Can Neuroscience defeat Theism

What do you think?

It’s been a while since we’ve had a thread of this sort, so I thought I would invite you all to present evidence, arguments, or even speculate as to how we imagine this sort of science and understanding of the human mind has/will affect theism.

I start this thread because I percieve that theism,having been battered into submission on all other fronts, now only holds answers (assuming you think theism can answer anything at all) to 2 questions:

  1. How did the universe begin?
    and
  2. What are these feelings of awe, insight, revilation, interconnectedness, trancendance and morality that most of us share, what causes them, why do we have them?

While personally i think the first question is presuming too much and therefor dosn’t desurve an answer… The second question seems is being answered by neuroscience…

Assuming we have or will take away theistic answers by replacing them with scientific ones on that field… will people think “oh my amygdala was just stimulated” and not “I just felt god’s presence and love” when these events take place? might we think God stimulated our amygdala, and would that be philosophically defensible?

I would like to explore such questions here…

I hope this thread sees some action…

I’d like to answer this in two ways.

First, no, neuroscience cannot defeat theism, for obvious psychological reasons. As long as people fear death, I think they’ll always accept a worldview in which death isn’t the final frontier. As long as people lose loved ones, they will always accept a paradigm in which they will see those loved ones again, or enjoy the bliss they could never fully achieve on earth, etc. As long as people need a motivating factor, or an all powerful listening ear, I think a need for God will exist.

Secondly, the belief in God is based solely on experience, whether it be the experience of self, or the experience of others, or an amalgamation of the two. One might cite literary references, or history, or arguments of popularity or authority, but all of these originate with experience. I won’t say science will never answer the “why” portion of the question, but I don’t see how it’s possible. Yes, we might be able to reduce our experience to chemical reactions of the brain, but why do these chemical reactions occur? Do these chemical reactions allow us access to a different part of reality, a reality that cannot be observed by science, but only solely through subjective experience? Unless science can somehow answer such questions, I don’t see neuroscience having any influence on theism.

Neuroscience can force religious explainations to be more complex as it presents physical evidence against certain beliefs. It cannot however, respond to the question of first cause. It answers only questions of how, and not those of why. It is necessarily quantitative, and therefore is accompanied by all the problem that occur when you try and match quantity and qualia. Who knows man. I’ve leaned toward the idea that everything can be explained by neuroscience, but then I think about it and lean back toward the center.

Since the notion of a god can be added to a system without changing the system in question, I don’t see them as being related at all. Whether or not the Japanese Emperor is considered a god, for example, does not change the condition of his small intestine. If lightening is Zeus, it doesn’t matter whether it is electricity or not. The notion of a god deals with the hypostatic nature of a thing as opposed to its essence.

So let’s say that the neurological experiments that are able to stimulate the sensation of being in the presence of one’s own god are indeed correct (I buy them, but there is some debate as to the methodology employed). All that changes for a Christian is, “Ahhh, so that’s how I experience God’s presence!” Knowing how nerves and their respective signals relate to things like sight, touch, taste, and smell doesn’t invalidate the concept of sensations after all.

Scientists can demonstrate that some commonly found thing triggers the series of events in the brain that are qualitatively felt as presence of God. This won’t mean God and not this physical factor, or God through this physical factor didn’t ultimately cause this cause to effect us in such a way, but this resolve is a bit sillier to take up.

Is it helpful to say “my occipital lobe just got stimulated” instead of "The car in front of me has its brake lights on? Probably only if the speaker is part of a neuroscience experiment. The fact that every cognition can be associated with a electro-chemical event does not reduce cognition to electro-chemistry. That’s true of all cognitions not just “theistic” ones.

My point is similar Xunxian’s.

I understand the notion that you may inject God into any system without altering the system… but the question is, does that render it philosophically indefensible?

For example is the complexity of life is a testiment to God’s act of creation? or evolution? can it be both? where did god’s finger touch the world in this “both” scenario… what was the event he made take place that would not otherwise have taken place, which ultimately lead to complex life/revilation in the brain… ?

once apon a time it was defensible to believe god touched your soul directly… or via the holy spirit or whatnot… but given we know the amygdala is what needs touching… and that if we were to carve that perticular part of the amygdala out… god would be unable and unwilling to communicate with you? what does that entail? I mean if you were to regret the operation sometime in the future and truly be penatent? would god not forgive?

would the theist claim that it would make no difference to god? that he would communicate with you anyway? if so would they be willing to test that belief by having that operation as a show of faith?

and what if you truly never did have another such feeling of connectedness with the devine? does that prove god is not omnipotent? that he’s dosn’t care? that he blames you for having faith in his power to overcome this?

I see so many questions coming up… and i’m sure there are problems that might arise that I havn’t even thought of… hence this thread… I want people to think creativly here… the ramifications on theism.

