TruthBook Religious News Blog

By Elena Garcia
Christian Post Reporter
Fri, Feb. 27 2009

Although most parents say they are trying to improve their parenting skills, few look to the Bible or church for guidance, a new study shows.

A majority of parents (60 percent) heavily rely on their own experiences growing up for parenting guidance but only one-fifth say they receive a lot of guidance from sacred text such as the Bible or Koran, the latest study by LifeWay Research found. Even fewer parents (15 percent) look to church as a source of guidance for parenting.

The vast majority (96 percent) agree they consistently try to be better parents but more than 6 in 10 completely ignore parenting seminars and over half don't care for books by religious parenting experts, according to the study.

The study also found that few (14 percent) say they are familiar with biblical teaching on parenting. Among Christian parents, those with evangelical beliefs are more familiar than Protestant parents on the Bible's parenting advice, 52 to 27 percent. Only 7 percent of Catholic parents are very familiar on what the Holy Book says about parenting.

"Christians are routinely neglecting biblical guidance and encouragement in their parenting today, relying instead on their own personal experience," McConnell commented.

When it comes to the home environment, around 7 in 10 parents describe it as supporting, positive, encouraging and active. However, an estimated 6 in 10 do not find their home environment peaceful, nearly 5 in 10 do not describe it as relaxed, and around 4 in 10 do not say it is joyful.

They study also showed that although parents spend time with their families on a daily basis, many do not engage in spiritual activities.

A modest majority of parents (57 percent) usually eat dinner together with their families everyday and 45 percent indicate they watch television together each day.

Prayer is a more common family activity than religious study, with 53 percent of parents indicating they pray together at least once monthly compared to 31 percent saying they hold religious devotionals or studies together at least monthly.

Over 80 percent of parents say they have an excellent family life but 30 percent rate their family's spiritual life as only fair or poor.

Overall, 92 percent of parents say they need encouragement but not many receive it from the Bible or church, the study showed.

Approximately 38 percent of parents who attend religious worship services weekly say they do not receive any encouragement from reading the Bible and 24 percent report not being encouraged from church.

Among Christian parents, Catholics (85 percent) are more likely than Protestants (43 percent) to not find encouragement in the Bible. Catholic parents (71 percent) are also more likely than Protestant parents (39 percent) to say church is not a source of encouragement.

Lifeway Research findings are based on a national survey conducted among 1,200 parents with children under 18 at home.

Labels: Bible, children, Elena Garcia, LifeWay Research, parenthood, religious experience

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Tuesday, September 30, 2008

Near-death experiences, guardian angel research projects connected?

Tuesday, September 30, 2008

by Steve Hammons

This month, news coverage of two research studies related to near-death experiences and belief in guardian angels provoked surprise, skepticism, and for some people, curiosity about transcendent and anomalous phenomena.

Are there cosmic connections between the two research project results?

The Human Consciousness Project at the University of Southampton in the UK began the biggest research study to date of near-death experiences (NDEs) among heart attack survivors who have been resuscitated.

The Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion also released results of a survey that found more than half of those polled believed they have been helped by a guardian angel during their lives.

There is an obvious link between NDEs and angels.

For those who suspect there may be some truth in both of these phenomena, the connections between them take only a small leap of faith, or even of scientific logic.

If, when we pass on, we go from this existence to some other place, then this afterlife or other dimension is probably associated with the dimension from which angels conduct their activities.

DIMENSIONS AND HEAVENLY WORMHOLES

Some physicists now tell us that the Universe may have many dimensions, including several we may not be able to easily perceive.

The Universe may be a "multi-verse" where layers or interfaces of different realities exist in ways that are both separate and connected.

People who report NDEs often describe going through a tunnel-like experience. This tunnel is often described as consisting of warm and beautiful light – a deeply loving and compassionate light.

In some cases, at the end of this tunnel, they may meet loved ones who had previously passed on. Or, they may encounter other beings.

Dr. Sam Parnia, head researcher of the University of Southampton project, was quoted in the UK newspaper The Telegraph as noting, "What people experience during this period of cardiac arrest provides a unique window of understanding into what we are all likely to experience during the dying process."

