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Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief Paperback – March 26, 2002
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In Why God Won’t Go Away, Newberg and d’Aquili document their pioneering explorations in the field of neurotheology, an emerging discipline dedicated to understanding the complex relationship between spirituality and the brain. Blending cutting-edge science with illuminating insights into the nature of consciousness and spirituality, theybridge faith and reason, mysticism and empirical data. The neurological basis of how the brain identifies the “real” is nothing short of miraculous. This fascinating, eye-opening book dares to explore both the miracle and the biology of our enduring relationship with God.
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Print length240 pages
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LanguageEnglish
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PublisherBallantine Books
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Publication dateMarch 26, 2002
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Dimensions5.5 x 0.5 x 8.2 inches
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ISBN-10034544034X
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ISBN-13978-0345440341
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How God Changes Your Brain: Breakthrough Findings from a Leading NeuroscientistAndrew Newberg M.D.Paperback
Editorial Reviews
Review
–HERBERT BENSON, M.D.,
President, Mind/Body Medical Institute and
Author of The Relaxation Response
“A THRILLING EXPLORATION . . . Newberg’s reverential attitude toward the great unknowns is reminiscent of Einstein’s.”
–LARRY DOSSEY, M.D.
Author of Reinventing Medicine and Healing Words
From the Inside Flap
In Why God Won?t Go Away, Newberg and d?Aquili document their pioneering explorations in the field of neurotheology, an emerging discipline dedicated to understanding the complex relationship between spirituality and the brain. Blending cutting-edge science with illuminating insights into the nature of consciousness and spirituality, theybridge faith and reason, mysticism and empirical data. The neurological basis of how the brain identifies the ?real? is nothing short of miraculous. This fascinating, eye-opening book dares to explore both the miracle and the biology of our enduring relationship with God.
From the Back Cover
In "Why God Won't Go Away, Newberg and d'Aquili document their pioneering explorations in the field of neurotheology, an emerging discipline dedicated to understanding the complex relationship between spirituality and the brain. Blending cutting-edge science with illuminating insights into the nature of consciousness and spirituality, they" bridge faith and reason, mysticism and empirical data. The neurological basis of how the brain identifies the "real" is nothing short of miraculous. This fascinating, eye-opening book dares to explore both the miracle and the biology of our enduring relationship with God.
About the Author
Eugene d'Aquili, M.D., Ph.D., was a clinical assistant professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania for twenty years. His numerous books include Biogenetic Structuralism; Brain, Symbol and Experience; and The Mystical Mind. Dr. d'Aquili died in August 1998, before the completion of this book.
Vince Rause is a freelance writer and journalist whose stories have appeared in the New York Times Magazine, the Philadelphia Inquirer, and many other publications. He is a regular contributor to the Discovery Channel Online.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
In a small, dark room at the lab of a large university hospital, a young man named Robert lights candles and a stick of jasmine incense; he then settles to the floor and folds his legs easily into the lotus position. A devout Buddhist and accomplished practitioner of Tibetan meditation, Robert is about to begin another meditative voyage inward. As always, his goal is to quiet the constant chatter of the conscious mind and lose himself in the deeper, simpler reality within. It’s a journey he’s made a thousand times before, but this time, as he drifts off into that inner spiritual reality—as the material world around him recedes like a fading dream—he remains tethered to the physical here and now by a length of common cotton twine.
One end of that twine lies in a loose coil at Robert’s side. The other end runs beneath a closed laboratory door and into an adjoining room, where I sit, beside my friend and longtime research partner Dr. Eugene d’Aquili, with the twine wrapped around my finger. Gene and I are waiting for Robert to tug on the twine, which will be our signal that his meditative state is approaching its transcendent peak. It is this peak moment of spiritual intensity that interests us.1
For years, Gene and I have been studying the relationship between religious experience and brain function, and we hope that by monitoring Robert’s brain activity at the most intense and mystical moments of his meditation, we might shed some light on the mysterious connection between human consciousness and the persistent and peculiarly human longing to connect with something larger than ourselves.
