Faith is a concept with which we are all familiar. Neurotheology, the study of the neurobiological mechanisms that underlie human religious behaviour, belief and experience, is rather less well-known. Yet, great hopes are held out for it, with people sometimes writing as if it will explain (or explain away) faith.
A major problem with this field is the difference between the brain and mental functions, and the gap in our understanding of how the two are related. As a result of this problem, it is crucial not to presume that images of the brain can immediately provide answers to the big questions about God, the content and cause of any religious experience, or indeed religion more generally. What such images can teach us, however, is that the brain is involved in a human experience defined by the subject as ‘religious’. To some this may seem insignificant, yet it can be regarded as an important step away from the perception of faith and religious experience as entirely ‘other-worldly’.
In most cases, it is possible to identify the specific area of the brain that is involved in an experience or belief. One such case study was conducted by Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili (2003)[1], in which three Franciscan nuns performed ‘centring prayer’, focussing their attention on a religious word or phrase and opening themselves up to being in the presence of God. The cerebral blood flow was examined using SPECT technology. The study showed increased activity in the frontal area of the brain, which is associated with attention focussing tasks.
If this study shows that the brain is involved in this act of faith, it does not reveal anything meaningful about the content of the experience. Nor does it reveal anything about the cause of such experiences or acts of faith. We can learn something of the association of certain neural responses with certain self-reports, but we know nothing about the definite cause of these responses, such as the reality of a divine causal source.
Given that all brain imaging can show us is that the brain is involved in experiences or acts of faith, would it be prudent to simply admit defeat and abandon what seemed a promising avenue for exploration? The findings of Uffe Schjødt and his team in early 2009 suggest the answer should be a confident ‘no’.
Schjødt[2] recorded images of the brains of 20 ‘devout’ Christians using fMRI scanning technology while they were performing two different tasks. The first of these tasks involved the subjects undertaking a period of improvised personal prayer to God, while being scanned. The results of this task matched patterns seen when humans communicate with each other, with increased activity in the prefrontal cortex, which evidence from other studies indicates that this area of the brain is the key to the theory of mind. The second task asked the subjects to make a request to Santa. During this task the prefrontal cortex appeared inactive which suggests that the candidates viewed Santa as fictitious.
What does this information actually teach us? That natural processes in the human brain have been found to correspond to faith does not tell us anything meaningful about God and certainly does not answer epistemological questions concerning whether one should believe in the reality of one’s experience. It simply reveals how people understand their faith; when they are talking to God, they believe they are talking to a real person.
Neurotheology is in it earliest days. Andrew Newberg’s view that brain imaging can show faith and religious experiences to be “biologically, observably and scientifically real” is, I would argue, premature. In reality, it is almost impossible to say that any experience or belief is “real”.
What we do know, is that experiences and acts of faith have a neural correlate which in some instances can tell us how the subject understands their experience. It may not seem much but it is certainly a start. The future could be far more revealing.
Matthew Lovat is an intern at Theos and has recently graduated with a degree in Theology and Religious Studies from Trinity College,
