Product Description

Do religious experiences come from God, or are they merely the random firing of neurons in the brain? Drawing on his own research with Carmelite nuns, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard shows that genuine, life-changing spiritual events can be documented. He offers compelling evidence that religious experiences have a nonmaterial origin, making a convincing case for what many in scientific fields are loath to consider—that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain.

Beauregard and O'Leary explore recent attempts to locate a "God gene" in some of us and claims that our brains are "hardwired" for religion—even the strange case of one neuroscientist who allegedly invented an electromagnetic "God helmet" that could produce a mystical experience in anyone who wore it. The authors argue that these attempts are misguided and narrow-minded, because they reduce spiritual experiences to material phenomena.

Many scientists ignore hard evidence that challenges their materialistic prejudice, clinging to the limited view that our experiences are explainable only by material causes, in the obstinate conviction that the physical world is the only reality. But scientific materialism is at a loss to explain irrefutable accounts of mind over matter, of intuition, willpower, and leaps of faith, of the "placebo effect" in medicine, of near-death experiences on the operating table, and of psychic premonitions of a loved one in crisis, to say nothing of the occasional sense of oneness with nature and mystical experiences in meditation or prayer. Traditional science explains away these and other occurrences as delusions or misunderstandings, but by exploring the latest neurological research on phenomena such as these, The Spiritual Brain gets to their real source.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #19335 in Books
• Published on: 2007-08-01
• Released on: 2007-09-04
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 384 pages

From Publishers Weekly
Following C.S. Lewis's dictum that to 'see through' all things is the same as not to see, neuroscientist Beauregard and journalist O'Leary mount a sweeping critique of a trend in the pop science media to explain away religious experience as a brain artifact, pathology or evolutionary quirk. While sympathizing with the attraction such neurotheology holds, the authors warn against the temptation to force the complex varieties of human spirituality into simplistic categories that they argue are conceptually crude, culturally biased and often empirically untested. In recently published research using Carmelite nuns as subjects, Beauregard's group at the University of Montreal found specific areas of brain activation associated with contemplative prayer. But these patterns are quite distinct from those associated with hallucinations, autosuggestion or states of intense emotional arousal, resembling instead how the brain processes real experiences. Insisting that we have never entertained the idea of proving the existence of God, the authors concede that the results of our work are assumed to be a strike either for or against God and that on the whole, we [don't] mind. Never shrinking from controversy, and sometimes deliberately provoking it, this book serves as a lively introduction to a field where neuroscience, philosophy, and secular/spiritual cultural wars are unavoidably intermingled. (Sept.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
*Starred Review* Neuroscientist Beauregard is no flighty New-Ager or Creationist but, he says, one of a minority of neuroscientists who don't adhere to strictly materialist interpretation of the human mind. He and his ilk believe that scientists who strive to explain the mind as an illusion created by the brain's chemical reactions ignore or vastly miscalculate the expanse of all that goes on in the universe. That is, it is too limiting to strictly confine the origin of all human thought to material or chemical interactions. In this complex tome, he describes the intricacy of his work and proposes that humans don't so much generate as transmit thoughts, and that by virtue of human ability to mentally interconnect with a higher consciousness, the actions of the mind become distinct and separate from, though observable by means of, the brain. He set out to prove his theory by studying a group of Carmelite nuns as they experienced God in prayer and meditation. Beauregard would be the first to note that, while his work doesn't ipso facto prove the existence of God, it does lend scientific credence to the existence of a higher or universal consciousness. Chavez, Donna

Jeffrey M. Schwartz, MD, Research Psychiatrist, UCLA, author of The Brain Lock and The Mind and the Brain
"A very important book, clearly explaining non-materialist neuroscience in simple terms appropriate for the lay reader."

Customer Reviews

Neuroscience meets...God!!
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"As we have seen throughout this book, materialist [materialism is a philosophy that holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is matter] neuroscientists and philosophers hold that mind, consciousness, and self are by-products of the brain's electrical and chemical processes, and that RSMEs [religious, spiritual, and/or mystical experiences] are `nothing but' brain states or delusions created by neural activity. Accordingly these scientists and philosophers believe that there is no spiritual source for RSMEs, that is, they think that the human brain creates these experiences and, in doing so, creates God...this book has been a refutation of their views from a number of angles...I think [or CONCLUDE] that the evidence supports the view that individuals that have RSMEs do in fact contact an objectively real 'force' that exists outside themselves."