In earlier conversations, Robert has struggled to describe for us how he feels as his meditation progresses toward this spiritual peak. First, he says, his conscious mind quiets, allowing a deeper, simpler part of himself to emerge. Robert believes that this inner self is the truest part of who he is, the part that never changes. For Robert, this inner self is not a metaphor or an attitude; it is literal, constant, and real. It is what remains when worries, fears, desires, and all other preoccupations of the conscious mind are stripped away. He considers this inner self the very essence of his being. If pressed, he might even call it his soul.2
Whatever Robert calls this deeper consciousness, he claims that when it emerges during those moments of meditation when he is most completely absorbed in looking inward, he suddenly understands that his inner self is not an isolated entity, but that he is inextricably connected to all of creation. Yet when he tries to put this intensely personal insight into words, he finds himself falling back on familiar clichés that have been employed for centuries to express the elusive nature of spiritual experience. “There’s a sense of timelessness and infinity,” he might say. “It feels like I am part of everyone and everything in existence.”3
To the traditional scientific mind, of course, these terms are useless. Science concerns itself with that which can be weighed, counted, calculated, and measured—anything that can’t be verified by objective observation simply can’t be called scientific. Although individual scientists might be personally intrigued by Robert’s experience, as professionals they’d likely dismiss his comments as too personal and speculative to signify anything concrete in the physical world.4
Years of research, however, have led Gene and me to believe that experiences like Robert’s are real, and can be measured and verified by solid science.5 That’s exactly why I’m huddling, beside Gene, in this cramped examination room, holding kite string between my fingers: I’m waiting for Robert’s moment of mystical transcendence to arrive, because I intend to take its picture.6
We wait one hour, while Robert meditates. Then I feel a gentle jerk on the twine. This is my cue to inject a radioactive material into a long intravenous line that also runs into Robert’s room, and into a vein in his left arm. We wait a few moments more for Robert to end his meditation, then we whisk him off to a room in the hospital’s Nuclear Medicine Department, where a massive, state-of-the-art SPECT camera awaits. In moments, Robert is reclining on a metal table, the camera’s three large crystal heads orbiting his skull with a precise, robotic whir.
The SPECT camera (the acronym stands for single photon emission computed tomography) is a high-tech imaging tool that detects radioactive emissions.7 The SPECT camera scans inside Robert’s head by detecting the location of the radioactive tracer we injected when Robert tugged on the string. Because the tracer is carried by blood flow, and because this particular tracer locks almost immediately into brain cells and remains there for hours, the SPECT scans of Robert’s head will give us an accurate freeze-frame of blood flow patterns in Robert’s brain just moments after injection—at the high point of his meditative climax.
Increased blood flow to a given part of the brain correlates with heightened activity in that particular area, and vice versa.8 Since we have a good idea of the specific functions that are performed by various brain regions, we expect the SPECT images to tell us a lot
Figure 1.1: The top row of images shows the meditator’s brain at rest and indicates an even distribution of activity throughout the brain. (The top of the image is the front of the brain and part of the attention association area, or AAA, while the bottom of the image is part of the orientation association area, or OAA.) The bottom row of images shows the brain during meditation, in which the left orientation area (on your right) is markedly decreased compared to the right side. (The darker the area, the more activity; the lighter the area, the less activity.) The images are presented in a gray scale because this provides more contrast on the printed page. The images on a computer screen, however, are usually displayed in color.
about what Robert’s brain was doing during the peak moments of his meditation.
We aren’t disappointed. The finished scan images show unusual activity in a small lump of gray matter nestled in the top rear section of the brain (see Figure 1.1). The proper name of this highly specialized bundle of neurons is the posterior superior parietal lobe, but for the purposes of this book, Gene and I have dubbed it the orientation association area, or OAA.9
The primary job of the OAA is to orient the individual in physical space—it keeps track of which end is up, helps us judge angles and distances, and allows us to negotiate safely the dangerous physical landscape around us.10 To perform this crucial function, it must first generate a clear, consistent cognition of the physical limits of the self. In simple terms, it must draw a sharp distinction between the individual and everything else, to sort out the you from the infinite not-you that makes up the rest of the universe.
It may seem strange that the brain requires a specialized mechanism to keep tabs on this you/not-you dichotomy; from the vantage point of normal consciousness, the distinction seems ridiculously clear. But that’s only because the OAA does its job so seamlessly and so well. In fact, people who suffer injuries to the orientation area have great difficulty maneuvering in physical space. When they approach their beds, for example, their brains are so baffled by the constantly shifting calculus of angles, depths, and distances that the simple task of lying down becomes an impossible challenge. Without the orientation area’s help in keeping track of the body’s shifting coordinates, they cannot locate themselves in space mentally or physically, so they miss the bed entirely and fall to the floor; or they manage to get their body onto the mattress, but when they try to recline they can only huddle awkwardly against the wall.