It’s too easy to say “nothing”… it’s almost never “nothing”… all major scientific discoveries have had some theistic consequences… from the earths position around the sun to darwin to einstains general relativity… a solid theory of brain would surely shake the world of theism.

No.

Well said.

I’m sure we’ll be able to get to the bottom of things in the brain, which are associated with religious experience etc., but we all know that neuroscience has this gap: it doesn’t correspond with our experience. When you experience, say, “an unseen agent” (as they like to call gods and such), the neuroscience can tell us what’s going on at the biological level. But our own actual experience is different story: we don’t experience synapses firing etc.

I think it’s important to distinguish between our experience and scientifically measurable concept. Let’s take love for an example. To measure love - our experience of love - we should first come up with a definition of love, that is measurable. Not that easy (and even harder for religion, I think). And even if we succeeded, would our measurement correspond with our own experience of love? How about if we measuder my “love amount” while I’m writing this post. I’dont think about my girlfriend right now, so the measurement would probably say that “no, you don’t experience any love now”. But I’d say I do.

Apart from few religious people sometimes being offended by anthropologist and psychologist attempts to explain the phenomena they’re part of, no, I don’t see why neuroscience (or any other field releated to the study of religion) would even begin to defeat theism.

Neuroscience cannot defeat Theism. Theists can make birth wherever there is an unanswered question or an unexplored possibility. Even if humans learn Everything that is possible, we would still think of more questions. Human desire would see to that.

Determinism is compatible with Theism.

Imagine for a moment a situation where the neuroscientist isn’t poking you in the brain to produce these visions of god… but rather by tracing the connections from that region of the brain to other regions and identifying them to such a degree of accuracy that he can construct a sentance or a series of images or ask you to recall certain events or even touch certain areas of your body, specially designed for the workings of your brain, so as to provoke that region of your brain and make you have a religious experience… Was it God who made that “experience” happen or the scientist?

Let’s say we got to the point that through the study of your perticular brain and it’s inner working one could reliably produce religious experiences by stringing together words in a certain order, rythem or tone (whichever has the connection in your brain)… when you then pray and find yourself having the experience of being in the presence of god… wouldn’t that render it far more likely that you are actually causing this experience in yourself? in that you are recalling the memories, creating the order rythem and tone of your words in such a fashion so as to stimulate that very part in your own brain? wouldn’t that be pretty much like poking yourself in the brain and stimulating the religious experience area? if so then how can it be attributed to god… ?

If a scientist can tell you exactly what sort of situations will cause you to have religious experiences and how powerful they would be in these various situations… then isn’t it the situations that are causing them? just as much as it would be the scientist causing them when he poked you in the brain?

I don’t see how you can justify attributing it to god…

But there is one way that God still might be claimed to work… saying that God created the universe and that everything that happens is predetermined so that each situation (even the one where the scientist is poking you in the brain) is part of God’s plan and thus he is doing it in an indirect way… and as such the experience is “real”…

But if that’s the defence… then we’ve effectivly pushed theism back to one final position… God as the origin of the universe… he is no longer the cause of your warm feelings through anything other than being the prime mover.

I see that as another win… with only one more battle to go before the war is won…

I think we need to identify the alternate scenario that the common theist is proposing, and see how this test could be applied in other areas.

First, are theists obligated to (or do they often endorse) the position that when a person has a religious experience, that nothing is happening in the brain, or that whatever is happening in the brain couldn’t be caused by anything else?

Second, could this same experience be run on non-religious experiences? For example, could a scientist play with my brain until I come out having the experience that the scientist is my Mom, or that he is a shark, or that he doesn’t exist?

Heck, for that matter, could a scientist play with the perfectly well functioning brain of a believer, and screw him up bad enough that he becomes an atheist?

If there really was a God, how would the scenario be different? Is the idea that if God caused some religious experiences, that a scientist would have no ability to induce them in some or all people?

How would any spiritual account of religious experience we may put in the theist’s mouth interact with the common position of the believer that, indeed, some spirituals experiences ARE false?

See above…

Maping your brain dosn’t mean we have to actually stick something in there and fiddle around with it to make you have an experience… like i said… the scientist can tell you EXACTLY what sort of stimuli would cause it… none of them involving brain manipulation… a simple string of words spoken in a certain tone or pronounced with a certain rythem might BY THE NATURAL DESIGN of your brain cause you to have an experience of god… no one is actually fooling with you head… but we can tell you exactly how it works and predict the exact situations in which religious experiences would take place.

If you then, knowing that, went home and engaged in prayer, where you by way of that ritual, were causing all the necessary and sufficient conditions of having a religious experience, then how can you attribute it to God?

