Much Of What We Call Spirituality Comes From Reduced Brain Function, Studies Show

Studies show that there is no distinct "God spot" in the brain, that reduced right brain function is responsible for much that we call spirituality, and that altruistic behavior is linked to that specific reduced brain function – which may account for why so many people who affiliate with a religion do not seem to embody the altruism and religiosity those religions call for in their daily lives.

This brain scan shows an injured right parietal lobe. People with similar injuries are less focused on self and more likely to be able to experience a spiritual connection with some type of higher power or with nature, determined by their pre-existing religious or spirituality tradition, scientists say.

The studies also show that certain activities – like Buddhist meditation, for example – can temporarily shut down the same areas of the brain that when damaged limit a person's sense of self. And that promotes altrusism and what we call spirituality:

Distinct “God Spot” in the Brain Does Not Exist, MU Researcher Says
Study shows religious participation and spirituality processed in different cerebral regions
Brad Fischer • MU News Release

COLUMBIA, Mo. – Scientists have speculated that the human brain features a “God spot,” one distinct area of the brain responsible for spirituality. Now, University of Missouri researchers have completed research that indicates spirituality is a complex phenomenon, and multiple areas of the brain are responsible for the many aspects of spiritual experiences. Based on a previously published study that indicated spiritual transcendence is associated with decreased right parietal lobe functioning, MU researchers replicated their findings. In addition, the researchers determined that other aspects of spiritual functioning are related to increased activity in the frontal lobe.

“We have found a neuropsychological basis for spirituality, but it’s not isolated to one specific area of the brain,” said Brick Johnstone, professor of health psychology in the School of Health Professions. “Spirituality is a much more dynamic concept that uses many parts of the brain. Certain parts of the brain play more predominant roles, but they all work together to facilitate individuals’ spiritual experiences.”

In the most recent study, Johnstone studied 20 people with traumatic brain injuries affecting the right parietal lobe, the area of the brain situated a few inches above the right ear. He surveyed participants on characteristics of spirituality, such as how close they felt to a higher power and if they felt their lives were part of a divine plan. He found that the participants with more significant injury to their right parietal lobe showed an increased feeling of closeness to a higher power.

“Neuropsychology researchers consistently have shown that impairment on the right side of the brain decreases one’s focus on the self,” Johnstone said. “Since our research shows that people with this impairment are more spiritual, this suggests spiritual experiences are associated with a decreased focus on the self. This is consistent with many religious texts that suggest people should concentrate on the well-being of others rather than on themselves.”

Johnstone says the right side of the brain is associated with self-orientation, whereas the left side is associated with how individuals relate to others. Although Johnstone studied people with brain injury, previous studies of Buddhist meditators and Franciscan nuns with normal brain function have shown that people can learn to minimize the functioning of the right side of their brains to increase their spiritual connections during meditation and prayer.

In addition, Johnstone measured the frequency of participants’ religious practices, such as how often they attended church or listened to religious programs. He measured activity in the frontal lobe and found a correlation between increased activity in this part of the brain and increased participation in religious practices.

“This finding indicates that spiritual experiences are likely associated with different parts of the brain,” Johnstone said.

The study, “Right parietal lobe ‘selflessness’ as the neuropsychological basis of spiritual transcendence,” was published in the International Journal of the Psychology of Religion.

Comments

[Adam Neira]

There have been many theories posited regarding the nature of consciousness and human spirituality -

(a) The reductionist secular says that it is a result of pure chance. "Chance" comes from old French which means to "fall from the sky" !!!

(b) Julian Jaynes in "The Evolution of Consciousness and the Breakdown of the Bi-Cameral Mind" suggest a similar theory.

(c) Terence McKenna in "Food of the G-ds" raises the idea of magic mushrooms being consumed on the plains of Africa in early hominid times. The eating of which boosted visual acuity and thus advantaged one group over the other.

(d) Arthur C. Clarke, 2001 – A Space Odyssey and the obelisk, and Daniken etc. suggested alien visitation as the catalyst.

This flawed research fits into the (a) and (b) theories above.

I studied all these issues for many years from 1987 to 1998. I am extremely confident of my conclusions on this subject reached in 2002. I wonder if these academics have read Maimonides's "Guide for the Perplexed" ? He explains spirituality and consciousness better than anyone.

[Shmarya]

Posted by: Adam Neira | April 23, 2012 at 02:30 PM

Yes, of course. It's always better to disregard peer reviewed scientific fact and instead follow the words of a madman.

You're off your meds. Go to your psychiatrist and get back on them.

[Adam Neira]

To Shmarya,

A simple question for you...

What is your opinion of the Thirteen Articles of Faith ?

Do you believe they are true or not ?

P.S. Are you calling Maimonides a madman ?

[Shmarya]

…Are you calling Maimonides a madman ?

Posted by: Adam Neira | April 23, 2012 at 02:47 PM

I'm calling you a madman.

[Dovid]

"He found that the participants with more significant injury to their right parietal lobe showed an increased feeling of closeness to a higher power."

I, on the other hand, am not a madman and I have studied such things including graduate level logic, philosophy of science and causality.

The statement above shows no causal chain whatsoever. It seems quite likely that people who have been injured in any way would have a stronger need to believe in a higher power and would have spiritual feelings. There is no mention of a control group with other sorts of injuries, to see whether there's any specific connection between spiritual feelings and an injury to that specific area of the brain.