These NDE accounts seem to indicate a pathway from our daily reality to another dimension or another kind of reality.

One in five of those respondents identified themselves as not being religious.

Why do so many people have this belief? Wishful thinking? A psychological security blanket? Or, is it something more?

If it is true that they (we) do go to another dimension of reality, what kinds of activities are undertaken there? Are the daily lives of family members and friends back on Earth simply forgotten and left behind? Or, are missions and projects undertaken that have some important meaning?

CONSCIOUSNESS BEYOND DEATH

The NDE study at Southampton University, led by Dr. Parnia, is called the AWARE study, referring to "AWAreness during REsuscitation."

Parnia has done previous research on patient consciousness while experiencing clinical death.

The research will be conducted in the UK and the United States and will involve 25 hospitals. Researchers will look at 1,500 patients who had heart attacks that resulted in cessation of heartbeat and brain activity.

Parnia was quoted in The Telegraph newspaper as saying, "If you can demonstrate that consciousness continues after the brain switches off, it allows for the possibility that the consciousness is a separate entity."

The Telegraph article also quoted Parnia as explaining, "Contrary to popular perception, death is not a specific moment. It is a process that begins when the heart stops beating, the lungs stop working and the brain ceases functioning – a medical condition termed cardiac arrest, which from a biological viewpoint is synonymous with clinical death."

According to Parnia, "During a cardiac arrest, all three criteria of death are present. There then follows a period of time, which may last from a few seconds to an hour or more, in which emergency medical efforts may succeed in restarting the heart and reversing the dying process."

Some recent scientific studies reportedly have found that 10 percent to 20 percent of people experiencing clinical death also claim to have had consciousness and vivid, very interesting experiences during the period between death and resuscitation.

AN ENCHANTED WORLD

The Baylor survey included a wide range of religious topics, not just guardian angel encounters. Christopher Bader was the director of poll. The survey queried 1,700 people.

The response that generated the most interest, however, was the agreement by those polled with the following statement:

"I was protected from harm by a guardian angel."

Fifty-five percent of those surveyed agreed with this statement.

This general response was consistent across educational levels, geographic region and religious denominations.

Bader was quoted in TIME magazine as saying, "If you ask whether people believe in guardian angels, a lot of people will say, 'sure.' But this is different. It's experiential. It means that lots of Americans are having these lived supernatural experiences."

The number of people saying they believed they were protected by an angels was "the big shocker," Bader said.

The TIME article also quoted Randall Balmer, chairman of the religion department at Barnard College in New York. He said the Baylor survey reflects the fact that "Americans live in an enchanted world" and that "There is much broader uncharted range of religious experience among the populace than we expect."

According to an ABC News article on the Baylor poll, Rodney Stark, a professor of social sciences and co-director for studies of religion at Baylor, said, "While I knew there were a lot of people who had such [beliefs in angels], I wasn't prepared for the frequency of it."

NOTE TO READERS: For more information, please visit the Joint Recon Study Group site and have a look around.

Labels: AWARE, Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion, faith, guardian angels, Human Consciousness Project, near-death experience, religious experience, science, Steve Hammons

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Friday, September 19, 2008

Guardian Angels Are Here, Say Most Americans

By David Van Biema
Thursday, Sep. 18, 2008

More than half of all Americans believe they have been helped by a guardian angel in the course of their lives, according to a new poll by the Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion. In a poll of 1700 respondents, 55% answered affirmatively to the statement, "I was protected from harm by a guardian angel." The responses defied standard class and denominational assumptions about religious belief; the majority held up regardless of denomination, region or education — though the figure was a little lower (37%) among respondents earning more than $150,000 a year.
More Related

The guardian angel encounter figures were "the big shocker" in the report, says Christopher Bader, director of the Baylor survey that covered a range of religious issues, parts of which are being released Thursday in a book titled What Americans Really Believe. In the case of angels, however, the question is a little stronger than just belief. Says Bader, "If you ask whether people believe in guardian angels, a lot of people will say, 'sure.' But this is different. It's experiential. It means that lots of Americans are having these lived supernatural experiences."

