Is God in Your Brain?

Researchers think they may have figured out how people have "religious feelings," but its more true that they are playing fast and loose with the facts

Larry Kirkpatrick. Daystar Academy. 5 May 2001

The New Theories

What would you say if someone approached you and asked whether you'd heard the latest scientific thinking on religion? What if they said that by watching what happens to the brain's blood-flow during prayer or meditation they theorized that religious sensations were produced when expected sensory input was "turned off" and that then the brain made up its own sensations on the fly? and these were of such a nature that they are interpreted as "religious" by people of the varied religions? that all were having the same experience but just filtering it through their own system of belief? that "our religious feelings [are] just a product of how the brain works"?

Such is exactly what some are saying today. According to author Bob Holmes, "experiments on the brain have led neuroscientists to suggest that the capacity for religion may somehow be hardwired into us." Holmes mentions a scientist who has just written a book suggesting that religious and mystical experiences are generated by the brain. (This theory is discussed at http://www.newscientist.com/features/features.jsp?id=ns22871 and at http://www.msnbc.com/news/566079.asp).

Just what is being said? Well, put concisely, the brain has several different regions that do different things. Key among these are the frontal lobe (attention), temporal lobes at the sides (thought to be linked to visions and voices), and parietal lobe at the top rear (orientation and association). By injecting radioactive dyes into the blood of those who were meditating and then taking scanned images of the brain, they discovered where blood-flow was centered during these mental processes. Where the most blood-flow was in evidence, there they think the most active regions of the brain are found, and give clues about what is happening.

For example, while one focuses their attention in prayer or meditation, the frontal lobe is very active, but the parietal lobe is largely inactive. This, says researchers, suggests that the perceived boundaries between ourselves and the rest of the universe would diminish and a person could experience a strong sense of oneness and unity with everything else.

The bottom line about most of this research? An increasing herd of scientists and skeptics are saying that it all proves that God is built-into our grey-matter, just "a trick the brain sometimes plays on the conscious self." Repeatedly, the current crop of articles and books speak of God or religious experiences being generated, originated, caused, created, etc., in the brain--that is, that as an actual, personal, self-existent, divine-Being independent of ourselves. God does not exist.

How might you and I respond to such ideas? Part of being a Christian is giving an answer for the hope that we have. What might we say in response to this theory that--while not saying so in so many words--suggests that God is nothing more than a figment of our imagination? Has science finally exposed God and religion for nothing more than a bitter set of fallacies that have dogged the race for thousands of years and kept everyone from having fun?

I hope you don't mind my taking a moment to outline some of the issues before we get to the Scriptures. This looks, on the surface, like potent stuff. But there is more to say. Much more.

What the authors or the individual scientists think or hold about God we can't be wholly sure. Nor is the substance of our disagreement with them, and in fact , with much they say we quite agree.

Down to Earth and No Problem

Seventh-day Adventists have a much more down to earth approach to matters such as this than do many Christians, for we have made the Bible our baseline for understanding what is what. Whereas popular Christianity incorporates vast gobs of human-composed traditions and syncretisms out of other belief-systems, we endeavor to cut-through that morass and derive our comprehension of spiritual matters from the Bible as largely unimpacted by the accretions of years as possible. We understand that God has sufficiently protected the text of the Bible that it remains an infallible authority.

For example, Adventists reject the teaching that man has an immortal soul, an immaterial or ethereal part of himself that is a separate "spirit" or "soul." We understand that the Bible teaches, not that God put a soul into man, but that man became a soul when God combined both His breath and the material substance from which the body is built up (Genesis 2:7). A living person is a soul. The teaching that people have immortal souls was incorporated into Christian thought in the fourth century after Christ, having originated out of the strange place of Greek myth and philosophy. Thus, while other Christians could be offended by science's attribution of the spiritual to the measurable, identifiable, rather unexciting and common day to day processes of the human brain, we remain unperturbed, for such would be what we expect.

If God is going to hook into human perception, veiled and limited by sin, where does He plug in? Into our brains of course. Where else? And if He does, what happens in a human brain? Blood-flow, etc., the whole pattern of normal biological functions in the brain are just what we would look for. There are no problems or mysteries here for us because of what has been measured there.

Key Premises

But let us consider still some of the ideas. Try to think of this in terms of a house.