What's in the article is like saying that it's been discovered that people who wear gold watches are less likely to be destitute than people who don't wear them. Wearing a gold watch is typically the effect of OTHER causal factors that ALSO cause a person not to be destitute. It's not the cause of not being destitute.

[ah-pee-chorus]

this is fascinating stuff. i've always maintained that religion brings about a reduction rather than increase in moral behavior and thinking. this looks to be a contributing factor. one of my kids will be studying neurobiology and its behavioral implications starting next year.

[Shmarya]

Posted by: Dovid | April 23, 2012 at 02:55 PM

Perhaps you should read the research before you attack.

Or would that be too taxing for you – especially because it is peer reviewed and certainly makes your attack look like the idiocy it surely is.

[Adam Neira]

To Shmarya,

Instead of resorting to casting aspersions can you please answer my question posed above.

[12345]

Unadultered poppy-cock! Bravo to the "insert your conclusion here" crowd! You will be remembered with the rest of the million or so crap research projects out there for your unfailing logical conclusions based on solid cause and effect evidence, not!
Dovid, it's a shame there aren't more people like you who can use simple logic to find fault with a totally flawed conclusion.
Of course we are all IDIOTS and TROLLS and should be RUNNING ALONG, of course our idiocy is "peer reviewed" and perhaps has been printed in a official scientific journal (which is proof of its 100 percent accuracy, of course)....
Hit te keys boys!

[SkepticalYid]

The article isn't claiming that all spirituality and transcendence is caused by brain damage or neurological deficiency. It is stating that neurological damage which reduces the sense of self leads to increased spirituality.

There's nothing to condemn in this article. After all, isn't that what religions is supposed to be about? Isn't it at least to some extent about abnegating the self in submission to a higher power?

Those of you who are trashing the study don't understand the scientific method at all.

[Mamzer HaKodesh]

If reduced brain function leads to increased kindness and caring, I'm okay with that.

[anuran]

The problem is that "spiritual" covers such a variety of things the word isn't terribly useful. Sufi zikr and Buddhist Mindfulness meditation have very divergent effects on the brain. Glossolalia is completely different as is the "born again" experience. Yogic withdrawal of the senses has little or nothing to do with any of the above.

English lacks an appropriate vocabulary to rigorously discuss these things. Instead they all get lumped together as "spiritual" or "religious".

[SkepticalYid]

It's pretty clear in the context of the article:
"..studies of Buddhist meditators and Franciscan nuns with normal brain function have shown that people can learn to minimize the functioning of the right side of their brains to increase their spiritual connections during meditation and prayer."

[Yochanan Lavie]

This is interesting in light of the previous thread about complicit psychiatrists drugging people at the behest of rebbes.

[SkepticalYid]

How so?

[Mike]

Interesting article, only thing I might add is that the term "spirituality" is slighly vague to me. Being "attached to a higher power" seems to be a little broad.

I don't believe, however, that the article was meant to be an attack on religion, rather that the increased activity in certain portions of the brain give one less sense of self. It's sad to me that I think the fact that the Haredim are guilty of this "decreased brain activity" not due to an attachment to G-d, but rather a detachment from everything else.

[Dovid]

Shmarya: "Perhaps you should read the research before you attack.

"Or would that be too taxing for you – especially because it is peer reviewed and certainly makes your attack look like the idiocy it surely is."

It's the job of the journalist to read that, and if there's something relevant that would make the claim logical, instead of obviously logically fallacious, they might consider mentioning it.

Sounds like you've read it Shmarya. was there a control along the lines I suggested?

[Yochanan Lavie]

Skeptical: Maybe the meds interfere with the brain patterns that cause the followers to go astray. Just speculating, not being a scientist and all.

[SkepticalYid]

Yochanan, more likely they just make life more bearable.

[Yochanan Lavie]

True.

[Yaakov]

Adam Neira:

I am wondering, does this:

(c) Terence McKenna in "Food of the G-ds"…

mean that you are a polytheist?

[Yaakov]

I don't have electronic access to this journal but what I gather from the article is that the reduction in parietal lobe activity is paired with an increase in other areas:

“Spirituality is a much more dynamic concept that uses many parts of the brain. Certain parts of the brain play more predominant roles, but they all work together to facilitate individuals’ spiritual experiences.”

It is also mentioned that people who meditate can reduce activity in that area without damage present. It seems that damage to that area has the side effect of increasing "spirituality" (which he does define, though I wish I could find the paper). So, it's not the cause of religiosity but because the selflessness is enhanced artificially by the damage, spiritual feelings result.

I have long held that God is an experiential, not a scientific thing. Though it is interesting, and I have no doubt that the brain mediates experience, it doesn't matter to me where in the physical domain that experience comes from.

Unfortunately, this is a very disturbing sort of thing for someone with an charedi hashkafa. It's something akin to finding out that the Masoretic text didn't come directly from Sinai.

[Shmarya]

Shmarya: "Perhaps you should read the research before you attack.

"Or would that be too taxing for you – especially because it is peer reviewed and certainly makes your attack look like the idiocy it surely is."

It's the job of the journalist to read that, and if there's something relevant that would make the claim logical, instead of obviously logically fallacious, they might consider mentioning it.

Sounds like you've read it Shmarya. was there a control along the lines I suggested?

Posted by: Dovid | April 23, 2012 at 04:46 PM

Please.

It's peer reviewed.

And you know damn well the studies that preceded it were, as well.

But it rocks your little world in a way you don't like, so you attack – but you don't read.