In normal circumstances, however, the OAA helps create such a distinct, accurate sense of our physical orientation to the world that we hardly need to give the matter any thought at all. To do its job so well, the orientation area depends on a constant stream of nerve impulses from each of the body’s senses. The OAA sorts and processes these impulses virtually instantaneously during every moment of our lives. It manages a staggering workload at capacities and speeds that would stress the circuits of a dozen super computers.
So, not surprisingly, the baseline SPECT scans of Robert’s brain taken before his meditation, while he was in a normal state of mind, show many areas of Robert’s brain, including the orientation area, to be centers of furious neurological activity. This activity appears on the scans in vibrant bursts of brilliant reds and yellows.
The scans taken at the peak of Robert’s meditative state, however, show the orientation area to be bathed in dark blotches of cool greens and blues—colors that indicate a sharp reduction in activity levels.
This finding intrigued us. We know that the orientation area never rests, so what could account for this unusual drop in activity levels in this small section of the brain?
As we pondered the question, a fascinating possibility emerged: What if the orientation area was working as hard as ever, but the incoming flow of sensory information had somehow been blocked?11 That would explain the drop in brain activity in the region. More compellingly, it would also mean that the OAA had been temporarily “blinded,” deprived of the information it needed to do its job properly.
What would happen if the OAA had no information upon which to work? we wondered. Would it continue to search for the limits of the self? With no information flowing in from the senses, the OAA wouldn’t be able to find any boundaries. What would the brain make of that? Would the orientation area interpret its failure to find the borderline between the self and the outside world to mean that such a distinction doesn’t exist? In that case, the brain would have no choice but to perceive that the self is endless and intimately interwoven with everyone and everything the mind senses. And this perception would feel utterly and unquestionably real.
This is exactly how Robert and generations of Eastern mystics before him have described their peak meditative, spiritual, and mystical moments. In the words of the Hindu Upanishads
Product details
- Publisher : Ballantine Books; Reprint edition (March 26, 2002)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 240 pages
- ISBN-10 : 034544034X
- ISBN-13 : 978-0345440341
- Item Weight : 8.2 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.5 x 8.2 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #398,977 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #159 in Psychology & Religion
- #281 in Medical Neuropsychology
- #544 in Popular Neuropsychology
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About the authors
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Andrew B. Newberg, M.D. is currently the Director of Research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Philadelphia. He is also a Professor in the Departments of Emergency Medicine and Radiology at Thomas Jefferson University. He graduated from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in 1993. He did his training in Internal Medicine at the Graduate Hospital in Philadelphia, serving as Chief Resident in his final year. Following his internal medicine training, he completed a Fellowship in Nuclear Medicine in the Division of Nuclear Medicine, Department of Radiology, at the University of Pennsylvania. He is Board Certified in Internal Medicine and Nuclear Medicine.
He has actively pursued a number of neuroimaging research projects which have included the study of aging and dementia, epilepsy, and other neurological and psychiatric disorders. Dr. Newberg has been particularly involved in the study of mystical and religious experiences as well as the more general mind/body relationship in both the clinical and research aspects of his career. His research also includes understanding the physiological correlates of acupuncture therapy, meditation, and other types of alternative therapies. He has taught medical students, undergraduate and graduate students, as well as medical residents about stress management, spirituality and health, and the neurophysiology of religious experience. He has published numerous articles and chapters on brain function, brain imaging, and the study of religious and mystical experiences. He is the co-author of the best selling books entitled, “How God Changes Your Brain” (Ballantine) and, “Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief” (Ballantine). He is also a co-author of “Words Can Change Your Brain” (Hudson Street Press) and “Born to Believe: God, Science, and the Origin of Ordinary and Extraordinary Beliefs” (Free Press). He is also the author of “Principles of Neurotheology” (Ashgate) and “The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Belief” (Fortress Press) that both explore the relationship between neuroscience and spiritual experience. The latter book received the 2000 award for Outstanding Books in Theology and the Natural Sciences presented by the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences. He has been involved in the teaching of the physiological basis of various alternative medicine techniques including the importance of spirituality in medical practice. He has published over 250 scientific articles and chapters and his books have been translated into 16 languages. He has presented his work at scientific and religious meetings throughout the world and has appeared on Good Morning America, Nightline, CNN, Dr. Oz, ABC World News Tonight as well as in a number of media articles including Newsweek, Time, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Readers Digest.
