TruthBook Religious News Blog

December 24, 2008 in Mind & Brain

A study in Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science finds that religious experience is associated with decreased activity in the brain's right parietal lobe. Cynthia Graber reports

[The following is an exact transcript of this podcast.] Please click on "exteranl link to access the entire podcast.

In America there’s a feeling of Christmas. But that’s not the only winter holiday going on. Jews are lighting Hanukkah candles, Muslims recently feasted on Eid al-Adha, and pagans celebrated the solstice. So it’s a good time for researchers to consider spirituality—from a scientific point of view.

One experience central to major religions around the world is that of transcendence, the idea of almost losing a sense of self to the feeling that there’s something bigger out there. Now scientists at the University of Missouri say they’ve located that experience in our brains. All the people studied, from Buddhist monks in meditation to Francescan nuns in prayer, experience this transcendence. And they all have decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain. That area has to do with senses such as orienting yourself in the space around you. The study was published in Zygon: Journal of Religion & Science.

Interestingly, people with injuries to the right parietal lobe report increased levels of spiritual experiences. The researchers are quick to say that this connection doesn’t minimize the role of religion, and that religious or spiritual experiences might decrease activity in that region and thus increase that special feeling of transcendence. Just in time for the holidays.

Labels: brain, Cynthia Graber, religion, science, spiritual experience, transcendence, Zygon

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Thursday, December 18, 2008

Selflessness Has Neuropsychological Connection

By: University of Missouri - Wed, 12/17/2008

All spiritual experiences are based in the brain. That statement is truer than ever before, according to a University of Missouri neuropsychologist. An MU study has data to support a neuropsychological model that proposes spiritual experiences associated with selflessness are related to decreased activity in the right parietal lobe of the brain. The study is one of the first to use individuals with traumatic brain injury to determine this connection. Researchers say the implication of this connection means people in many disciplines, including peace studies, health care or religion can learn different ways to attain selflessness, to experience transcendence, and to help themselves and others.

This study, along with other recent neuroradiological studies of Buddhist meditators and Francescan nuns, suggests that all individuals, regardless of cultural background or religion, experience the same neuropsychological functions during spiritual experiences, such as transcendence. Transcendence, feelings of universal unity and decreased sense of self, is a core tenet of all major religions. Meditation and prayer are the primary vehicles by which such spiritual transcendence is achieved.

“The brain functions in a certain way during spiritual experiences,” said Brick Johnstone, professor of health psychology in the MU School of Health Professions. “We studied people with brain injury and found that people with injuries to the right parietal lobe of the brain reported higher levels of spiritual experiences, such as transcendence.”

This link is important, Johnstone said, because it means selflessness can be learned by decreasing activity in that part of the brain. He suggests this can be done through conscious effort, such as meditation or prayer. People with these selfless spiritual experiences also are more psychologically healthy, especially if they have positive beliefs that there is a God or higher power who loves them, Johnstone said.

“This research also addresses questions regarding the impact of neurologic versus cultural factors on spiritual experience,” Johnstone said. “The ability to connect with things beyond the self, such as transcendent experiences, seems to occur for people who minimize right parietal functioning. This can be attained through cultural practices, such as intense meditation or prayer or because of a brain injury that impairs the functioning of the right parietal lobe. Either way, our study suggests that ‘selflessness’ is a neuropsychological foundation of spiritual experiences.”

The research was funded by the MU Center on Religion and the Professions. The study – “Support for a neuropsychological model of spirituality in persons with traumatic brain injury” – was published in the peer-reviewed journal Zygon.

“Our research focused on the personal experience of spiritual transcendence and does not in any way minimize the importance of religion or personal beliefs, nor does it suggest that spiritual experience are related only to neuropsychological activity in the brain,” Johnstone said. “It is important to note that individuals experience their God or higher power in many different ways, but that all people from all religions and beliefs appear to experience these connections in a similar way.”

Labels: brain, Brick Johnstone, neuroscience, selflessness, spiritual experience, spirituality, Zygon

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Friday, September 19, 2008

Survey results provide insight on faith

Sept. 18, 2008

By Sommer Ingram
Staff Writer,

More than 40 years ago, the first two major surveys of American beliefs and practices were published in American Piety. For the first time, Americans could examine the many different facets of religion and the impact on people's lives.

Now, a team of Baylor professors picks up where this survey left off.

Do Americans really believe in Santa Claus? Does God directly speak to people? Should the Bible be taken literally, word-for-word?

These, along with other in-depth questions relating to religion, belief in the supernatural, and the voice of God, comprised the new wave of the National Baylor Religion Survey on Americans' Beliefs and Practices.

Baylor scholars from the Institute for Studies of Religion have released the results from the follow-up to their 2005 landmark study on American religious attitudes.

The results, which are compiled of mailed questionnaires from fall 2007 collected by the Gallup Organization, represent a national sample of 1,648 English-speaking Americans aged 18 and older. The John M. Templeton Foundation provided funding.

The first wave of the study was conducted in 2005, and included questions that dealt with controversial books, such as the Da Vinci Code, whether Americans are truly losing their religion, and how often Americans pray.

The results of the most recent study were published in "What Americans Really Believe," written by Dr. Rodney Stark, Distinguished Professor of the social sciences and co-director of ISR.

The book will be available in stores Sept. 19.

Participants in the study had to identify what religious denomination they could most accurately identify themselves as, as well as the name of their current place of worship.

The questionnaire included questions about the strictness and structure of the church, and spiritual experiences.