To put it in words you can grasp, it has hezkat kashrut.

If you want to take that away, you'll have to – gasp! – read it and attack it based on actual facts.

[SkepticalYid]

Why do you draw that conclusion from the article? Couldn't it be argued that God designed us in such a way that our transcendent experiences are mediated through our neurology? Would that necessarily conflict with Haredi beliefs?

[Yaakov]

SkepticalYid:

Was that question directed at me?

[Beth Frank-Backman]

One of the problems of journalistic coverage of research is that science journalists have a bad habit of taking narrow operational definitions and turning them into common language statements. That turns into sweeping claims that are well beyond the scope of the actual research.

[Dovid]

Shmarya, I'm usually supportive of your positions on most things. But I find the rude and nasty tone of your replies to me to be offensive and unnecessary and totally inappropriate.

This research in no way "rocks my little world" as you put it. I have no idea why you would say that or what you imagine my "little world" to be.

Just because something is peer reviewed doesn't mean shit, especially in the world of the "soft" "sciences" like psychology. I spent years looking at research (all of it peer-reviewed) where unwarranted conclusions and causal chains were fallaciously drawn from test results. That kind of stuff is everyday fodder for graduate students of logic and in philosophy of science the world over.

I have no idea what the research says (there's no link to it) and I was reacting to the claims made by the journalist (and you). Had you bothered to read what I wrote, you would see that.

I'll ask you again: Have you read it, and was there a control group with non-brain injuries?

[SkepticalYid]

Yaakov, yes it was.

[Dovid]

Beth, I suspect you are correct here. Shame that Shmarya's little world is not large enough to understand that, and he just parrots what the journalist wrote in this press release.

Yes, the original article is just a press release!

[SkepticalYid]

I'll ask you again: Have you read it, and was there a control group with non-brain injuries?

Posted by: Dovid | April 23, 2012 at 06:52 PM

Did you really read the article in full?
Of course there was a control group. The study doesn't link spirituality to brain damage anyway.

It clearly states that multiple areas of the brain are involved in a spiritual experience. It also states that fervent prayer among groups such and nuns and buddhist monks led to similar neurological findings.

[Dovid]

I read it several times. You say "of course there was a control group." I would hope so, but I'm asking what it was. Scientific research often uses control groups that are the wrong ones.

The question I'm asking is only one among many that could be asked. Questions, but no answers as far as I can see...

The irony here is that Shmarya is rudely accusing me of being the one trying to hold onto some set of religious beliefs in the face of scientific research. Which is so utterly ludicrous it's beyond belief. Does Shmarya have any idea whatseover of what I believe, or if I believe in anything, like God for example? Apparently he does not.

In fact you and Shmarya are treating the journalistic reportage of some piece of research as some sort of gospel truth. Which, quite frankly, is an idiotic position to hold.

[Yaakov]

SkepticalYid:

The reason that this is not acceptable from a charedi point-of-view is that it removes the magic from a God experience. God is perfect and pure, not something related to brains.

Of course, I don't have that approach but I know that even the idea of a "god center" in the brain infuriated my charedi friends, chal va-chomer they would abhor the idea something that can be associated with diminished functioning would be considered the "source of God".

Clearly that's not the point here are all, but just as many atheists foolishly jumped on the god center idea as the "source of God" the charedim adopted the opposite view: that such a thing can't be true.

Also, it is certainly the case that the Creator could use the brain as the medium of Godly experience, but that feels like denying the neshama. I have had many philosophical and epistemological with charedish/yeshivish folks and I was surprised to find they have a need to deny things that are not at all problematic logically.

[Beth Frank-Backman]

Shmarya,

Peer reviewed or not, that does not mean it is right. Academics debate articles all the time and disagree with them. I appreciate your dogged defense of research, but please don't turn a journal's review board into a new form of unquestionable religious authority.

My training (at an ivy league school) specifically taught me to tear research apart. We were NEVER told "its peer reviewed so don't question it".

Fully satisfactory statistics and controls are often missing from psychology studies, but they still sometimes get published if the lit review is good or the theory is interesting enough or if there is a hope that a better researcher (or better funded research budget) can do an improved more rigorous study.

Dovid deserves an actual answer to his question. Even if his question is irrelevant because of the research goal or experimental design, he still deserves an explanation of why the question is not relevant to this particular study.

No one learns to think critically by being slapped down when they ask a question.

[Beth Frank-Backman]

Journalist aside, this statement attributed to Johnstone strikes me as a huge overreach:

--- “We have found a neuropsychological basis for spirituality" ---

The problem here is that, as others have noted, "spirituality" is a very broad and amorphous concept. If he tries to narrow it to "feeling close to God" or even "selflessness" he's going to leave out a lot.

There are in fact some definitions of spirituality that are in direct conflict with spirituality= feelings of closeness to God. For example, the "dark night of the soul" in Christian mysticism or the Jewish notion of "na'aseh v'nishmah".

The "dark night of the soul" is a period in someone's spiritual life where God feels very distant and removed. Certain forms of Christian spirituality considers working through a period like this an essential stage in the development of spiritual maturity.

Or "na'aseh v'nishmah" implies that spirituality comes from doing not feeling. In Judaism Loving God is measured through our actions not our feelings. If feeling helps push action forward, great. But feeling isn't the goal.

There are also definitions of spirituality that conflict with the notion of abnegation of self. For example, what about the Jewish notion of "wrestling with God"? That's not about closeness or merging of self to God nor about emptying self to feel God. Rather it is a spirituality based on the notion that a human self can stand rightly in opposition to divinity for the purpose of bridging the gap between what the world ought to be and what the world is. (example: Abraham arguing with God).

