From last October, at Telic Thoughts, The Neural Correlates of God, in which Joy tells us,
Scientific American has published in its October 2007 issue a lengthy review of past and present neurophysiological research - using everything from EEG to fMRI and everything in between - in the scientific quest to understand God's interactions with human beings. Or maybe just understand human beings' communion with God.
The naturalist can only approach the phenomenon of "communion with God" from the worldview of naturalism. Such a viewpoint, because of its self-imposed limitations, can only ascribe deterministic causes for the God aspect. As such, scientists will typically search for beneficial reasons for explaining why someone would engage in communion with God. Hence, we have such statements, from the paper Joy references,
Such efforts to reveal the neural correlates of the divine—a new discipline with the warring titles “neurotheology” and “spiritual neuroscience”—not only might reconcile religion and science but also might help point to ways of eliciting pleasurable otherworldly feelings in people who do not have them or who cannot summon them at will.
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Artificially replicating meditative trances or other spiritual states might be similarly beneficial to the mind, brain and body. Beauregard and others argue, for example, that such mystical mimicry might improve immune system function, stamp out depression or just provide a more positive outlook on life.
Of course, attempting to explain communion with God, from a purely pragmatic and utilitarian point of view, falls flat when pitted against the actions of self-sacrifice. Do Christians seek communion with God because of the pleasure it brings? Does such communion enhance our fitness for survivability?
I wonder what beneficial and pleasurable feelings (otherworldly, at that) we could partake in were we to experience the pleasure of being beaten for the name of Christ?
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