The above comes from this book authored by "non-materialist" neuroscientist Mario Beauregard (the main author) and Christian journalist Denyse O'Leary. Also, the above quotation basically sums up the entire book. (Neuroscience is the field devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system.)

For those who have read the above quotation carefully, this book is really about mind. Historically, mind has been viewed in two ways:

(1) mind has been viewed as a metaphysical entity separate and apart from the mechanistic systems of the brain (the part of the central nervous system encased within the skull).
(2) it has been viewed as a biological metaphor representing the manifestation of the, still not understood, neurophysiologic processes of the brain.

The structure of this book (as can be deduced from the above quotation) views the mind as given in (1) above but with a religious twist. This view is favoured by vigorously refuting the materialistic or biologic view given in (2) above.

Unfortunately, errors abound in this book. Here are a few of my favourites:

(1) The "standard assumption" in current neuroscience is that "there really is no YOU in you at all, that consciousness, soul, spirit, and free will are merely illusions bolstered by folklore." This is untrue.
(2) The brain is a "quantum system." There is no evidence of this.
(3) We are told that the Hippocratic Oath contains the phrase "First, do no harm." It does not.
(4) This is my absolute favourite:

"The average neuron [or nerve cell], consisting of about 100,000 molecules...The brain is home to about 100 billion [neurons] and thus about [1 followed by 15 zeros] molecules. Each neuron gets about 10,000 or so [synaptic] connections from other cells in the brain."

There's something wrong here. Take sentences one and three. If you divide (100,000) molecules by (10,000) connections, you get (10) molecules making up each synaptic connection!! That's impossible!!! There's no way you could make up an adequate connection with such a small amount of material.

Take sentences one and two. Multiplying (100,000) molecules by the brain's (100 billion) neurons gives (1 followed by 16 zeros) molecules in the brain not (1 followed by 15 zeros) molecules. The author's are in error by a factor of 10!!

As you can see, the authors' numbers are suspect and they can't get the basic math in their own estimate right!!!!

This book is rife with anecdotal stories and inferential conclusions. There is actual minimal science and neuroscience presented.

There are also endless quotations from others, and some of these quotations appear to be taken out of context so as to bolster the authors' argument. After a while, these became a tedious chore to read. There is also a mistake in a key quotation by Albert Einstein:

The book has the quotation as:

"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical."

The last word should be "mysterious." This is an important distinction because "mystical" as used in this book implies "God power." Einstein did not believe in God.

Even though there is a glossary, many terms that are important to understand the main narrative do not appear in it.

The CONCLUSION of the book given in the quotation that begins this review can be restated as follows: the brain is a receiver for supernatural forces. The "evidence" for this seems to be that since science can't explain certain process of the brain adequately enough to satisfy the authors, then God is responsible for them. This is called "God in the Gaps."

Finally, the biggest problem I found concerns the book's subtitle: "A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul." The world "soul" is not defined in the book's glossary or in its main narrative. I've read this book thoroughly and am unclear as to what the "neuroscientist's case" for the soul's existence exactly is.

In conclusion, this is a strange book where neuroscience unconvincingly meets God.

(first published 2007; acknowledgements; introduction; 10 chapters; main narrative 295 pages; notes; glossary; bibliography; index)

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the peptide challenge
I've noticed that people have a very hard time understanding the following simple fact: Many of the words we use every day do not correspond in any meaningful way to scientific concepts. Here are a few examples: "soul", "free will", "consciousness", "spiritual", "mind". It's not that these things don't exist. It's just that when you try to define them in a way that makes them amenable to scientific study, you find that they simply wither away. Prolonged attempts to grapple with these concepts scientifically leads one into a thicket of meaningless jargon. A clear warning sign that you're on shaky ground is if you find yourself relying on words like "materialistic" or "supernatural". If you find that you need to rely on quantum mechanics to justify your position, consult a qualified physicist immediately.

Consider a less controversial example: The sky. Does the sky exist? We can recognize it when we see it, we can communicate the concept to each other, and communications of this nature are often quite meaningful. Some cultures throughout history have even chosen to worship the sky.

