Science and Religion Come Together

Nirvana is at long last attainable.  You’ll just have to first suffer a brain hemorrage, or become a Tibetan Buddhist monk or a Franciscan nun.

Neurotheology attempts to bridge the divide between science and religion.  Two books serve as building blocks in this bridge; Andrew Newberg’s, “Why God Won’t Go Away”, and Jill Bolte Taylor’s, “My Stroke of Insight”.

At age 37, Taylor, a brain scientist, almost died from a severe stroke.  Remarkably, as her left cerebral cortex was exploding, Taylor found refuge in the right side of her brain.  As Taylor describes it, she could retreat into the right side of her brain - to a peaceful, blissful place where the energy matter of her own body melded into the surrounding energy of the universe.  There was no me in this place and no past or future, just the present.  It was, Nirvana.   However, the damn left side of her brain kept interfering with this euphoria.  Taylor’s damaged left cerebral cortex pestered her with brain chatter.  What was happening?  Who should she call for help?  How was her life going to be forever altered?  What had to be the next step of her recovery? The thoughts coming from the left side of her brain were only concerned with her as an individual.  This part of her psyche forced her to separate from the rest of the universe and focus on her own life.  For 8 years Taylor struggled to recover.  Each day, she was confronted with staying within the “heaven” of her right brain, or leaving this safe, peaceful place, to enter the world of her left brain - a world that existed for the painful struggle to relearn how to speak, write, and think.  Only by forcing herself into her left brain was Taylor able to restore her place in the world.

Andrew Newberg studies the effects of religious experiences on the brain.   Using a SPECT (single photon emission computed tomography) camera, Newberg can follow injected radioactive particles in a person’s blood stream and analyze how their brain is functioning.  Newberg’s findings from studying the mystical experiences of Tibetan meditators and Franciscan nuns at prayer, show that in both cases there was unusual activity in the right rear part of the brain called the posterior superior parietal lobe.  This is the area of the brain associated with orienting us in relation to our surroundings.  The mystical, euphoric, out-of-body, feelings experienced by the meditators and nuns, closely resemble those of Taylor’s retreat into the right side of her brain.  But why would the spiritual experiences of Tibetan Buddhist meditators and Christian nuns, map out so similarly in their brains?  Could there truly be some scientific common ground for practitioners of the world’s religions?  Could peoples from around the world tolerate other diverse concepts of God, simply through an understanding that, at a bare minimum, we all experience God in similar ways?

Neurobiology may yet provide us with the missing link to finding God?  Dots are being connected.  Dostoevsky’s belief that he “touched God” during some of his eptileptic seizures is not so far from Carl Jung’s believe in the “collective unconscious”, or the mystical experiences of nuns and monks.  I for one suspect that science will bring us closer to God, not further away.

Albert Einstein

Hate pervades our culture.  Anne Coulter’s book, Guilty, is on the New York Times best seller list; Bill O’Reilly, Sean Hannity, and Glen Beck reap high viewership ratings on the Fox News Channel; Michelle Malkin is a popular blogger; Howard Stern and Rush Limbaugh do well on radio, and TMZ brings its mean-spirited tabloid journalism to television and the internet.  When tempted to confront, return in kind, or “sit and stew” over this hate, I turn to a quote by the 17th century Dutch philosopher, Baruch Spinoza.

I have made a ceaseless effort not to ridicule, not to bewail, not to scorn human actions, but to understand them.

Baruch Spinoza

Einstein, when asked if he believed in God, replied, “I believe in Spinoza’s God”.  But Spinoza was a rationalist whose philosophy planted him firmly in the camp of the atheists, so just who was the God of Spinoza and Einstein?

Spinoza took the view that “God is nature”.  Not that God was in everything, and everything was of God, like a pantheist might believe, but rather that the universe played out according to the laws of nature.  Spinoza’s God was not a “personal God”, and he did not believe in the supernatural aspects of religion.  To Spinoza, the “passions and emotions” that played out in Christianity and Judaism, did not provide an individual with true freedom.  Real freedom came from revealing and understanding the laws of nature, and removing the hopes and fears associated with being a slave to the belief in an omnipotent and judgmental God.  To Spinoza, knowledge not only unlocked the mysteries of the universe, but it served to guide one’s morality.  Virtue was something a person desired, not so much as a prerequisite for a blissful hereafter, but to ensure that life here on earth was enhanced through the mutual respect of men.

Baruch Spinoza

I love the way Spinoza argues against traditional religion while leaving the door open to the possibility that the Bible and religion do hold some truths.  While this diplomacy didn’t seem serve him very well during his lifetime, as he was excommunicated by his synagog and ostracized by his community, it does serve as an example as to how we can tolerate and learn from different opinions and actions.  I can embrace parts of Spinoza’s thinking without feeling like my entire belief system is under attack.

Unfortunately this tolerance of ideas is missing in much of  the world today.  Rather, ideas are treated as George W. Bush saw the larger world; “You are either with us, or against us”.  Ideas falling outside of our narrow belief systems are treated as something that must be destroyed.  Hate is the result.  We can choose to understand it like Spinoza, or we can let it seep into our psyche and allow it to diminish us.

Laws which prescribe what everyone must believe, and forbid men to say or write anything against this or that opinion, are often passed to gratify, or rather to appease the anger of those who cannot abide independent minds.

Baruch Spinoza