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The book also details the long standing arguments about whether various deep religious experience is an expression of some kind of mental disorder(s), or a higher brain function useful for specific purposes. It notes for example that highly religious persons throughout the ages have often also been significant achievers. This appears to be imcompatible with the notion that they are 'mentally disordered'. The book asserts that for whatever reason 'altered brain states' occur, there was/is a significant evolutionary reason for them to have been selected in the first place. This is an important point;- altered brain states, including mystical/religious experience, probably had their origin in the struggle for existance, which was then utilised for other circumstances. The origin of myth-making and ritual in the human condition for example, is discussed in this way. There are also discussions on the importance of conflict, contradiction and resolution in religious ritual and myth, and their likely evolutionary origins.
Many of the books early assertions appear to be summations and ideas strung together from elsewhere, but the book in the second half becomes more controversial in asserting that the altered mental states or 'higher reality', as described variously by mystics, may in fact BE an alternative/higher reality, and not a cultural interpretation of unusual brain functioning. This is a bold assertion, which requires some weighty evidence. The evidence presented in this book however appears to rest mostly on shaky anecdotal support, "I experienced a highly significant event, therefore my interpretation of this event must also be correct". The authors suggest that various mystical/religious experience may imply the existance of an independant 'higher reality', which brain evolution has already cottoned onto. The authors seem to suggest that whilst most people who have some kind of religious experience do in fact misinterpret them, it is still possible that they are ultimately right-an independant and profound reality exists, independent of the evolution of the senses and the self. Whilst conceding the possibility, I personally need more evidence of this concept of 'God' to accept that this experience isn't just a fundamentally important ability of the brain, to give us survival, purpose and meaning, but not necassarily a connection to an external 'God' or 'reality', however you may want to define this 'reality'.
Ultimately there are two possibilities this book suggests to account for religious experience. 1) It is fundamentally a state of mind, selected by evolution and useful for survival in predominantly past environments 2) It is the evolution into a higher reality, something we are perhaps 'evolving into'. The jury is out for me on this one. I don't know whether as a scientist we are evolving into "religion", or out of it, but I do recognise its origins in the evolution of the brain. It seems clear to me, that evolution selected the altered mental states this book describes (and some of which I have experienced) for various individual/group survival purposes, which can then be used/modified for other purposes. Whatever is the case, soemthing strange is going on in this brain of ours.
I agreed with the books view that many of the simple things we do for example, as humans, are simply variations of the 'ritual' experience-such as taking a relaxing bath, or listening to rythmical music. These have been shown to stimulate areas of the brain in a similar way to relgious ritual and association. Interestingly, there also seems to be a link between various altered brain states/mystical/religious experience and the evolution of the orgasm. There are many similarities-they are associated with the same brain areas, and they both produce deeply profound and satisfying 'brain-body' experiences. The evolution of some religious experience may in fact be linked with a kind of schism in the sexual experience within the brain. It is an interesting idea.
There is also good balance in this book between recognising that 'religious experience' is not all for fuddy-duddies. It is real, and it has played a huge and benificial part in human development. It is asserted however, that it is often misunderstood. Rather than being a window to 'God', it may simply be a neuorological ability of the brain, to deal with difficult environments. It's apparently unusual social expression is easily misunderstood.
The book only briefly touches on the negative side of religious experience, and simply notes that any human activity can be perverted, or misused. It was not the purpose of this book to focus on the negative social aspects of religion, other than to perhaps note that it is possible much of this is possibly the incomplete mental expression of these mental mechanisms.
The title pretty much covers the content-'God' isn't going away so easily, primarily because we have a biological tendancy to religious experience. Science is only just beginning to learn of the social benefits of various religious states and mental associations. This book is definitely a step in the right direction. I don't think any scientist can call himself a lover of humanity who doesn't seek to at least examine the basis and the implications of the ideas presented in this book, with an open mind.
I'm impressed that any scientist would be willing to suggested physical evidence for a non-rational experience, but this is what they've done.