What's interesting about the Baylor findings on guardian angel experiences is that they cross all boundaries. They have scriptural writ (in Psalm 91 and elsewhere). They are clearly experiential. And guardian angels are a prominent part of Catholic belief that happens to float freely outside of a sacrament. The cross-spectrum legitimacy of the notion of angelic interventions may free Americans to engage in the kind of folk faith that is part of almost any religious system but is not always officially acknowledged.

Randall Balmer, chairman of the religion department at New York's Barnard College, says that the Baylor angel figures are one in a periodic series of indications that "Americans live in an enchanted world," and engage in a kind of casual mysticism independent of established religious ritual, doctrine or theology. "There is," he says, a "much broader uncharted range of religious experience among the populace than we expect." Just possibly, Baylor has begun to chart it.

Labels: angels, Baylor University Institute for Studies of Religion, David Van Biema, faith, religious experience, supernatural

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Friday, May 16, 2008

“Neural Buddhism” as religion’s future

Written by Clint Rainey
May 14, 2008 14 Comments

In his column yesterday, The New York Times’s David Brooks, lately on a neuroanthropological kick, tackles the religious implications of modern neuroscience, saying its research portends disaster for orthodox believers—Christians, Jews, Muslims—although perhaps accommodating a generalized belief in some non-God supreme being.

“This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the form of militant atheism,” he writes. “Instead it will lead to what you might call neural Buddhism.” According to Brooks, neuroscience is moving the atheism-theism debate from culturally entrenched—thanks to the tireless militancy (and bestselling polemics) of antitheists like Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins and the other Four Horsemen—to irrelevant.

Because neuroscientific advances take what Christians call religious experiences and demystify them physiologically into, say, an increase in blood flow and synaptic activity in one’s prefrontal and parietal cortices, a worldview informed by modern neuroscience doesn’t have to be averse to God per se—just to a personal, miracle-working God like Christianity’s.

These recalibrated emphases on neuroscientific studies could shift the atheism-theism debate from believer and nonbeliever to Bible (or Quran) believer and Buddhist (or Wiccan, or Scientology) believer. That is, writes Mary Martin at Animal Person, cognitive scientists are “merely explaining that the feelings associated with god might not come from outside us,” and, in turn, helping to validate nontheistic religions.

Brooks maintains that, right now, “[i]n their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God.” But that “was the easy debate”: He predicts the real challenge will come “from people who feel the existence of the sacred”—i.e., again, like Buddhist nontheists—“but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits.”

Though Jewish, Brooks demurs from joining the hand-wringing, saying he’s “not qualified to take sides” even though he is watching the neuroscience science community “joining hands” with mysticism “in unexpected ways”—by which he presumably means “any at all.” The result, he argues, is a new science-based movement that emphasizes “self-transcendence” over “divine law or revelation.”

Orthodoxy will be under attack more than ever, as a defense is laid for neural Buddhism. “Orthodox believers,” he says, are going to have to defend particular doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies are true guides for behavior day to day. . . . We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects.”

As proof of where this path leads, Brooks cites a prescient Tom Wolfe essay from Forbes in 1996, written well ahead of the curve, lamenting neuroscience’s Nietzschean move to bury God and make science soulless, sending “modern man plunging headlong back into the primordial ooze”—the very move cheered by Hitchens and the anti-Expelled crowd, particularly Dawkins, who appears in the film.

Labels: David Brooks, God, neural Buddhism, neuroscience, religion, religious experience

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Monday, April 21, 2008

Discovery of the God Module Results in New Field of Science: Neurotheology

Saturday, April 19, 2008
by: Barbara L. Minton

(NaturalNews) During the concentration of prayer, the encompassing peace as we draw near death, a mystical revelation, or the sense that God is talking to us, we experience the most intense experiences of our lives. Since the beginning of time, people have imbued such experiences with religious significance. But in recent years, scientists have begun to explore this spiritual realm, asking their own questions about what goes on in our brains during these extraordinary events. They have been coming up with some fascinating answers that have given birth to a new field of brain science: neurotheology, the cognitive neuroscience of religious experience and spirituality.