Finally, a lot depends on the nature of "selflessness", especially for religions where spirituality is defined at least in part by ethical behavior. Psychology likes to talk about "healthy narcissism". Too little sense of self and too much sense of self can lead to behavior that is hurtful to others. Another way to say this, is "you can't love others as yourself, if you don't have any idea of what it means to love yourself".

[Jake]

Beth
I love your brains.

[Yochanan Lavie]

Yaakov, what do you think of Aldous Huxley's notion that God is imminent, not transcendent? I think our tradition says s/he's both.

[12345]

Dovid, Beth; your probably not going to receive any direct answer to your question/s. This is how fundamentalist work, they attack your context, attack your choice of words, attack what they think you are or are trying to defend but they never answer the core question directly- because they can't!

[Shmarya]

Please.

Even on a basic level, the multiple number of studies that show that people with a particular type of right brain injury (as opposed to other brain injuries) exhibit enhanced spirituality, and the replication of this in Buddhist monks after meditation makes Dovid's "point" moot.

You have an article citing accepted science and noting that science has been replicated.

Period.

[Proton Soup]

so... are atheists less altruistic than theists?

[Emanuel]

Shmarya, even at the "basic" level you know, or should know that this study is just that , a study, not written in stone that opens the opportunity for debate among academics and experts, not amateurs. It does not render Dovid's point moot at all, on the contrary raises a valid interrogatory.

Funny and interesting that you exhibit the same behavioral pattern. Once it says 'scientific" article with the obligatory "peer reviewed" fine print you automatically take it as if written in stone, no different than religious fanatics do with scripture.

I am sorry but your rather childish rant and behavior towards two well posted and written opinions from Dovid and Beth Frank tend to discredit your opeinion.

Chill out bro, we have two ears two listen twice. You show a total lack of tolerance with dissident thinking, even when such thinking is scientific as well. If you knew anything about statistics, bio-statistics and behavioral sciences, maybe, for just a second you would have listened to what Dovid and Beth said.

That said, the article is very interesting and I would love to see follow up results on the control study group and maybe with a higher sample, not just 20.

[Chicago Sam]

I have never cared much for the na'aseh v'nishma attitude, which gives rise to the kind of mechanical Judaism that is so ubiquitous and endemic of the OJ world. Nor do I think Maimonides was terribly fond that idea either.

Adam Niera--I liked your comments; I also read those books that you mentioned. The term "spirituality" needs to be more precisely defined; it's used to casually and most people haven't a clue what spirituality actually is. If my memory is correct, I think Jaynes attributes the expansion of consciousness with the development of literacy, which produced a rippling change in ancient Grecian society; once they read the myths, they began wondering, "So, this is the stuff we have uncritically accepted all these centuries?" Once the Torah was translated into Greek, our ancestors began asking similar questions.

(BTW, the Stoics were the first to read the Iliad as a series of spiritual metaphors--a distant precursor to the world of Midrash)

I think any concept of a Judaic spirituality (from the Latin, "spiritus") needs to be approached from the perspective of ruach. Once we define that term, I think "spirituality" will have a more precise meaning.

BTW, I do not think Adam is "mad." Everyone should hold fast to the strengths of one's convictions.

[Emanuel]

Ok, I found the abstract, anyone wants to fork the 36 bucks to read the entire study? Or prefer to donate the 36 bucks to Shmarya and Failedmessiah?

At the bottom you will see the issue I encountered when I tried to read the entire article.

Abstract

Objective: to replicate studies that suggest that a frontal-parietal circuit is related to spiritual-religious experiences, and specifically that a decreased focus on the self (i.e., selflessness), associated with decreased right parietal lobe (RPL) functioning, serves as the primary neuropsychological foundation for spiritual transcendence. Methods: Participants included 20 outpatients with brain injury referred for neuropsychological assessment. Outcome variables included measures of spirituality [Inspirit (Kass, Friedman, et al., 199129. Kass , J. D. , Friedman , R. , Lesserman , J. , Zuttermeister , P. C. and Benson , H. 1991 . Health outcomes and a new index of spiritual experience . Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. , 30 : 203 – 211 .
[CrossRef], [Web of Science ®], [CSA]
View all references); Brief Multidimensional Measure of Religiousness/Spirituality (BMMRS; Fetzer, 199920. Fetzer Institute & National Institute on Aging Working Group. 1999 . Multidimensional measurement of religiousness/spirituality for use in health research. Kalamazoo , MI : Fetzer Institute. .

View all references)] and neuropsychological abilities (i.e., bilateral parietal, temporal, and frontal lobes). Results: Consistent with previous research Pearson correlations indicated that decreased RPL functioning is significantly associated with increased spiritual transcendence as measured by the Inspirit (and BMMRS spirituality subscales to a lesser degree); and 2) increased frontal lobe functioning is significantly associated with more frequent religious practices. Conclusions: Spiritual transcendence (i.e., emotional connection with the numinous/mystical) is a specific spiritual dimension that appears to be primarily related to increased selflessness associated with decreased RPL functioning. Increased frontal lobe functioning also appears to be related to more frequent religious practices (and spiritual experiences to a lesser extent), although the specific neuropsychological process/mechanism remains uncertain.

