Fingerprints of God 2nd Discussion

A Synopsis of Barbara Bradley Hagerty's book, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality.

Hastily done. Excuse the egregious errors.
This synopsis served as the springboard for our conversation at the October 1, 2010, gathering of the Friends of St Thomas.


Barbara grew up Christian Scientist and “at age 34—with the exception of a vaccine before my family traveled to Europe—I had never visited the doctor, never taken a vitamin, never popped an aspirin, much less flu medicine.” Then in a moment of “weakness” tormented by the miseries of the flu, she took a single Tylenol which magically made her feel better. Within a couple of years she left Christian Science.

It was not only this experience of relief from flu misery through the agency of Tylenol that led to her change of religious identification.

She was in L. A. doing a story on Saddleback Community Church. She was visiting after the Saturday night service with a woman who had been battling cancer for years. Kathy's cancer had recently returned. Barbara asked Kathy, “How can you be so cheerful when you've got this awful disease?”
“It's Jesus,” Kathy said, “Jesus gives me peace.”
“A guy who lived two thousand years ago?” Barbara asked incredulously. “How can that be?”
“Jesus is as real to me as you,” Katy explained. “He's right here, right now.”

They continued talking. Then at some point that evening Barbara and Kathy together experienced a presence. Barbara writes, “The air grew warmer and heavier, as if someone had moved into the cirlces and was breathing on us. . . . Gradually, and ever so gently, I was engulfed by a presence I could feel but not touch. I was paralyzed. I could manage only shallow breaths. After a minute, although it seemed longer, the presence melted away. We sat quietly, while I waited for the earth to steady itself. I was too spooked to speak, and yet I was exhilarated, as the first time I skied down an expert slope, terrified and oddly happy that I could not turn back. Those few moments, the time ti takes to boil water for tea, reoriented my life. The episode left a mark on my psyche that I bear to this day.” p. 5.

Driven in part by her desire to “understand” her experience that night, Barbara began work on a book about spiritual experience. What do we make of the accounts of people who have been drug addicts for years, decades, then something touches them and they leave it all and become sober and functional. We do we make of the miracles accomplished by Christian Science practitioners?

One of Barbara's conclusions is given right up front: “After talking to countless scientists far more knowledgeable and insightful than I, I have concluded that science cannot prove God—but science is entirely consistent with God. It all depends on how you define 'God.'” p. 11

In chapter two, Barbara tells the stories several people who have had very different experiences with the divine, experiences that radically altered their lives. The first, Sophy Burnham, is now a grandmother. She began having mystical experiences when she was a child, with “definitive experience” occurring at Machu Pichu after she was married and had two teenage children. These experiences led her into a wide-ranging new agey kind of spiritual quest. One was a scientist whose life was disintegrating because of alcohol. Another was a grad student who began meditating (he was ethnically Indian). Still another was a teenager who was having significant behavioral problems. Still another was a Sufi.

Hagerty's point is two-fold: First people do have spiritual experiences. Not everyone. But most people. Secondly, while the experiences are not identical, there are some common elements in these experiences that appear to cross religious, ethnic, cultural boundaries. These common elements include personal transformation. After having such an experience, the person is different. Inescapably. Ineluctably. There is a cost: the loss of one's former life or identity.

In agreement with William James, she argues we can explore spirituality only if we agree to take seriously the accounts people give of their experiences. The subjective reporting of people is data. Sure, it's not the kind of data scientists are used to working with, but if we are going to study spirituality, we are going to have to give attention to the self-reporting of people who have had the experiences.

The title of this chapter is: The God who Breaks and Enters. These experiences are not available on a demand basis. These experiences happen to people. There are some things people can do to make it more likely for the experience to happen. But one cannot compel the experience.

Here I am reminded of the testimony of Steven Kotler in his book West of Jesus. He says that at one point in his life he pursuit the spiritual quest with great intensity. He mastered meditation, sitting for up to ten hours at a time. But “the vision” never came to him.

However, twice in widely disparate situations—different geography, different culture, different time—when he is nearly killed by the waves when surfing, but escapes, someone remarks to him, "It looks like the Conductor had his way with you."

We cannot command “break through” spiritual experiences. Neither can we perfectly secure ourselves against them. Paul on his way to Damascus wasn't looking for something new.





Chapter 3: The health effect of praying. (My title.) Studies on the effects of prayer are conflicting and inconclusive. The placebo effect is well-documented, illustrating the power of the mind to affect the body.

In chapter 4, Hagerty discusses “hitting bottom.” The essential prerequisite for a transformative spiritual experience is “brokenness.” I did not find it particularly illuminating. How do you schedule an episode of brokenness so you can have a transforming spiritual experience?

Chapter 5: Hunting for the God gene. Some interesting info, nothing ground shaking. Yes, there are genetic components that affect spirituality. Duh!!!!. Genetics affects everything—eyesight, hearing, touch, smell, IQ. Color blindness does not negate the reality of color. The reality of color does not somehow erase the fact that some people cannot perceive colors. Similarly, the fact that some people, including very articulate, learned scientists are oblivious to the divine or the numenous, that does not prove God does not exist. The reality that God does exist does not erase the fact that some people are insensible to God's reality and God's presence.