Early Studies and Results

In a vanguard experiment on the physical sources of spiritual consciousness, Michael Persinger, Ph.D., professor of neuroscience and psychology at Laurentian University in Canada, isolated an area of neurons in the brain's temporal lobes that repeatedly fire bursts of electrical activity when one contemplates God or has feelings of spirituality. Attempting to try to stimulate these bursts, Persinger isolated an area near the front of these temporal lobes, the amygdala, an almond shaped organ that infuses events with intense emotion and a sense of meaningfulness.

He then passed a controlled electrical current through coils on the head of his 80 subjects, creating a magnetic field that mimicked the firing patterns of the neurons in the temporal lobes. This resulted in an induced spiritual experience. The subjects reported an "opiate-like effect with a substantial decrease in anxiety, a heightened sense of well-being" that gave them the sense of not being alone. This sense was described by some as a religious experience.

At the same time While Persinger conducted his experiments, Vilayanur Ramachandran, Ph.D., director of the Brain and Perception Laboratory at the University of California at San Diego, also tuned in to the cosmic consciousness. He announced that he had discovered the 'God Module' in the brain which could be responsible for man's evolutionary instinct to believe in religion.

Ramachandran and his team studied the brains of people with an unusual type of epilepsy that affects the brain's temporal lobes. The study compared epileptic patients with normal people and a group who said they were intensely religious. Electrical monitors on their skin, a standard test of activity in the brain's temporal lobes, showed that the epileptics and the deeply religious displayed a similar response when shown words invoking spiritual belief.

According to the Ramachandran led research team, the most intriguing explanation is that the seizures cause an over-stimulation of the nerves in a part of the brain dubbed the God module. "There may be dedicated neural machinery in the temporal lobes concerned with religion. This may have evolved to impose order and stability on society." The results indicate that whether a person believes in a religion or even in God may depend on how enhanced is this part of the brain's electrical circuitry.

The idea of a single God module is regarded by most scientists, including Ramachandran, as too simplistic. A Canadian researcher, Mario Beauregard, and his student used a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to study the brain activity of Carmelite nuns while they were reliving the experience of unio mystica, an intense sensation in which they report feeling the presence of God.

With fMRI imaging, changes in blood flow in the brain may be monitored in almost real time. This allows researchers to see which regions of the brain become more or less active in different conditions. Beauregard observed that the nuns' ecstatic state was associated with a distinct pattern of activity in several areas of the brain. The researchers concluded that "mystical experiences are mediated by several brain regions and systems".

Other researchers have probed the experiences of people with temporal lobe epilepsy with interesting results. In Switzerland, Olaf Blanke and his colleagues found that electric stimulation of specific brain regions can trigger repeated out-of-body experiences. Although these experiences are somewhat common, they were not rigorously studied until Blanke came upon a case of a woman he was treating for epilepsy.

A part of the woman's brain near the junction point of the temporal and parietal lobes was stimulated with an electrode, producing the experience. Every time that part of her brain was stimulated, she described the experience as floating above her own body and watching herself.

Brain Mechanisms and Religious Experience

Shahar Arzy, a colleague of Blanke's, purposed that the junction between the temporal and parietal lobes may have played a part in some of the pivotal events in world religions. As Arzy and co-authors pointed out, many of the world's religions feature revelation experiences that take place on mountains. Many non-religious, non-mystic mountaineers have also had similar experiences while in the mountains. Time spent at high altitudes may affect the brain, according to Arzy, and "facilitate the experience of a revelation".

Arzy suggests mechanisms that could be involved in this experience. High altitudes have a significantly reduced level of oxygen which can affect the temporo-parietal junction. Stays at high altitude, particularly in solitude, might lead to low resistance to stress and loss of inhibition.

History is full of charismatic religious figures. Could any of them have been epileptics? Were the visions of Bible characters like Moses or Saint Paul reflective of temporal lobe epilepsy? There is no way to know.

