Cover
story Is
God out there beyond the neurons?
By RICH HEFFERN
NCR Staff
Br. Wayne Teasdale is a lay monk who
teaches at Catholic Theological Union in Chicago. His book The Mystical
Heart: Discovering a Universal Spirituality in the Worlds Religions
is quoted extensively in Newberg and dAquilis new book. With regard
to this research, Teasdale thinks that describing the fruits of prayer solely
in terms of unitive states, of feeling at one with everything, misses much of
its richness. Sometimes prayer is a life-changing experience of compassion and
of conversion, or even of Gods unknowableness; sometimes its a
visit by a Presence. Consciousness in prayer is incredibly creative, he told
NCR.
John Haught, professor of theology at Georgetown University and
director of the Center for the Study of Science and Religion, has followed the
research, too. Haught told NCR: We now realize how much our
religious and ethical behaviors are connected to brain processes. In many
ways we already knew this, he said, yet now scientists have located it more
precisely. This work makes us realize how intimately linked our most
precious expressions are to the operators in the brain, and how vulnerable,
too. Its another way to see how deeply incarnational our religion and
spirituality are. Its both humbling and bracing.
Newberg and dAquilis theories about evolutions
embrace of religion reveal how deeply connected we humans are with the natural
world, Haught said. Necessarily we are paying attention more and more to that
human relationship with the natural word. The old religious dualism that
split the divine from the material allowed us to ignore whats going on in
nature. This research helps link us with the story of life and the universe in
a much more intimate way.
Of course, Haught said, the ontological question remains: Is God
out there beyond the neurons? Science cant answer that now, but its
telling us this: Drawn by the intuition of a deeper reality that the brain
provides for us, we probably cannot help but be spiritual searchers. And
science can illumine our seeking.
Science writer Steven Jones quips: Few working scientists
have much sympathy for those who try to interpret nature in metaphysical terms.
For most wearers of white coats, philosophy is to science as pornography is to
sex: It is cheaper, easier, and some people, bafflingly, seem to prefer
it. Change the word philosophy to theology and you get the
current picture of the relationship between hard science and religion.
Like the religious experience continuum, however, scientists can
be arranged on a scale between hard-nosed skepticism and willingness to
consider the spiritual. At one extreme are those who think as Jones describes;
at the other, there are both fundamentalists and New Age types whose scientific
method seems to be: I want this to be true, so therefore it is. End of
discussion. Dont confuse me with facts.
In the middle are biologists like Andrew Newberg and Eugene
dAquili, physicists like Niels Bohr, Erwin Schrödinger or Albert
Einstein -- hard-nosed theorists rigorously faithful to the data and willing to
go wherever it leads, yet with a touch of wonder in their eye, who see the
living world as though turning a childs kaleidoscope.
For them, science and religion profoundly enhance each other.
Investigating the religious brain has opened a new path toward
understanding our relationship with the tremendous and spellbinding mystery
that is God. Theres surely more to come.
And our mystical minds will be there, watching and praying.
National Catholic Reporter, April 20,
2001
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