That’s like me scartching my own arm and thanking God for making the itch go away… how was that god’s doing?

or walking down the street you suddenly see a tree in a certain light while thinking about your mother, which you know happens to be one of the situations that cause you to have a religious experience, is that God’s doing or “accidental”? did God place the tree there for you? did he make you think of your mother? did he make the sun shine? control the clouds? which part can you reasonably say God is involved with?

of course this also means that you can with greater confidence claim that it was god if you had a religious experience without any of the necessary neuron’s being stimulated… meaning that one might actually look to prove the existence of a god type entity… since at the very least this sort of event would prove that religious experience is being caused by something we are not familiar with, and that only affects that perticular “religious experience” part of the amygdala…powerful stuff for theists…

neuroscience might end up giving theism some better justification…

Mad Man,

You are looking up a dead horse’s you-know-what. The answer of the theist is always “God did it”. It doesn’t make any difference what, or when, or how, It is the prime mover perspective, and the apriori assumption is that god is always the cause no matter whether we understand it or not. Neuroscience can say what and how, but we invent why. God is always the why.

You can challenge the apriori assumptions, but to a theist, even the questioning of god’s existence is the work of god. A theist isn’t concerned with why that, only that.

Hey, I started a thread on that very subject matter. :smiley:

Tentative

Of course, you are right… I’m not ignorant of the inherent circularity of theism.

It’s a game of obfuscation and sophistry with theism… it’s about holding on to shapeless and elusive ideas that can porform any needed function to explain and adress concrete problems and questions, those ideas being represented by concrete words makes the words the answers we need, even if the idea isn’t coherent, we at least know by the ways in which the words are used, how they are supposed to function.

Did you ever watch the smurfs? Did you ever figure out what “smurf” means, what concept it represents? I bet you didn’t… but it can apperently mean any number of things… based solely on the way it was used. The more episodes you watched the more ways in which the word smurf was used the greate number of functions it could be said to serve. Conversely if you were to replace the word smurf with other words in those sentances in which it was used, you would deplete the functions of the elusive "smurf"concept. so that if it were never used to adress any concrete question or problem… it would simply vanish back into the nothingness it came from.

Likewise with the concept of God and other such supernaturl things. If the questions were answered and the problems solved… then no one would be asking… and the elusive idea would no longer have anything to adress… and the words would no longer be needed in the function of an answer (consequently destroying the elusive idea’s dominion of the question/problem as well).

Who asks why humans have two eyes and one nose anymore? and more importantly… who answers that question with “god did it”? Most theists don’t even bother to get THAT ignorant… They would likely give the same evolution answer the rest of us do.

Likewise if we have a sudden sense of awe and warmth and we wonder what caused it… a good theory of brain might very well replace the “god did it” answer… even among theists. Not likely to happen from day one… but given time…

I see allot of people on this thread who are either atheists, battered into hopelessness by the shere persistence of irrational theistic beliefs, or theists who are unwilling to entertain the hypothetical of having a “better” explination. (maybe because they too realize that God exists only as the uses of the word… and they know if they stop saying “God did it” that their god would vanish into nothingness)

No one seems to be looking at history and how such events have altered the discourse of theists and theism in general, thus reshaping it… But then again… maybe I’m missing something here… maybe there really is a coherent concept of God and Spirits and magic… Maybe we know it as something other than the function of a word.

But I doubt it…

2 hours after me though…

Does that mean I have the copyrights? :laughing:

Sure. :smiley:

Do you want me to just pull my thought’s into here?

I would value any pertinent input you might have… :slight_smile:

No.

Not at this time, but possibly in the future.
Although some success like this is possible with brain washing techniques, but those are not accomplished in the same manner that you are thinking of.

Happens all the time.

Since we don’t know an objective answer to a God existence or how that would even work, presumably the scenario would be the same.
If God doesn’t exist, we don’t know.
If God exists, we don’t know.
Either way, our test results come out the same.

Essentially positing, can God be over ridden by a scientist in the mind of a given person.
Happens all the time.

Using a computer program to orchestrate music is no less music than music that is played by hand.
The essence of human tone is left out of computer generated music tones in some cases, which means that the type of musical experience will differ, but it does not negate the relation of musical experience by a given listener.

So to, simulating spiritual events by scientific methodology is just another means of reaching the same end.
As of right now, people need to perform certain behaviors to produce divine connection or experiences; prayer, meditation, church, temples, sacrifices, testimonies, seance’s, etc…

Essentially what you are asking me is if I make a movie that causes you to cry for the character, is the sorrow that you felt fake?
No.

Production does not inherently negate authenticity of the transmitted experience.

Look at it this way:
If you dial in a radio, you aren’t causing it to falsely make a connection to something.
You are dialing it in so that a connection can be made.

Our brains are similar to radios.
Dialing them in to specific emotions just short-cuts the entire process of going out and getting involved in given trickles of life with people in attempt to produce those experiences.

What I will say is that the day we can dial someone in to a religious experience is the day that we should really start questioning our observed reality more deeply.
That day will bother me in more important concerns than religion.