“Proof” that genetics plays a role in spirituality says almost nothing about the reality or non-reality of God.

Chapter 6. Drugs and spirituality. There are some interesting parallels between the experiences of people who use mushrooms religiously and the experiences of people who use other methods—like prayer, meditation, tongues-speaking—to enhance their openness to spirituality.

Chapter 7. Searching for the God spot.
One brain researcher theorizes that human sense of the divine originates in the right temporal lobe of the brain. This region is associated with epilepsy. And epilepsy is frequently associated with hyper religiosity. In some cases when a hyper religious person is treated medically for epilepsy, their religious zeal disappears.

It is possible to stimulate the right temporal lobe and evoke in a person a “Sensed Presence.” This Presence, according to Michael Persinger, is the source of spirituality in humans. Persinger is sure that all that happens in an encounter with God is that for some reason the right part of the brain is stimulated and one experiences a “Sensed Presence.” There is no actual presence in Persinger's view, merely the impression, the feeling, that there is.

Chapter 8. Spiritual virtuosos.

This chapter features the story of Scott McDermott, a Methodist pastor with a Ph. D. in New Testament. He heard about and was severely critical of the “Toronto Blessing” which was a Pentecostal revival that included people laughing uncontrollably and barking like dogs and doing other vocalizations.

He decided to check out the phenomenon first hand at a meeting led by the pastor of the Toronto Church. During this meeting, the Spirit came on McDermott and he experienced the Toronto blessing. It was a very dramatic, drawn out ecstatic experience. For an hour and a half he “ran” in place while lying on his back on the floor. As he was “running” he had visions of his journey from Jericho to Jerusalem.

Prior to this experience McDermott was already practicing a pretty intense spiritual life. He prayed for an hour or two a day. He was the pastor of a large Methodist Church and taught at a university. Still he never felt adequate. That changed during that marathon on the floor.

The Lord spoke to him. According to McDermott, when God spoke,

there was this indescribable love, it was beyond words, and it began to fill me. All that low self-esteem, all that sense of not being valued, began to melt in this love.

The change has been dramatic. I can't say I'm a perfect man as a result of this, or that every day I walk on cloud nine, but I will tell you this: Because of that, I know how much I'm loved by God. And When life gets hard—and life does get hard—God's love is there to see me through.”

After his mystical marathon, Scott said he was horrified that he had made himself such a spectacle. But the next day, he said, “People would ask, 'Why would you have an experience like that and not me?' And I don't have an answer to that one.”


The chapter talks about brain scans that have been done on people who are experts or at least highly practiced in different kinds of spiritual practice.

Franciscan nuns and Tibetan Buddhist monks had similar brain activity. Both reported having a sense of oneness or union with God or the universe. Scans showed these individuals' frontal lobes were highly active. “Think of the frontal lobes as the chief operating officer of the brain, one with accountant-like tendencies; it handles the details, helps plan and execute tasks, keeps you awake and alert and above all, focused.” p. 173.

At the same time the parietal loves of both of these groups appeared to become utterly inactive. One researcher calls the parietal lobes the “orientation area” because it orients you in space and time. The parietal lobes tell you where yournbody ends and the rest of the world begins. Which might explain the common experience associated with this kind of meditation: A feeling of oneness with the universe, the dissolution of self.

One of the common features Hagerty noticed in people who had experienced mystical states was their tendency to drop religious labels.

Brain scans of people speaking in tongues shows the frontal lobes completely shut down. The activity in the parietal lobes increased.

One common feature between the meditators and the charismatics was an asymmetry in the thalami (that's the plural of thalamus). In most people they are symmetrical. In all the spiritual virtuosos Newberg has studied they are markedly asymmetrical. (Andrew Newberg is associate professor of radiology in the department of radiology—with secondary appointments in psychiatry and religious studies—at the University of Pennsylvania. He has not identified an explanation for this asymmetry.

At the end of this chapter, Hagerty raises what I think is for her the ultimate question: What is the relationship of the mind to the brain. Is our mind a function of our brain? Or is the brain a tool of the mind?

For Hagerty, if the mind is a function of the brain, if the mind has no separable existence from the brain, then this would mean the triumph of materialism. There is nothing more than what can be accounted for by the currently known laws of physics.

As a Christian materialist (which is what I call the Adventist position on body-soul unity), it seems to me quite possible to conceive of the mind as an emergent property of the brain. Mental function is more than merely the addition of all the particular functions of neurons and other brain tissue, but mental function cannot be separated from brain tissue.

An analogy: There is on way you can learn anything meaningful about the software running on a computer by a chemical or physical analysis of the hardware of the computer. But the software is inseparable from the hardware.

You would never “see” a Bach concerto in a piano. No matter how finely you analyzed the mechanics or composition of the mechanism. But the music is inseparable from the piano . . . or lute or violin or flute or orchestra. The music cannot play itself. The music does not make the piano, the piano makes the music. But the music is more (or at least “other”) than the piano.