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[Emanuel]

Oh, i forgot I got that reply from:

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10508619.2012.657524

[Beth Frank-Backman]

Interview with Johnstone giving a better understanding of how he sees his research:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/20/god-spot-in-brain-is-not-_n_1440518.html?ref=gps-soul .

--- The research does not make claims about spiritual truths but demonstrates the way that the brain allows for different kinds of spiritual experiences that Christians might name God, Buddhists it could be Nirvana, and for atheists it might be the feeling of being connected to the earth. On the other end of the spectrum, Professor Johnstone admits that for him it is the music of Led Zeppelin that helps him transcend himself: "When I put on my headphones and listen to "Stairway to Heaven" I just get lost." ---

One area I would like to see research in is therapeutic listening. Suppose you took a group of expert therapists whose clients rated them highly for "really listening". Good listening also requires a kind of self-emptying.

I strongly suspect that you would find similar brain patterns in the therapists after an extended period of deep listening.

Especially after his comment about Led Zepplin, I also wonder if we're talking here about the brain patterns associated with a certain kind of receptivity or capacity for self-emptying. It can be used to create an internal space for religious experience, to allow oneself to really get "into" music, or to create an internal space where you can welcome the world of another person inside yourself.

As for the brain injury patients, we know how they are similar to meditating monks, but I'd like to know more about how they are different. A monk clearly has the ability to turn this self-emptying on and off. Do the brain injury patients? What effect does it have on them if they can't?

[Beth Frank-Backman]

Hmmm... also is there a similarity in brain patterns when performers, athletes, or computer programmers are "in the zone"? Those also involve an element of selflessness.

[Eli, what me messiah?]

I've never really had much interest in the "how" of a belief in a divinity. It's obvious that a "god spot" has to exist in brain somewhere given the evidence of human culture going back millenia. More interesting to me is the "why" we are so easily deluded by a false sense of being in a divine presence, and the competitive advantage that holding such misinformed beliefs gives us, but we'll have to wait for Shmarya to post something from evolutionary biology to comment on that....
Still, this is pretty cool stuff, Shmarya. Who knows, maybe some of the haredi trolls on this site might devote some open-minded self-reflection to comment intelligently on this.
Oh, wait, forgot the part about not the yeshivas not teaching much or any science.
Nevermind...

[Yaakov]

Yochanan Lavie:

I am not sure i subscribe to that spectrum as meaningful in any general way. We some trepidation, since I believe it will be misinterpreted in certain quarters, here is a very abbreviated exposition on my basic approach in this area.

As I have said previously, I believe that God, in human terms, is experiential. To that end, we have no more chance of "explaining" God than we do of explaining human experience from the outside.

That our experience, or the world and our own existence, is an emergent result of physics, seems to me self evident. There are many suggestive things we all know concerning the effect of manipulating the physical that lead me to that conclusion. But, does that mean we, in the sense of what we would call I are therefore "physical"? I don't see that as necessary, and , in fact, I think it is militated against by the evidence I know of.

I take an epistemologically solipsistic approach to this. Some time ago I abandoned a Materialist view as uncalled for. I think it is a neo-Platonist reflexive distortion. However, in doing this, I have no reason whatever to ignore or deny any valid scientific findings. I believe that what we "are", in exploring our inner experience, is mediated by the material. This doesn't make any difference, however, to our experience. Ignorance and knowledge of scientific finding are equally useful in the search for that meaning of I.

So, to answer your question, I think that God, because that word means something experiential, is, in some very important sense psychological. (Note that this does not mean God is an error, trivial, or "explained" in any way!) I think this psychological "reality" is the source of shvi'im punim l'Torah, and that it goes even further than that in diversity. But, in light of your question, that would be the imminent God.

The problem with this label, for me, is can lead to the confusion that God is somehow material. I don't believe this at all. Since I don't believe that our psychology is material, rather emergent from the material, I don't believe that God is material, but further emergent from our psychology.

On the question of transcendence, I think that's impossible to talk about. I do believe that thought extends beyond the limits of speech, but, I can't talk about things that are in that domain. In fact, using the word "domain" is already infinitely incorrect.

Here's a Zen Koan from The Gateless Gate, with commentary from Mumon, that also fails to elucidate this problem:

Nansen said, "Mind is not the Buddha, reason is not the Way."

Mumon's comments:

Nansen let slip the family secrets. Yet there are very few who are grateful for his kindness.

Mumon's poem:

He opens his heart and expounds the whole secret.

[Yaakov]

Adam Neira:

I ran across this thread from May of last year. I hadn't read your comments there and so imagined that people were being hyperbolic when discussing you.

Having read them, I now understand they are being factual, and so I must apologize for approaching you in the way I did. Frankly, I think that your beliefs concerning yourself are literally crazy. I hope you figure this out for yourself. I won't bother you any more.

[Jeff]

Yaakov, not only is he literally psychotic, but as you noticed in that thread, he has a habit of threatening people who challenge his delusion - first with divine retribution, then directly.

[jancsibacsi]

Jeff -You are the best as is yaakov,that is what they know best threats and physical force that is how they got to be where they are just like thugs.

[Ynot]

Interesting article, if true, and I am not saying it is, it may help explain things like war, and how people in the modern day could continue to believe the medieval fairy tales of human divinity told by some religions(other than sheer ignorance). Paradoxically, it may also explain why we continue to read this website?