But yet no one studies the sky scientifically. There is no skyology. There are simply fields like astronomy, meterology, optics, etc. Few people doubt that if one learned everything about those fields, one would have a very good understanding of the sky, despite the fact that the sky has a great deal of emotional significance for many people.

So it is with the mind. So it is with the soul. So it is with the spirit. These things are studied routinely by people who study neurophysiology, brain anatomy, pharmacology, chemistry, physics, etc. If we understood everything about these subjects, we would understand everything about the mind. You can argue that it really seems like there's something to the mind that can't be captured by such mundane forces. A few centuries ago you would have said the same thing about thunder.

Beauregard and O'Leary say that this way of thinking is called "materialism", and that materialism is a problem for science. And to the extent that materialism is bad, non-materialism must be good, whatever it entails. But as at least one of them must know, science is a way of learning about things that can be measured. They seem to think that this definition introduces a philosophical bias against non-material explanations, but again this is just a case of expecting ill-defined words to correspond to reality. Try this: define a method for distinguishing between "material" and "non-material" causes. Better yet, try to define a method for distinguishing betwen "non-material" and "imaginary!" Actually, don't bother; it's not possible. All existing strategies boil down to an exclusion principle -- define all material forces and their interactions, and whatever's left has to be non-material. The first step in this strategy is called "science", and it's going to take a while. And until it's finished, we have no way of knowing if the second step is necessary.

But people really like the idea of non-material stuff (whatever the patterns of neural activity in their brains cause them to think that "non-material" means). So they do silly things. Mario Beauregard actually got a bunch of nuns to undergo fMRI scans while thinking about God. And in a second experiment he got the same nuns to think about intense non-Godly personal experiences while in the scanner. Not surprisingly the scans showed different patterns of brain activity (actually blood flow), indicating that thinking about God was different from not thinking about God, particularly in the brains of people who think about God all day. Beauregard suggested that the second experiment could be considered a control for the first, but the whole study was so poorly designed that dignifying any part of it with a word like "control" is really too much. Anyway, the paper was published in an obscure journal, and it would have been forgotten forever if not for the relentless hype associated with the religious angle. Unfortunately Beauregard seems to be largely responsible for much of the hype. Pandering in the popular press is bad enough, but using such a lame study as the basis for a book called the "Spiritual Brain" is just reprehensible.

Consider by way of example a study by Montague and colleagues, published a few years ago in the journal Neuron. The authors placed subjects in an fMRI scanner, and gave them either Coke or Pepsi. For all intents and purposes, Coke and Pepsi are chemically identical, and not surprisingly brain activity was similar when the subjects didn't know what they were drinking. However, different patterns of activity were seen if they were told that they were drinking one cola or the other. So thinking about Coke activates different brain regions than does thinking about Pepsi. Does this mean that the human brain is wired for Coke (or Pepsi)? Is there something more to the experience of soda than high fructose corn syrup and carbon dioxide? Ask a silly question, and you're going to get a silly answer.

An incomplete argument
While this manuscript is reasonably well researched, current, and well written, it portrays an incomplete debate inasmuch as it only seriously poses Materialists against Non-Materialist/theistic design advocates. The authors give a passing nod to non-materialists who are non-theistic, but their barely hidden agenda is clearly to move the reader into a very particular belief system.

Had they defined the issue properly at the outset, they would have stipulated the 4 propositions at its heart. There is:
1. No non-corporeal existence and no deity. Materialist.
2. Non-corporeal existence and a deity. Theistic non-materialist.
3. Non-corporeal existence and no deity. Non-materialist/non-theist.
4. A deity but no non-corporeal existence. Theistic/selective non-materialist.

The authors devote practically the entire book to a debate of propositions 1 and 2. They conveniently leave out the many thousands of experiences logged in IANDS (International Association for Near Death Studies) and other world wide organizations that strongly support proposition 3 through far more than just NDEs. And, while proposition 4 may be seen as a logical completion of the paradigm, it has indeed been held at times by cultures throughout the world.

Overall, it was an interesting read. However, one must wonder what percentage of readers have sensed that there was (perhaps purposely) "something missing".