The neuroscience of religion

By definition, science is concerned with natural phenomena that can be tested or detected in some way. Also by definition, religion, or more broadly supernatural spirituality, is concerned with supernatural phenomena that cannot be tested or measured.

There can be grey areas. When Einstein proposed the existence of gravity waves in 1916, there was no way to test or detect gravity waves until a large detector came online in 2016. Gravity waves were detected almost immediately and Einstein’s belief in gravity waves went from something akin to both science and spirituality to real science. The same can be said of the Higgs boson, an elementary particle in the Standard Model of particle physics. The Higgs particle was suspected beginning in the 1960’s but it was not detectable until a big atom smasher was built and went online and 2008 and the particle was detected in 2012.

Is the neuroscience of religion an oxymoron?: Since supernatural spirituality or religion is never detectable or testable, can there ever be science of any kind that’s directed to testing or detecting it? There’s two answers to that, no and yes. No because true supernatural spirituality, including all formal religions that hold belief in supernatural events will never be testable or detectable at least for the supernatural parts. Known laws of the universe, e.g., mathematics and entropy, help define the outer limits and contours of what’s knowable and what isn’t. What's outside the realm of the knowable is the realm of the supernatural.

On the other hand, all natural human phenomena are subject to analysis and understanding by science. From a pure science point of view, anything detectable that goes on in the human brain when a spiritual event is perceived to occur are subject to research, analysis and data interpretation. That’s no different than ongoing studies of all sorts of mental experiences.

The neurobiology of spiritual experience: It turns out that spiritual experiences are detectable. The results weren’t surprising. Researchers exposed devoutly religious people to several different religion-related experiences that were intended to elicit a spiritual response. The study participants were asked "Are you feeling the spirit?" Response choices ranged from "not feeling" to "very strongly feeling." At the same time, participants’ brains were scanned to determine areas of the brain that were active during various degrees of spiritual response.

Human brain during a spiritual experience

The brain scan data showed that spiritual experiences activated brain reward or pleasure circuits about the same way that love, sex, gambling, drugs and music do. In other words, responses to, or perceptions of, supernatural beliefs or experiences operate through the same or similar brain circuits that other pleasurable experiences trigger.

Questions: Since supernatural phenomena cannot be detected or tested, is brain scan data showing a more or less normal pleasure or happiness response real science or mere coincidence? If supernatural phenomena are real, why should they elicit any detectable biological response at all? Or, is it perfectly obvious to think that since humans are sentient biological beings, all spiritual experiences must operate through the biological mechanisms that all other sentience experiences operate through?

B&B orig: 12/4/16