[ah-pee-chorus]

: Eli, what me messiah?-

More interesting to me is the "why" we are so easily deluded by a false sense of being in a divine presence, and the competitive advantage that holding such misinformed beliefs gives us,

it has been suggested and fairly widely accepted that human belief in a god stems from the evolutionarily advantageous quality of pattern-seeking. those that saw connections between color of green vegetation and water sources, or where certain animals are likely to be at various times of day or year were better able to sustain. in addition, there is a benefit to erring on the side of seeing more than actually exists. for instance, humans that saw a certain shaped shadow and thought it was a bear would be more likely to avoid being attacked and thus survive to pass on DNA -even if they were wrong 99 times out of 100- than a human who always assumed there was NO bear, despite that he would be right 99% of the time.
belief in god can be said to be a false-positive of our pattern-seeking which had evoltionary advantages.

[SkepticalYid]

Dovid , a control group would be uninjured. Not differently injured.

[SkepticalYid]

Here's an interview with the researcher. His goal was NOT to link brain damage to spirituality. His study was to determine if there was a neurological basis to the spiritual/ transcendent experience - IN ORDER TO VALIDATE THAT EXPERIENCE!

http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=brain-surgery-boosts-spiritual

[Eli, what me messiah?]

APC, I've read those arguments. But I don't think they are sufficient to explain the persistence of religious belief vs the option to shuck off the delusion and view the world through rational eyes only. Holding onto the delusion seems to offer a competitive advantage.

[Beth Frank-Backman]

Skeptical Yid: I got the sense that he was simply trying to figure out "how" for a set of human experiences from the Huffington Post article as well. An author who cited him also focused in on another component that has been very much downplayed: the role of culture and other factors in cognitively framing the subjective experience.

Not everyone who is has that experience assigns that feeling to God. He already noted that individual belief systems will make one person talk about a connection to nature and another talk about Nirvana.

If I'm right that even for a single person there can be more than one experience that has that brain wave pattern (mediation, intent listening, creative concentration), then matters like context also help us interpret or frame such situations.

[Beth Frank-Backman]

APC: The word "God" doesn't really have a single meaning, though nearly all ideas of "God" do have some sort of connection to the concept of pattern, or at least the broader notion of meaning.

How do you work out your theory to account for the full range of "God" concepts or theologies?

For example, "God" can mean an old man in the sky who can sometimes make things happen contrary to nature; Or "God" can be a first cause and nature is a sort of clock that ticks on its own via natural laws; for some people the world is a puppet, God is the puppeteer, and natural laws are strings God manipulates to make nature do God's bidding. Human beings in a similar way use technology to control the world. Each of these ideas relate to the notion of pattern in different ways, but do include God as a causitive actor within the system. But they do so with very different assumptions about how the world and creation connect and why. How do you explain all of this variety? Even for theologies that see "God" as an actor in the natural system, there isn't one way of conceiving the relationship.

But also it should be noted that not all "God" concepts see God as a cause.

We also have existentialists, Kantians, and various forms of platonist notions of God. In these theologies the relationship between the world and "God" or the mind of God is representative rather than causative.

Platonists of various sorts see the relationship of the world and the creator like a book and its author: a book is an idea in the head of the author. The words that make up that book are expressions of the idea but they are not precisely the same as the idea. Thus there are two kinds of patterns: patterns within the natural world (the book) and patterns in the mind of God (the author).

Existentiallists focus on what makes something into itself. Paul Tillich for example argues that God does not "exist" because for something to "exist" it must be bounded in someway and God is limitless. Rather "God" is the essence or ground of existance, i.e. whatever it is that makes existence be existence.

Kanatian notions of God focus on the fact that we actually have a word "God". A word implies a referent. Pre-Wittgenstein and logical positivism, philosophers understood that as proof that the thing existed or was an amalgum of things that exist: how else could the mind conceive it ? How else could people use the word among themselves and still understand each other?

Post-Wittgenstein words became handles that reflect a collection of personal and shared social experiences. We understand each other because there is overlap in the ideas and experiences each person associates with the word.

That basically makes the word "God" into a handle for a set of personal experiences, feelings, meanings. God in God own self may be none of these or may not even "be" at all. But the word "God" may still be a useful word if two people or a society feel it captures enough shared meaning and experience.

Historically speaking Judaism has never fixated on any one theology. It seems more interested in naming where God is and what God is related to than defining what or who God is.

Personally for me, my theology is very much tied to post-Wittgenstein notions of language. On a human level "God" is the word we use for everything that gives us reason for hope. We spent our lives finding and making our own the missed reasons for hope and getting rid of the false reasons for hope. Some reasons for hope we accept because our ancestors have lived through hell and still found them worthy reasons for hope. Some we accept with no reason because they give life purpose and meaning and nothing has contradicted them. Some come from our hard-won personal experience. Some just are. They sit in our souls and push us through each day, yet every day at the end of the day we aren't quite sure why.

As for what "God" really is, I think it is beyond the mind to conceive or know with certainty. That's not just a cop-out. Godel's incompleteness theorem means that there is no such thing as a system of thought that is completely provable. There will always be at least one assumption. We can strive for internal consistency within a system, but we can't ever say that any system of thought is the one and only provable truth.

I tend to agree with Tillich's observation that making God into a thing as part of a system bounds God and makes God something other than the Jewish notion of "One" with nothing beside to compare. But that means that God as God really is (rather than God as the collection of things we or our culture at this moment in our lives associate with the word "God") is beyond knowing in a logical philosophical sense since logic and language only lets us work within a system.

