Recovering Evangelicals #44 – Neurobiology of spiritual experience – part 2
Having described the neurobiological mechanisms behind our relationships with other people, Dr. Smith then addressed our original question: “how do we humans relate to God?” Her answer: “in exactly the same way.”
Some might be surprised that I even had to ask. They might shrug their shoulders or flip their hands and say: “Of course we interact with God through our brains … how else do you think that happens?”
But accepting that explanation raises more than one problem.
First, many of those people are the same ones who talk about some day leaving the body behind and flying off to the blue yonder. For them, heaven is a celestial, spiritual place: they completely separate the body from the full experience of God. Can they have it both ways!?
Second, if activating those neurochemical pathways is part of the spiritual experience, then how do we distinguish that experience from “artificial” ones provoked by psychoactive drugs or extreme physiological states (mental and physical exhaustion; tantric sex; shamanic rituals), which also use the exact same neurobiological pathways?
Third, when one learns how to stimulate those same pathways in church by developing a practiced routine of hyperventilating, rocking and swiveling rhythmically, alternately tensing/relaxing, shaking, repeating phrases (my Pentecostal/charismatic experience) … or by finding a private, quiet, peaceful corner in which one meditates, reflects, reads, and prays (the more traditional approach) … is that a spiritual experience or a trained reflex leading to a cognitive state that they interpret as a religious experience?
What about claims of God speaking to people through dreams, which sleep physiologists describe as a very chaotic mental state not unlike that caused by psychedelic drugs?
I don’t think we’re finished trying to understand the spiritual experience.
As always, tell us what you think.
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