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    This document provides a review of the book "Principles of Neurotheology" by Andrew Newberg. The review summarizes that Newberg aims to establish neurotheology as a field linking neuroscience and religion through brain imaging studies of religious experiences. However, the review criticizes Newberg for an uncritical view that the brain determines our experience of reality and for not adequately justifying or examining the epistemological premises of neurotheology that make brain science so important. The review argues that Newberg's vision of neurotheology relies too heavily on a narrow, brain-centered view and does not sufficiently engage with alternatives or predecessors in the field.

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    Principles of Neurotheology

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    This document provides a review of the book "Principles of Neurotheology" by Andrew Newberg. The review summarizes that Newberg aims to establish neurotheology as a field linking neuroscience and religion through brain imaging studies of religious experiences. However, the review criticizes Newberg for an uncritical view that the brain determines our experience of reality and for not adequately justifying or examining the epistemological premises of neurotheology that make brain science so important. The review argues that Newberg's vision of neurotheology relies too heavily on a narrow, brain-centered view and does not sufficiently engage with alternatives or predecessors in the field.

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    This document provides a review of the book "Principles of Neurotheology" by Andrew Newberg. The review summarizes that Newberg aims to establish neurotheology as a field linking neuroscience and religion through brain imaging studies of religious experiences. However, the review criticizes Newberg for an uncritical view that the brain determines our experience of reality and for not adequately justifying or examining the epistemological premises of neurotheology that make brain science so important. The review argues that Newberg's vision of neurotheology relies too heavily on a narrow, brain-centered view and does not sufficiently engage with alternatives or predecessors in the field.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    36 views5 pages

    Principles of Neurotheology

    Uploaded by

    joaonit
    This document provides a review of the book "Principles of Neurotheology" by Andrew Newberg. The review summarizes that Newberg aims to establish neurotheology as a field linking neuroscience and religion through brain imaging studies of religious experiences. However, the review criticizes Newberg for an uncritical view that the brain determines our experience of reality and for not adequately justifying or examining the epistemological premises of neurotheology that make brain science so important. The review argues that Newberg's vision of neurotheology relies too heavily on a narrow, brain-centered view and does not sufficiently engage with alternatives or predecessors in the field.

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    Principles of Neurotheology

    Article in Ars Disputandi · January 2010


    DOI: 10.1080/15665399.2011.10820062

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    Nathaniel Barrett
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    Ars Disputandi
    Volume 11 (2011)
    ISSN: 1566-5399

    Nathaniel F. Barrett Principles of Neurotheology


    INSTITUTE FOR THE
    BIOCULTURAL STUDY OF
    RELIGION,
    By Andrew B. Newberg
    UNITED STATES
    Surrey: Ashgate, 2010. 286 pp., hb. £ 55.00, pb. £ 16.99; ISBN: 978-1-4094-
    0810-9/ 978-0-7546-6994-4.

    If you have read anything about brain-imaging studies of religious


    experience in the last ten years, it is likely that you have come across the name of
    Andrew Newberg. A leading expert in neuroradiology, he has conducted some of
    the highest-profile studies of the neurobiological correlates of experiences
    induced by meditation and prayer. Moreover, since co-authoring The Mystical
    Mind (1999) with Eugene d’Aquili, Newberg has established himself in the public
    eye with numerous mainstream media appearances and several provocatively
    titled books aimed at a general audience (e.g. How God Changes Your Brain,
    2009). With Principles of Neurotheology (2010), Newberg seems to be turning
    toward a different audience: his academic peers in the sciences and humanities.
    His stated purpose is to clarify the premises, goals, and methods of a massive
    interdisciplinary project that he calls ‘neurotheology’; his unstated purpose, I
    suspect, is to entice more scholars to join him in this unusual venture.
    Newberg’s vision for neurotheology is extraordinarily ambitious. Though his
    initial definition of neurotheology is deceptively simple—‘the field of study
    linking the neurosciences with religion and theology’ (p. 45)—as this linkage is
    further articulated, it becomes clear that Newberg seeks to do more than foster
    interdisciplinary dialogue. His goal is the integration of religious and scientific
    perspectives in pursuit of an overarching ‘megatheology’ rooted in ‘two universal
    elements—religion and the human brain’ (pp. 65-66). However, though he
    repeatedly calls for an equal and mutually respectful partnership between
    religious and scientific perspectives, by the end of the book it is clear that the real
    engine of neurotheology is brain science. Newberg hopes that brain science,
    when coupled with a rich phenomenology of religious experience, will allow us
    finally to tackle perennial questions about the nature of consciousness, the
    nature of reality, and the existence of God. The religions of the world may have
    already granted us experiential access to ultimate reality—Newberg is always
    careful to leave this possibility open—but he believes that brain science will play
    a pivotal role in developing a systematic understanding of religious experience,
    and hopes that this understanding will improve the human condition and guide
    us toward a ‘new enlightenment’ (p. 267).