[Beth Frank-Backman]

Yaakov,

There are two main reasons why hope rather than personal religious experience is the core of my theology. First, after some 20+ years listening to people work through meaning and faith in their lives, I'm fairly convinced that the capacity for personal "religious experience" is biological and varies greatly from person to person. Some people don't have a mystical bone in their body. Some people can enter a meditative state at will. If God is for everyone and wants a relationship with everyone, it doesn't seem right that it would be dependent on something that is so variable.

Second, since my late teens I began to be disturbed by the huge gap between having religious experiences and the will to act and think coherently to make the world a better place. Whether we're talking born again/charismatic Christians, Hassidic Jews or new-age cults, personal religious experience seems to be morally neutral. It can add depth and meaning to a commitment of caring and love to the world at large. It can also lead to an insular and self-satisfied spirituality. It can lead to deep hope-filled independence from social norms and it can also lead to guru-ism. It can nuture the belief that the holiness of some individual is why you are having spiritual experiences or it can deepen a personal relationship where you believe the experiences came because God just thought you needed them and would benefit from them at this time in your life.

The need for hope is universal. As Viktor Frankl observed in his concentration camp memoirs, "Man's Search for Meaning", one literally can't live without it. Each person finds hope in their own way according to their own personality, so there isn't an issue of biological predisposition. Hope is also broad enough to include both social action to fix the world and also personal experience that motivates the individual to both self care and care of others. Because it includes both it is easier to have a conversation about whether and how personal hope and social hope ought to be connected.

[Yaakov]

Beth Frank-Backman:

My response to YL was on a rather narrow point of theology. Please don't take it to mean I have a one-dimensional view of religious experience.

In fact, I believe at the margins it has as many varieties as there are people, and innumerable possible gross manifestations—attractor basins—created and maintained by reflexive social context. So your focus on hope is entirely consonant with my approach, we have no disagreement on the centrality of a hope or hope-like mechanism. After all, on a purely rational basis, one would abandon efforts to "improve" the world as foolhardy or ignorant.

But, I think that it still comes back to an epistemic solipsism, and the recognition that the world we live in is literally "man made", that is, our recognition of patterns and meaning in the world isn't inherent in the world, rather it is a feature of the human mind.

There is a complex dance of mechanisms at work here and I don't think that any one of them is the most important. I think even things we see as critical are made so by things we consider trivial, and, if the trivia were changed the critical things would lose their power and new ones would arise.

I think we are actually in broad agreement.

[Yaakov]

Beth Frank-Backman::

I agree, the nebulous meaning of the word "God" is critically important. It is a label for a set of experiences and resulting ideas which defies direct explanation but which is also susceptible to social corruption. People are very vulnerable to suggestion about what "God" means because it is impossible to talk about directly.

The accept nonsense because it has some relationship to experience, and the shared mythology binds them to a community. It has genuine utility for them.

In the best case, people can talk to each other in a way that acts as "pointing" to their internal experience and reach agreement that way. This is always very abstract and symbolic. It is often in the form of art. Poetry is an excellent vehicle. Music can be used but requires more sophistication in the musical language than most people have.

When mythology intended to preserve and communicate these experiences becomes factual reporting, the confusion of fundamentalism takes over. What was intended to explain something that required analogy to grasp becomes something held up as historical and literal. Yet, within what is preserved of these traditions we can still find the original attempts at communicating the unspeakable and revealing the unseen.

[Beth Frank-Backman]

Yaakov: -- I think we are actually in broad agreement ---

Seems like it.

sollipsm, i.e. the only thing we can really know is the content of our own mind and that anything beyond it can't be known with certainty. Even if there are things that exist outside the mind such as nature or other people, all of our perceptions are mediated by and potentially transformed by the mind.

One of the huge frustrations I have with fundamentalism, both on the scientific side and on the religious side, is the great difficulty fundamentalism has with sollipsm. Most people leap from the claim "in the mind" to the claim "not there outside the mind" without realizing that "can't know" really really means "can't know".

Even when people leave religious belief (or should I say the use of religious language to describe their experiences?), they still make this fallacious leap.

Uncertainty is perhaps hard on the soul. We want things to be known. We mistakenly believe that hope comes from certainty rather than the capacity to live and act in the face of uncertainty.

[Yaakov]

Beth:

I would hasten to distinguish epistemic solipsism from metaphysical solipsism. The former being an acknowledgment that our experience is the hard limit of our knowledge and the latter being the assertion that all that exists is our experience.

As you mention, the metaphysical postion is the one latched on to by the fundamentalists and (usually unintentional) neo-Platonist conservatives who insist on things like, "words have meanings" by which they mean that the dictionary is authoritative much in the same way the charedim believe that the halachic decisions of their poskim create reality. They argue against it on the basis of there being an absolute reality about which they know.

The epistemic position is used by opponents of fundamentalism as a bludgeon to deny the validity of internal experience. They hold up scientifically useful evidence as the only valid type. They argue against it on the basis of there being an absolute reality about which science knows.

[Beth Frank-Backman]

I agree with your clarification that there are two very different kinds of difficulties. It is a very good point.

I'm not sure I'm following why you label one as metaphysical and one as epistemic?
Aren't they both epistemic in the sense that they reflect our beliefs about how we know what we know?

Perhaps it would be better to call one "metaphysical" or "Kantian" and the other "empiric" or "objectivist"?

What you are calling "metaphysical" I would say is a retreat to a pre logical postivist/Wittgenstinian approach to language. The thinking that words have meaning and refer to a "one true reality" is very much in line with Kant so perhaps that is why you are calling it "metaphysical"?