Many things go into the building of a house. There is the lot, the piece of land upon which it is constructed. Why build it there? Then, at the bottom of the house you pour the foundation. The whole weight of the house must rest upon the foundation, so it should be placed on solid ground and then made strong. On the foundation are built the walls and the roof. They are supported by the foundation. Their purpose? To make the inside of the home livable, to protect from the elements. All these parts of a house have to be nailed or mortared together. How is it then for the theory we consider today?

Those who seek to assign the existence of God to a trick played upon us by the brain are not necessarily so unbiased as might be thought. Just as we, they have their starting points, their premises, their foundational planks in their platform of thinking. What are some of them?

Here are a few:

1. Antisupernaturalism. A key premise is that everything in the material world can be measured, explained, etc., without recourse to supernatural events. No miracles or divine interventions are permitted. The existence of a divine Being is ruled out a priori. Science then, as interpreter of the material world, takes the place of grand explainer and guide and savior to humankind.
2. Evolution. To the author of one of the articles at least, evolution is a given ("The limbic system is a part of the brain that dates from way back in our evolution.") That is, humans were not created by a Creator, but arose in (the thoroughly speculative) process of the non-living turning into living matter over long periods of time.
3. All human religious experiences are the similar. The varied religious ideas can all be accounted for as expressions of an experience common to humankind but interpreted differently by different persons because of their different cultural biases. That is, the spiritual experience of the Catholic is the same as of a Baptist is the same as of a new-ager is the same as a Muslim is the same as a bhuddist is the same as any unbeliever claiming a "spiritual" event, etc.
4. Found in the brain means originates in the brain. Some are saying that because we can measure some form of brain activity during so-called religious events we can conclude that they are internally generated (not representing real contact with an external, divine being).

It is also of interest to us to notice the nails holding the theories together. The following phrases and words were all culled from the two articles I reviewed; these modifiers so often tend to decorate them like so many polka-dots: words like, "it seems," "maybe," "sometimes," "can be," "perhaps," "may be," "could explain," "may explain why," "only tentative," "suspect," "suggests," "speculates," "might explain," "may somehow." When we hear these vast theories spun, we do well to watch for the weasel words, the wiggle words, the qualifiers and escape-hatches.

This might happen in the brain here and account for this, and that might happen in the brain there and account for that. Of such stout timbers are these theories built in some places.

Shrinking Our Knowledge of God

Why then the tissue of explanatory words and theories? Turn with me to Psalm 14:1. Listen:

"The fool hath said in his heart there is no God."

That is, the fool hath said in his brain there is no God. Over the centuries the seat of human consciousness was thought at first to be in the bowels, then later in the heart, and finally in the mind, the brain. In other words, in the innermost, distinctive, self-aware uniqueness of the person refusing to acknowledge God, arises the certainty that there is no God. And why would such a theory arise? Psalm 50:21 helps us. It says of the unbeliever, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such an one as thyself." In other words, to that person the Creator says, "you thought that God was completely as you are."

And we are finite and limited. In fact, the common way that many such think about religion is that we humans invented God, made Him up. Romans 1:19-23 says that in spite of God's knowableness, the skeptic thought God was no more than they felt themselves to be--fortuitously evolved animals in stuffed shirts. In their materialist mindset they thought God was no more than a figment of humanity's collective imagination; a trick the brain plays on its owner.

God can be known, and in fact is known in some meaningful respect by everyone. Yet He refuses to force us to believe. If we resist the evidences he has provided, we will be allowed to resist. If we insist on taking pleasure in what is not right, God will not necessarily intervene and smite us. But if we do not turn back to Him before He intervenes in the universe to eradicate sin from it, we will be consumed with sin in our attachment to it.

We Seek a Moral Vision

The articles reduce the religious experience to mystical events, sensations, moments of awe-filled revelation. Such experiences, it is said, are what draw people to church. That might be true for some, but this is to assign religion to a very narrow band of things. In our fallen state, we as worshipping beings, designed as worshipping beings, still are drawn to worship. But we worship idols of our own making. Religion is not a seeking for sensation. What people are after is the fulfillment of a built-in moral yearning. Although fallen and attracted to evil, still we have within ourselves a love and attraction for what is morally right. If we refuse those, we turn to other substitutes. But no drug-induced high, no thrilling roller-coaster ride at the amusement park, no special-effects laden movie, no illicit sexual experience, can effectively substitute the place of the real thing.