The book occasionally skirts the atheist's assumption that science can explain everything. I wish all those scientist who assert that God doesn't exist because we can't find him (with our limited sense based perceptual capacities) would take a hard look at the research referenced in this book.
Now I want even more research.
In the last few decades, advances in neuroscience have offered another challenge to religious belief. These advances have called into serious question the notion of free will and even that of personal identity. Further, many of the researchers in this field have claimed that religious feelings and visions are nothing other than neuronal activities in the brain. These researchers have not explained however the evolutionary advantages of these feelings, if any.
The authors of this book examine the evidence for the view that religious thought is purely neuronal, and the evidence that it can be given a purely naturalistic explanation. If religious belief or mysticism can be giving a purely biological grounding, this would be of significance to those who want to devote their lives to its practice. The authors' discussion is highly interesting, especially the first five chapters, where they discuss many of the latest results in neuroscience. The book is written for a general audience, and so no background in neuroscience is assumed. However, readers could appreciate the book more if they come to the book with some knowledge of the brain regions and neuronal processes, and familiarity with the experimental techniques used in the imaging of the brain.
One of the more interesting discussions in these initial chapters concerns the authors' notion of "cognitive operators", which represent the collective functions of different structures of the brain. As an example of a cognitive operator, they give the one that is responsible for solving mathematical problems. This mathematical cognitive operator thus represents all of the structures and functions of the brain that are responsible for arriving at the solution of these problems. The notion of a cognitive operator is thus a kind of coarse-grained representation of brain activity, as it does not make explicit reference to the activities of individual neurons. As the authors explain, cognitive operators shape thoughts and feelings, but are not themselves ideas. A cognitive operator could be viewed as somewhat similar to the concept of a `schema' that has been floated about recently in the literature on cognitive neuroscience. The authors discuss eight cognitive operators that they believe are most relevant to religious experience: the `holistic operator', which, as the name implies, enables one to view the world as a whole, and arises in the activity of the parietal lobe; the `reductionist operator', which allows the world to be dissected into its component parts; the `abstractive operator', which forms general concepts from the perception of individual facts, finds links between facts; the `quantitative operator' which allows the abstraction of quantity from percepts; the `causal operator', which allows the interpretation of events as sequences of causes and effects; the `binary operator', which allows space-time relationships to be reduced to simple pairs of opposites (up-down for example); the `existential operator', which gives a sense of existence to sensory information processed by the brain; the `emotional value operator', which assigns emotional responses to the processes of cognition and perception. The functioning of all of these operators, the authors assert, can be observed using brain imaging techniques, such as PET and fMRI.
The authors do not depart from the neuroscientific viewpoint that whatever a human experiences can be associated with activity in certain regions of the brain. Therefore if an individual is having a genuine experience with a deity, it will show up in brain activity. This opens up the possibility of doing controlled experiments that show what areas of the brain are active when certain individuals are having religious or mystical experiences.
Myth-making, ritual, and other activities associated with religion are not a cause of alarm for the authors. Many have taking these activities to be proof of the scientific inadequacy of religion, but they are very comfortable in using them as support for their belief that the brain is actually meant for communication with a deity. Indeed, religious ritual results in neurological effects that convert a religious belief into a religious feeling. This allows the actual experience of the presence of a deity, an experience that mystics have reported throughout the ages. Humans, in the view of the authors, are compelled to act out their myths due to the neurological processes of the brain. They also want to distinguish between mysticism and psychotic delusion, arguing in particular that hallucinations cannot provide the mind with an experience that is as "convincing" as a mystical one. Mystical experiences are rich and coherent, and are actually remembered in the same way as ordinary past events. Further, mystical spirituality beings as an act of free will, and results in what the authors refer to as `deafferentiation' in certain areas of the brain. This results in the "loss of self" that can accompany mystical experiences.
The authors' assertions are interesting, and they clearly believe that they have given evidence that experience of a deity is in fact real. One could just as easily argue that these brain activities are mere fantasies. The authors acknowledge this also.
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Beantwortet viele Fragen
Macht neue auf
Motiviert sich wiedereinmal mit Neuro Forschung zu beschäftigen . Gut geschrieben!
The subject Neurotheology and the Science of Belief may sound a little daunting but the subtitle 'Why God won't go away' is much more exciting and helps the reader understand the nature of belief and how we are 'hard wired' for God - unbeatable in its field!