically end up in a position of resisting
an immortal soul while maintaining a strong dualism.
• How does the immaterial soul interact with the material body?
Descartes thought this interaction was mediated through the
pineal gland.
Divine-human interaction
• Revelation--God communicates to human
beings through our brains
– Which parts of the brain are responsible?
• Brain science can elucidate conditions which
externally appear similar to inspiration
• Drugs, meditation, ritual are effective in
facilitating spiritual experience. Do they
summon God?
Interpretations
• Absolute Unitary Being is “realer than real” -Newberg and d’Aquili
• The mind generates an experience of
“sensed presence” to account for irregular
activity in the right temporal lobe (housing
emotions of the self) -- Persinger
• Feelings, including spiritual ones, are the
basis for the regulation of life by the brain -Damasio
My Conclusions
• Personal spiritual experiences need to be
appreciated as neurologically mediated.
• The specificity and impeachability of such
experiences may contribute to a higher degree of
humility in interpreting them.
• Dogma relying on dualistic anthropology is obsolete.
• Spiritual experience is an important facet of what it is
to be human, and facilitating technology, as long as it
respects other important facets of what it is to be
human, can be welcomed.
Further Reading
Discussion Questions
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Is the project of discovering how the brain works by studying individual
functions of the brain fruitful? What implications does the answer to that
question have for our understanding of the self? The soul? The spirit?
Would it be possible to use the results of brain science to distinguish between
various types of spiritual experience? How about the possibility of presenting
objective evidence verifying the reality of such experiences? What about then
validating such experiences?
What if it were possible to psychotropically induce a conversion experience?
Would such a conversion be authentic? Ethical? Is God using exactly this
mechanism to talk to people?
How is an individual's experience of the divine conveyed to his or her mental
faculties, if not through the brain? If such experiences are conveyed through
the brain, what parts of the brain are involved?
If the brain is intimately involved in mediating spiritual experience, what is the
spiritual status of an individual in whom that part of the brain is injured? What
about in an individual in whom that part of the brain works differently than
normal?
If you could investigate the religious brain function of an historical person,
who would you pick? What would you look for?
Are there pathological expressions of brain religious function? That is, would
it be possible or advisable to medically treat a disease of spiritual
experience?