Karen from the article you linked too -
washingtonpost.com
"But theologians say such practices don't describe most people's religiousness in either eastern or western traditions.
"When these people talk of religious experience, they are talking of a meditative experience," said John Haught, a professor of theology at Georgetown University. "But religion is more than that. It involves commitments and suffering and struggle – it's not all meditative bliss. It also involves moments when you feel abandoned by God."
"Religion is visiting widows and orphans," he said. "It is symbolism and myth and story and much richer things. They have isolated one small aspect of religious experience and they are identifying that with the whole of religion."
Belief and faith, argue believers, are larger than the sum of their brain parts: "The brain is the hardware through which religion is experienced," said Daniel Batson, a University of Kansas psychologist who studies the effect of religion on people. "To say the brain produces religion is like saying a piano produces music."
At the Fuller Theological Seminary's school of psychology, Warren Brown, a cognitive neuropsychologist, said, "Sitting where I'm sitting and dealing with experts in theology and Christian religious practice, I just look at what these people know about religiousness and think they are not very sophisticated. They are sophisticated neuroscientists, but they are not scholars in the area of what is involved in various forms of religiousness."
At the heart of the critique of the new brain research is what one theologian at St. Louis University called the "nothing-butism" of some scientists – the notion that all phenomena could be understood by reducing them to basic units that could be measured.
"A kiss," said Michael McClymond, "is more than a mutually agreed-upon exchange of saliva, breath and germs."
And finally, say believers, if God existed and created the universe, wouldn't it make sense that he would install machinery in our brains that would make it possible to have mystical experiences?"
Tim |
