Very interesting article you posted...
"In his 2003 book, The God Part of the Brain, Alper says that with the advent of self-conscious awareness, humans became the first animal that could conceive of its own mortality and inevitable death. In order to survive the excruciating anxiety produced by this awareness, a cognitive mechanism was selected into us that compelled us to believe in an alternate, spiritual reality, one that allowed us to perceive ourselves as able to transcend physical death and therefore live forever in a type of afterlife.
The fact that all cultures from the dawn of time have believed in some form of spiritual reality as well as engaged in specific religious practices implies that spirituality and religiosity represent an integral part of our genetic inheritance. The fact that certain plants or chemicals can trigger a spiritual experience in us demonstrates that there exists some part of the brain that is receptive to these stimuli.
Alper finds support for his hypothesis in the research on temporal lobe epileptics as well as religiously-oriented "organic psycho-syndromes" in which people with head injuries, afterwards, become excessively religious.
This leads Alpers to imply that there is no spiritual reality, no god, no soul, no afterlife, nothing that transcends or supersedes the physical realm, invalidating every brand of spiritual or religious belief that exists. The greater implication is that cognition, emotion, perception, and sensation are derived from our genetic makeup in conjunction with the environment in which these genetic potentials are nurtured. The fact that we have no control over either of these variables suggests that there is no such thing as free will.
Needless to say, Alper has been roundly criticized for such a harsh world view.
However, he sees benefits from his conclusions. As much as the religious impulse serves to bond society with mutual values and a sense of hope, it also prompts us to certain discriminatory behaviors and the commission of all sorts of hateful acts and atrocities. If religiosity is accepted as a biologically based impulse, we may be able to curb its potentially harmful excesses such as those that have led our species to acts of hostility, war and genocide. We may be able to focus our attention and energies on the here and now instead of some dubious concept of afterlife.
According to the Ramachandran team, it is not clear why such dedicated neural machinery for religion
may have evolved. One possibility they saw was the encouragement of tribal loyalty or reinforcement of kinship ties and the stability of closely knit clans. These scientists emphasized that their findings in no way suggest that religion is simply a matter of brain chemistry. "These studies do not in any way negate the validity of the religious experience of God," the team cautioned. "They merely provide an explanation in terms of brain regions that may be involved."
Carl Kinsely, an expert in psychology and neuroscience at the University of Richmond in Virginia says the implications of research investigating the relationship between the brain, human consciousness and a range of intangible mental experiences is fascinating. "People have been tickling around the edges of consciousness and this sort of research plunges in", Kinsely said. "There is the quandary of whether the mind created God or God created the mind." He believed that any conclusions are very premature.
As Ramachandran has said, "We are only starting to look at this. The exciting thing is that you can even begin to contemplate scientific experiments on the neural basis of religion and God." |