What you are calling "epistemic", goes back to a pre-Hume, pre-Kirkegardian understanding of empiracism.

Kirkegaard's "truth is subjectivity" argument raised questions about what we mean when we say "true". Empiricism is only useful for determining a limited range of the things we find useful or meaningful. Many of the things we find most meaningful in fact exist only in attitudes of the heart rather than observable facts.

But even for observable facts, Hume had already raised issues over the idea that observations don't just interpret themselves (cf. his discussions of causal inference). Kant's argument that all reality is mediated by the mind was the final nail in the coffin of pure empiracism.

Either way external-to-self empirical knowledge = whole of "truth" is a very hard argument to make for anyone that has given the questions raised by Hume, Kant, or Kierkegaard serious consideration.

[Yaakov]

Beth:

The first is "epistemic" because it is only concerned about what we can know. The second is "metaphysical" because it makes the leap to saying that what we can know is all there actually is.

On the pairing of Wittgenstein with the Vienna Circle:

While he certainly attended the meetings, Wittgenstein was in opposition to the Logical Positivists and his lectures to them were an effort to point out their error, until he gave up.

When Gödel revealed his secret proof of incompleteness, the Vienna Circle's programme was devastated but Wittgenstein was on an orthogonal path and remained untouched.

Wittgenstein is, minus the Vienna Circle, a good figurehead for epistemic solipsism and the rôle of language in it. It was an advance from the neo-Platonist quagmire but few outside the philosophical world understood how to follow. In the popular mind, Plato still holds sway, even when they've never read a word of his work.

[Beth Frank-Backman]

Ah. Ok. I was conflating epistemic solipsism with the word "solipsism".

I actually thought you were saying something different: explaining two different difficulties people have with epistemic solipsism.

Re: Wittgenstein and the Vienna school.

Good point.

I think my point was a bit muddled. Wittgenstein and Logical Positivists both forced a shift away from Kantian based neo-orthodox theology, but for different reasons.

Wittgenstein's impact came through the way he deconstructed language. For example, consider Borowitz's "Renewing the Covenant" where he uses Wittgenstien's approach to language and the post-modernist critique of Kant to ditch Hermann Cohen's Kantian based universalism and reassert an argument for Jewish particularism.

However, the logical positivists influence really had nothing to do with language. In fact as you point out their approach to language is quite different than Wittgensteins. Like Kant, the way LP defined words actually was totally _bound_ to the tight association between a word and its referent. Their "verification principle" implied that a word wasn't meaningful unless the referent of a word was an empirical observation, i.e. Since I can't touch, taste, smell, hear, or physically feel it, why should I care what it refers to? Any metaphysical or subjective referent was declared by fiat to be "meaningless".

Existential theology may have its roots in Kirkegaard, but I think its flowering in the mid 20th century is in large measure a reaction to the narrow way LP defined "meaningfulness" LP forced Jewish theologians and others to look long and hard at what we mean by "meaning".

Most neo-orthodox theologians just assumed that we all have the same idea of meaning and it never occurs to them to ask "why does anyone _care_ if this is true"? The answer is obvious to them: we've proved "God" and God said we should care.

That claim works for people within an orthodoxy but it is utterly useless to people outside of that community of belief. Existential theology looked for ways to understand meaning that could speak to anyone, not just people who shared the same orthodoxy.

Fundamentalits act like Wittgenstein and the logical positivists never happened.

Thus fundamentalists often offer "proofs" of God's existence that are perfectly meaningful to them but meaningless to everyone outside of their world. If someone from the outside tries to point this out, they keep insisting it is a matter of "faith" to see why this is meaningful or a matter of "will".

Thus people who don't share their meaning are either "faithless" or "bad" (lacking will) rather than simply understanding meaningfulness in a different way.

[Yaakov]

Beth:

Yes, this is a very good analysis. There is a species of reasoning error which is suffered by all groups who assert absolute reality. It involves a simple question begging argument but it is hidden from them because they believe they are stating an axiom.

For example, some atheists are absolutely convinced in the positive non-existence of God because they reason this way:

Science does not address anything which is not falsifiable.God is not falsifiable.
Therefore, science does not address God.

So far, all's well, but there is a funny leap next, which is, "So, as we can see, there is no evidence for God, and that means God doesn't exist."

The circular reasoning relies on the generally unspoken axiom that scientific is not a specification in "scientific truth" but a redundancy. There is no truth outside of science for them. So, if science can say nothing about something, that thing, perforce, does not exist. This is very much like the attitude of the LP, and not by chance.

As an aside, if confronted with this circular aspect, these same folks will often resort to Occam, which of course, is faulty on two counts: first that Occam's heuristic is intended for use in the same domain science operates in, and second because Occam depends on things taking the likely course, it is a statistical comment.

This same circularity is what makes religious fundamentalists reason straight off the edge of reality. They imagine that the self-evident truths, the axioms, have more power than the logical inferences that are made from them, even though the latter are proven and the former are merely asserted.

Everything one says to a fundamentalist is tested against the closed system they consider absolutely true, much like those who worship science. I distinguish scientists, who use the scientific method to uncover what truth it can, from Scientists who take an approach very much in the religious vein and accept dogmas which aren't really scientific at all.

[Yochanan Lavie]

My karma ran over your dogma.

[Yaakov]

Yochanan Lavie:

You can't hear my groan, but rest assured you elicited one.