In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (Evolution and Cognition Series) by Atran Scott

Author:Atran, Scott [Atran, Scott]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Published: 2002-11-14T05:00:00+00:00

7 Waves of Passion

The Neuropsychology of Religion

As with emotionally drawn-out religious initiations, neurobiological studies of stress disorders indicate that subjects become intensely absorbed by sensory displays. Unlike chronic stress sufferers, however, participants in even the most emotionally aversive initiations end their ordeal through positive affirmations of social acceptance. Previous neurobiological studies of religion have focused on tracking participants’ neurophysiological responses during episodes of religious experience and recording individual patterns of trance, vision, revelation, and the like. This has favored comparison of religious experience with temporal lobe brain wave patterns during epileptic seizures and acute schizophrenic episodes. Cognitive structures of the human mind/rain in general, and cognitions of agency in particular, are usually represented in these studies in simpleminded terms (e.g., binary oppositions, holistic vs. analytical tensions, hierarchical organization) that have little input from, or pertinence to, recent findings of cognitive and developmental psychology. Perhaps more telling is recent work on the role of the prefrontal cortices in processing concepts of agency and self and in cognitive mediation of relevant emotions originating in (what was once called) the limbic system. Still, for those religious believers who never have an emotionally intense encounter with the Divine—including the overwhelming majority of persons in our society—the neurophysiological bases of faith remain a complete mystery.

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