It is helpful to keep the concepts of mind and brain distinct. They are labels for different realities. But the different realities are not separable.

At least that's my view.

It's a view that Hagerty is clearly contending against in chapter 9, Out of My Body or out of My Mind?This chapter explores out of body experiences. The most well-evidence conclusion from various studies on out of body experiences is that many (most? all?) of the people who have had them are changed. And the changes are perceived by the people themselves and usually by others around them as positive changes. People who have had these experiences become less judgmental, more global, more compassionate.

Hagerty interviews people who are researching out-of-body experiences. A couple of avenues of research are evaluating the descriptions given by people who report floating up over the operating table when they've clinically died on the table. Do their descriptions match was actually happening? Could they know what they are describing from some other source than being an eye-witness of their own situation? Hagerty reports stories that appear to support the idea of a people actually observing from a point above the operating table. She also reports the failure (so far) of an experiment that places special “targets” in operating rooms. These targets are invisible from the floor or table but would be visible to someone looking on from the ceiling. So far, no one has ever reported seeing one of these targets in a near-death experience.

Chapter 10, “Are We Dead Yet?” This chapter is more reporting on near-death experiences.

Hagerty writes near the end of the chapter:

“Every person I interviewed who had traveled to the brink of death returned with a new definition of God. I had first noticed this when I talked with people who had enjoyed spontaneous mystical experiences, and I saw the pattern repeat with those who experience other transcendent moments as well. I realized that after encountering the “Other,” people no longer clung to religious distinctions. If they identified themselves as Christians or Jewish before, they might still attend church or synagogue, but they no longer believed their faith tradition could make a claim of exclusive truth. They were like witnesses to the same God, but from different angles. Or think of God as the head of a multinational corporation. He controls several subsidiary companies, each with its own president: Jesus . . . Moses . . . Muhammad . . . Buddha . . . and on and on. But take the elevator up one level, above the religions that try to make sense of the spiritual world, and you find the “Other” or “Light” or “Source”--that is, the CEO who presides over the whole enterprise.” Hagerty writes she is not sure this is her final conclusion, but it is what she heard repeatedly from the “spiritual adepts” she interviewed.

Chapter 11 “A New Name for God”

Hagerty quotes Einstein, “Everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of the Universe—a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble.”

After referencing Anthony Flew's recent conversion and a lecture she heard by Francis Collins, both of which prominently referenced the improbability of intelligence in a genuinely godless, purposeless universe, Hagerty writes that a vision of God as “the infinite intelligence” that lies behind the math of the universe—this “is a God who makes sense to me, a defensible God, and one who has a starring role in a new batch of scientific experiments” p. 246. The experiments she is referencing are efforts to explore awareness at a distance. She recounts stories of people who awaken with sudden concern for a loved one, and then discover the loved one was in fact in dramatic crisis at just that moment.

Interesting but not earthshaking for me. I guess the implication she is positing is that if there is such a thing as awareness at a distance, it would break the “absolute rule” of the known laws of physics and make room for something else . . . something spiritual?
In chapter 12 she recounts a public exchange at Cambridge University between Richard Dawkins and mathematician John Barrow. It occurred in an event sponsored by the Templeton Foundation. Barrow “was speed-walking us through the hypothesis of a “fine-tuned” universe . . . He explained multiverses . . . then said, almost as an aside, “I'm quite happy with a traditional theistic view of the universe.”
Dawkins reacted sharply. “Why on earth do you believe in God?”
Barrow: “If you want to look for divine action, physicists look at the rationality of the universe and the mathematical structure of the world.”
Dawkins: “Yes, but why do you want to look for divine action?”
Barrow, with a bit of a smile: “For the same reason that someone might not want to.”

The room erupted in laughter—everyone that is except for Dawkins.


Right at the end she reports on conversations with Mario Geauregard of the University of Montreal. He was one of the people who first did MRIs on people who were meditating. Beauregard says that when he presents his arguments that humans are more than biological robots, scientists clamor for more info. “Many young scientists come to me—not openly but covertly—and they tell me they greatly admire the kind of work I'm doing. They don't dare go public yet. . . .”

Which reminds me of something I read this week in another book, Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think by Elaine Howard Ecklund, a sociologist at Rice University. She found that younger scientists are more likely to be theists than are older scientists. These “younger scientists” are not students. They are faculty, thus beyond the point in life where people typically make radical changes in their beliefs. So over time the academy may become a bit more open to spirituality.

Hagerty quotes William James favorably: The real distinction between a material and spiritual worldview does not rest in hair-splitting abstractions about matter's inner essence, or about the metaphysical attributes of God. Materialism means simply the denial that the moral order is eternal, and the cutting off of ultimate hopes; spiritualism means the affirmation of an eternal moral order and the letting loose of hope.”

Hagerty then writes, “Given the choice, I throw my lot in with hope.”

Finally a paragraph written for us, the Friends of St Thomas.

“And if I'm wrong [in some of her less-than-orthodox opinions]? Well, if I'm wrong, I can only hope that the central character in my story, who included a skeptic named Thomas among His closest friends, would see in my questions an honest search for the truth. And, perhaps, He would approve.” p 283.