Researchers suggest that these issues may have played a part in one of the mystical phenomena of ancient times, the oracle of Delphi. George Papatheodorou, an emeritus professor of geology at Patras University, and his colleagues examined the narrow cave where the Delphic priestesses were believed to have delivered their messages. They found high levels of methane, ethanol and carbon dioxide in the cave's air. "The site lies on a fault where gases leak out. These gases cause an oxygen reduction that induces a mild hypnotic state that could well produce hallucinations," he told the Greek Kathimerini newspaper.

Brain Mechanisms and Near-Death Experiences

Neurophysiologist Kevin Nelson, a researcher at the University of Kentucky in Lexington, is exploring the powerful spiritual phenomena of the near-death experience. His results have led him to believe that these experiences may be dream-like states triggered by stress and a common sleep disorder known as sleep paralysis. When people with this condition begin to awake, part of their brain stays in the random eye movement (REM) phase of sleep. They experience inability to move, resulting in frightening hallucinations.

Nelson studied 55 people who experienced near-death phenomena in a range of circumstances, including heart attacks, traffic accidents, and fainting spells. He found that about 60 percent of them reported symptoms of sleep paralysis. In a matched group of 55 healthy volunteers with no near-death experiences, only 24 percent had symptoms of sleep paralysis. Nelson concluded that his findings "anticipate that under circumstances of peril, a near-death experience is more likely in those with previous REM intrusion".

Possible Conclusions

According to the Ramachandran team, it is not clear why such dedicated neural machinery for religion may have evolved. One possibility they saw was the encouragement of tribal loyalty or reinforcement of kinship ties and the stability of closely knit clans. These scientists emphasized that their findings in no way suggest that religion is simply a matter of brain chemistry. "These studies do not in any way negate the validity of the religious experience of God," the team cautioned. "They merely provide an explanation in terms of brain regions that may be involved."

As Ramachandran has said, "We are only starting to look at this. The exciting thing is that you can even begin to contemplate scientific experiments on the neural basis of religion and God."

Labels: brain, God, God Module, Michael Persinger, neurotheology, religious experience, spiritual neuroscience, Vilayanur Ramachandran

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Monday, July 23, 2007

Different Varieties of Experience

20 Jul, 2007
Mukul Sharma, TNN

Pioneering psychologist and philosopher, William James, delivered his Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh in 1901 and 1902 which became the basis for his highly influential and much quoted book, The Varieties of Religious Experience.

Being disdainful of organised religion, James felt that religious experience should be the primary topic in the study of religion, rather than its institutions.

By contrast, astronomer and science writer Carl Sagan delivered his Gifford Lectures in natural theology in 1985, which later formed the basis of the book The Varieties of Scientific Experience as a nod to William James. It’s a study in which he elaborated his views on divinity in the natural world.

In it Sagan wonders why the God portrayed by several religions of the world seems not to possess any knowledge about the universe beyond what was known at the time the scriptures were written. Why not a commandment, for instance, saying that thou shalt not exceed the speed of light?

After all if he, she or it created that limiting speed and knew that Einstein would discover it one day wouldn’t one expect a reference made to it perhaps at some point?

Interestingly, towards the end of the book Sagan actually answers the question himself when he says: “I think if we ever reach the point where we think we thoroughly understand who we are and where we came from, we will have failed.”

Although both men were coming from the same place — namely, scientific pragmatism (though not necessarily total unbelief) — James didn’t have such a deterministic viewpoint. For it was said commendably of Sagan that the scientist was more than religious as he had left the priests and mullahs behind. What kind of unbelief, or belief, is that?

James had an elegant answer to that one: inexperience. But he didn’t go overboard in either direction and managed to remain philosophically afloat. After experimenting with such consciousness altering substances as were available in his time he concluded that while the revelations of the mystic hold true, they hold true only for the mystic.

For others, they are certainly ideas to be considered, but can hold no claim to truth without personal experience of such. In his world view there was no requirement for any god that might exist to expound creation individually.

This is the reason that James’ view on the psychology of religion is still considered one of the defining moments of human understanding of what many consider the divine.

Labels: Carl Sagan, Gifford Lectures, God, Mukul Sharma, religion, religious experience, scientific experience, William James