Solomon told the truth when he said "he that loveth silver shall not be satisfied with silver; nor he that loveth abundance with increase: this also is vanity" (Ecclesiastes 5:10). All the substitutes and spiritual Olestras will never fill the spiritual craving that our God has built into us. Hear Ellen White:

The same divine mind that is working upon the things of nature is speaking to the hearts of men and creating an inexpressible craving for something they have not. The things of the world cannot satisfy their longing. The Spirit of God is pleading with them to seek for those things that alone can give peace and rest--the grace of Christ, the joy of holiness" (Ellen G. White, Steps to Christ, p. 28).

The faculties are built in, and God is at work to connect with them. We seek not for the random sensory stimulation that is thought by researchers to be the essence of religion. We search for that which is more: we look for the city whose maker is God. Our vision is a moral one.

Epileptic Seizures Attributed to Paul? Come on

One article even goes so far as to suggest that religious conversion experiences are of the same quality as epileptic seizures. But a conversion may be a relatively quiet experience, and surely is something that God has been working on for some time before it comes to fruition. The human heart is darkened by sin, and unearthing its better desires is a careful work for even God.

Throughout these articles various poets and novelists's works are quoted, followed by the suggestion based on what they've described that they had these "religious" experiences or epilepsy. In another one of the "maybes," one author writes, "Other religious figures from the past who may have been epileptic include St. Paul, Joan of Arc, St. Theresa of Avila and Emmanuel Swedenborg, the 18th century founder of the New Jerusalem Church."

As in so much of this material, the speculative essence is here obvious. I can't speak to the experience of Theresa or Joan or Swedenborg, but I can read the writings of Paul. And there what do I find? No description of queer sensations, no emphasis upon visceral feeling apart from morality. Paul is quite down-to-earth. He tells us, yes, of a love of God poured out into our hearts (Romans 5:5), of a knowledge of God that passes understanding, of a life indwelt by the Spirit of God. But who of all the Bible writers is more lucid and rational than he? I see no evidence that his experience was that of an epileptic.

Nowhere in these articles am I reading of the ethical beauty of Christianity or the love expressed out into the world through the lives of believers down through the ages. Where do the new theories about God account for people acting morally when no ground for morality exists? An absolute right and an absolute wrong cannot exist apart from God's moral character. That's why in religions of the orient you have the yin adn the yang, balck and white equally opposing forces, right and wrong bult-into the fabric of the universe--and you can't have one without the other. We don't believe that. Yes, many tragic and murderous actions have been conducted under the auspices of what is supposed to have been the real thing but which was a false Christianity, and identified as such long before by means of Bible prophecy. God's universe does not require the existence of sin. In fact, it cannot exist for any long period of time in it.

Let's take one more moment on sensation. A fellow up in Canada named Michael Persinger has put together a helmet-like gadget that creates a rotating magnetic field around the brain and induces weird sensations in those who put it on. He calls these experiences "God moments." But that is no more such a moment than is a crack-induced high. What we have here is no more divine than a peyote chewing contest; it just has the novelty of being produced by a mad-scientist styled machine.

Experiences External To Ourselves Are Processed by the Brain

Surely it is admitted that experiences external to ourselves are processed by the brain. If you watch a bank robbery occur, your brain will do certain things. Alertness and attention will shift to a heightened state; emotional response will increase; there will be fear, excitement, perhaps other emotions. But remove yourself from the situation. Say you were wacthign it all happen on a monitor screen in a room somewhere where a bunch fo cameras at several banks show what is happening at each. Something would be happenin g far away from you, but still the chemicals and electricity and blood flowing about your brain will change to reflect the emergency.

But were you hooked up to a brain-scanning device and someone looking at the results later told you, "That didn't happen. It was all in your head," you would differ from them. Yes, the events in the brain happened in your head, but they were the response to something entirely outside of yourself. The thing is, if this can be true for a bank robbery, it can also be true of God. God can communictae to us from outside of ourselves, while the brain simply processes the event. Ther is no great problem or mystery here.

Some Hard Questions for the Unbeliever

Well, here are a few of the questions that I think render very dubious a solution that says God is in your brain and thats all it is. How can some of these be accounted for apart from the real existence of God.?

Question: So How Do You Account for Lives Rich in Moral Beauty?

