The Brain and Spirituality

The Brain and Spirituality.
September 3, 2010
7:00 p.m. at North Hill Adventist Fellowship
10106 36th Street E
Edgewood, WA 98371

We will begin our conversation with a bit of a summary of some chapters in a book I'm reading titled, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality by Barbara Bradley Hagerty.

Hagerty is a reporter. A born again Christian. She grew up Christian Scientist.

The book is a report on the physical correlates in the brain to spiritual experience.

Put simply: Brain scans and other contemporary techniques of neurological investigation clearly show some consistent patterns of physical correlation to different kinds of spiritual experience.

The questions that naturally rise in connection with this research:

1. Does brain physiology and anatomy exhaustively account for spiritual experience, i.e. is it "all in our heads"? Or does this brain activity point to a reality outside the brain?

2. To put it another way: Are people who are unusually (or hyper-) spiritual, abnormally delusional or exceptionally aware? Does a lack of spiritual sensitivity or awareness indicate a person is more grounded in reality or merely less aware of the fullness of reality? Is a person who has minimal spiritual sensitivities more like someone who is colorblind or tone deaf or more like someone who is phobia-free or allergy-free?

3. Given our current knowledge of the universe and natural law, can we confidently say that anything which appeals to forces other than the strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity and electromagnetic energy is hokum?

4. See below for question 4.

Obviously, I believe there is more to the universe than the four forces. I am not confident our knowledge of the universe, even the near regions of it, that we can claim exhaustive knowledge of the forces which operate in it.

In Hagerty's book, she notes a number of times that the scientists she runs into who believe there is more to the universe than pure materialism and the four forces, have all--without exception--themselves had some kind of mystical experience. They are a minority of scientists to be sure. She was struck, and it rings true to me, by the very, very strong correlation between a scientist having had a mystical experience and his/her openness to spirituality as a perception of a reality "out there" as opposed to spirituality as merely brain activity.

So my question for us this evening: What mystical experiences have we had? Why are we believers? Many of us have strong credentials as skeptics, doubters, questioners, agnostics. This part of our reality is not mere posturing. However, given this part of our reality, why do we continue to care about God, prayer, spiritual life, religion?

I look forward to hearing your stories.

Question 4. According to brain scans, the theological content of one's religion makes zero difference in brain physiology. Different spiritual practices do map differently. That is, Buddhist meditation and Christian centering prayer look the same in the brain. Speaking in tongues looks different. One of the common ideas among hyper spiritual people in all sorts of different spiritual traditions is the unity of all things and the ultimate value of compassion. This convergence among the hyper spiritual led Hagerty to question the classic claims of Christianity to an exclusive patent on authentic spirituality. I share her questions in this area.