The study found that 20 percent of the population has heard God speak to them, 16 percent believe they have received a miraculous physical healing, and 55 percent believe they have been protected from harm by a guardian angel.

Women, blacks and Republicans are more likely to have spiritual experiences.

The Baylor survey found that belief in traditional Christian values actually decreases the tendency to be superstitious, as measured by beliefs in the paranormal and occult. The religion survey was also the first to ever ask about a belief in Santa Claus.

"An argument out there says that these beliefs are the same as religion," Bader said. "They think that believing in UFOs is as crazy as believing in the divinity of Jesus. But we have been able to discount the fact that Christians will believe anything."

The researchers also assessed the attitudes of various churches to issues in the general culture.

Fifty-two percent of the population said their place of worship would forbid abortion, while 32 percent said their church would merely discourage it.

Only 44 percent of the population said their church would forbid homosexual behavior, and 38 percent of church members said their church would forbid premarital sex.

Despite the myth that the Atheist population is growing, the study found that the percentage of Atheists living in America hasn't changed from 4 percent of the population over the past 60 years.

Fifty-six percent of Americans who claim to be irreligious actually pray.

Megachurches, which are congregations comprised of more than 1,000 members, were also addressed in the study.

It is a widely-held belief that one must worship in a small congregation in order to have an intimate relationship with God, but the study shows that mega-church members actually display a higher level of personal commitment by attending services, tithing, and attending a Bible study group.

People in megachurches also participate in more outreach activities and witness to others more: 83 percent of the megachurch population had shared their faith with a friend within the past month, compared to 52 percent in small churches.

The team will continue their research until 2018 and will come out with new studies every other year. The gap between myths surrounding the religious attitudes of Americans and what Americans really believe is continuously shrinking as these Baylor professors persist in their research.

Labels: American Piety, National Baylor Religion Survey on Americans' Beliefs and Practices, Sommer Ingram, spiritual experience

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Monday, May 12, 2008

Agnostic feels a tug after Sunday in church

by Steve Lopez
May 11, 2008

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I'm coming up on 40 years of slogging through life without any religious affiliation, and for the most part, I have no regrets. Last Sunday, though, I was standing before a couple hundred members of All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena and found myself envious.

I had been asked to talk about my three-year friendship with a musician who slept on the streets of skid row when we first met.

Life with Mr. Nathaniel Ayers is opera, with great soaring arias and sudden crashes, I told the parishioners. I feel good about having found ways to help this man whose promising career ended with a breakdown 35 years ago. But at times, I worry that my good intentions have brought him more attention than he might have wished.

In describing the journey, the soul-searching and the rewards of giving, I used the words "spirituality" and "grace." As I did, I saw people nodding as if I belonged in that room with them.

But wait. I'm an agnostic, and quite content.

So why did I feel such a connection? Could my stubborn resistance to faith be slipping?

No way, I told myself after leaving the church. Religious fervor has done an awful lot of harm in the world, dividing people, sparking wars, producing an endless parade of charlatans and hustlers.

And just look at how religion is playing out in the presidential campaign, with the running battle over which candidate is linked to the worst and most hypocritical human being who claims to speak for God.

Is it Sen. John McCain, who sought the support of televangelist John Hagee? Hagee, you'll recall, referred to the Catholic Church as "the whore of Babylon" and said God whipped up Hurricane Katrina to punish New Orleans for sins that included "a homosexual parade."

Or is it Barack Obama, who recently had to distance himself from his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr.? Rev. Wright suggested in a sermon that the phrase "God bless America" should really be "God damn America."

He also offered congregants his theory that the government created the HIV virus to kill off blacks, and recently said that the Rev. Louis Farrakhan, who is seen by many as an anti-Semite, is one of recent history's leading voices.

I spoke about all of this with my wife, whose beliefs and non-beliefs are similar to mine. She mentioned that our daughter, just shy of 5, had asked a couple of questions lately about people who practice different faiths and what it all means.

I've always felt that what we believe in and how we live are the only forms of spiritual guidance we need to give our daughter. But maybe that's the lazy man talking -- the one who used to skip Catholic church on Sunday and watch ballgames on TV instead.

Maybe it wouldn't hurt, my wife and I agreed, if we were to show our daughter that our values are important enough to us to clear time and to celebrate and honor them in a ritualistic way.

I don't know that either of us is ready to make a decision about all of this, but I did go back to All Saints a few days after my appearance at the Rector's Forum to mull things over with the Rev. J. Edwin Bacon Jr.

I felt a bit of a tug, I confessed to Bacon, while speaking to his parishioners. Bacon, who missed my presentation but later watched it on video, said he sensed there was "a moment" in the room in which we all connected. I was speaking about giving, he said, which releases the divine in all of us.

"Martin Luther King is my north star," said Bacon, who grew up in Georgia. As a young man, he met King, whose work he calls a "prophetic vision, a blend of spirituality and justice, spirituality and peace."

In this week's Sunday sermon, he said, he would talk about how the Rev. Wright comes out of that same tradition of identifying injustice and demanding change.

"The role of the church is not to be the servant of the state but to be critical of the state, and that's where Jeremiah gets it right," Bacon said. "The role is to stand with those who have been marginalized and say to the state, 'You can do better.' "

But Wright went off course with some of his comments, and his ego didn't serve him well, Bacon said. It's one thing to question connections between U.S. foreign policy and the rise in terrorism, Bacon said, but another thing entirely to suggest that God should damn America.

Labels: All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena, atheism, church, Rev. J. Edwin Bacon Jr., spiritual experience, spirituality, Steve Lopez