If there is no God, and there is no morality, then how are the lives of various notable persons through history accounted for? In a morally-pruned understanding of the universe there can be no right and no wrong. Hitler is no better or worse than Ghandi or the most lovey heroes of Christianity or anything else. There can be no differentiation if there is no morality. Apart from a moral ground, why should anyone do or not do anything besides what they please? No explanation we know of can account for those who are changed by something external to themselves and live for the good of others. No explanation that is, but that there is a God who reaches out and helps His people change into that which they are not naturally endowed with.

Question: So How Do You Account for Bible Prophecy?

How do these varied yet in common experiences account for the fulfillment of Bible prophecy? How does evolution/anti-supernaturalist theory account for the phenomenon of conscience? To these questions no answers are offered.

Think or a moment of the fact of Bible prophecy. Included among the prophecies of the Bible are several time prophecies marked by specific beginnings and endings. Predicted centuries and even millennia before their fulfillment, how does the scientist account for these? How does he account for the decree of 457 B.C., the Messiah coming on schedule according to Daniel 9:24-27, and the arrival of the cleansing of the sanctuary at the end of the 2300 years of Daniel 8:14? How does he account for the 1260 years starting with the arrival of the little horn power in full force in 538 A.D. and ending with the deadly wound to the Papacy in 1798 A.D.? Much more might be said, but upon this surely we can agree: if religious experiences and sensations are merely random tricks played upon us by our brains, then why do the varied prophecies come together? Why does the Bible produced over 16 centuries and by over 40 human authors present a unified and harmonious message? To such questions there are no rational answers science can make.

Question: So How Do You Account for Conscience?

I mentioned conscience. Think of it: what can explain the universal sense people have of right and wrong? Now some people are more informed about what is right and what is wrong by additional revelation from beyond the material world, like the Bible. But why are actions like murder and theft and adultery almost universally understood to be "wrong"? How can there be a moral "right" or "wrong" if it is not grounded in the fact of how the universe is wired apart from humankind? Some have theorized that such morays are determined by group consent, by societal consensus. But such speculations in no way answer the problem of the existence of conscience. Again, to these questions this new "science" offers no compelling answers.

Conclusion

Science is the realm of the material, of the measurable. It rules out the moral, it cannot access God's creative events happening in ages past when it was not there to observe. It cannot mark a moment of new spiritual birth in the brain or induce it. It has changed our world and pulls a long train of successes, but enters this realm of the spiritual only as a pseudo-science built of the mortar of "maybes" and "could be's." We welcome the interest of those who wish to record and measure and quantify the spiritual; but we hasten to add a caution. Real Christianity is more than a sensation or an epileptic jolt. The experience of the inward-focusing eastern religionist and of the outward focusing western-religionist have little in common.

The house of this new theory is put together with many "maybe" nails, its founded on several a priori ideas that rule out His existence, its walls and roof are erected to protect man's substituted presence upon the throne of the universe. God said "Thou shalt have no other gods before Me," but some have built a naked little hut on the edge of the universe and propped a throne up in it and said man is the measure of all things, and speculated that God is just in our brains.

Because you can measure it, don't think you can bottle it. Don't think that the brain creates its own god, that God is in your brain. Your thirst is for the moral, not the ephemeral. "The fool hath said in his heart there is no God." You have correlated certain experience with certain brain activity. With this we quarrel not. Only be careful what you call it. Perhaps you've seen the wiring. God made man, He made the mind so that He could interconnect with it. Your findings are interesting but unsurprising. It's what we expected.

Fill your whole heart with the words of God. They are the living water, quenching your burning thirst. They are the living bread from heaven. Jesus declares, "Except ye eat the flesh of the Son of man, and drink His blood, ye have no life in you." And He explains Himself by saying, "The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life." John 6:53, 63. Our bodies are built up from what we eat and drink; and as in the natural economy, so in the spiritual economy: it is what we meditate upon that will give tone and strength to our spiritual nature. (Steps to Christ, p. 88).

The authors of the articles mentioned left open the possibility that GOd exists outside of our brains. I'm glad they did. To you and to them I reccomend the Giver of living water, the Definer of moral vision, the ground of all rightness. Let Him show you His government based upon givingness and unselfishness, not survival of the unfittest. There is more to the creation than meets the eye, and nothing in it that can quench the moral thirst more than God who really exists, and does so independently of us. May we cleave unto Him.