    Nathaniel F. Barrett, June 30, 2011. If you would like to cite this article, please do so as follows:
    Nathaniel F. Barrett, ‘Review of Principles of Neurotheology,’ Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 11 (2011), 133-
    136
    Nathaniel F. Barrett, Review of Principles of Neurotheology

    Newberg builds his case for neurotheology through the exposition of fifty-
    four principles. Although he aspires to a set of ‘necessary’ principles that together
    constitute the ‘ideological foundations’ of neurotheology (pp. 1, 267), in the
    course of his argument he tends to offer the principles as suggestions or
    guidelines rather than necessary axioms. The principles range from
    commonsensical tenets of open inquiry (e.g. Principle III, p. 46) to some rather
    tendentious claims about the neural constraints of religious belief and experience
    (Principle XI, p. 64) and the ‘fundamental uncertainty’ of all beliefs about reality
    (Principle XXIX, p. 214). More than anything, it seems that Newberg’s use of
    principles is a rhetorical strategy designed for maximum clarity and
    straightforwardness, and in this respect he succeeds admirably: one could get the
    gist of his book by reading just the principles printed in bold.
    However, while the principles are clear and straightforward, they are not
    adequately justified. In particular, Newberg does not sufficiently examine, let
    alone justify, the epistemological premises that make brain science so important
    for the synthesis of religion and science. And yet Newberg’s proposal that brain
    functions are a crucial tool for the interpretation of religious beliefs—what he
    calls ‘neurotheological hermeneutic’ (see Principle XVII, p. 84; Chapter 5:
    ‘Towards a Neurotheological Hermeneutic,’ pp. 87-114)—is the most distinctive
    feature of his methodological approach. Indeed, I would argue that Newberg’s
    picture of how the brain determines our experience of reality is not just the
    lynchpin of his planned synthesis of religious and scientific perspectives; it is the
    fundamental premise of ‘neurotheology.’
    The importance of Newberg’s brain-centered epistemology comes into full
    view in the tenth and final chapter, ‘Epistemological Issues in Neurotheology’
    (pp. 249-265), where he proposes that brain science, coupled with the
    phenomenology of ‘primary epistemic states,’ might provide leverage on
    questions about the ultimate nature of reality. Ironically, this leverage is gained
    by placing us in an epistemological predicament of seemingly hopeless isolation.
    Newberg argues that we ‘are trapped with our brain peering out into the world
    and reconstructing it the best we can’ (p. 252). From this position, our only
    indication of what is real is what feels real to us. By combining phenomenology
    with neurobiology, however, Newberg believes that we might be able to find our
    way out of our brains (pp. 262-265).
    In my estimation, Newberg’s uncritical conflation of brain activity with
    cognition is the book’s major flaw. No one can doubt that the brain is the most
    important organ of human cognition, but that does not necessarily mean that we
    are trapped within the brain. In Newberg’s vision of neurotheology, the brain is
    so important that it crowds out all other objects of scientific investigation. This
    narrow scientific focus is reinforced on the religious side by a preoccupation with
    the phenomenology of religious experience. In his discussions of the relevant
    data for building a scientific understanding of religion, Newberg focuses almost
    exclusively on ‘subjective’ accounts of spiritual experience (p. 2) and makes no
    mention of physical, cultural, and social environments. My guess is that this
    narrow focus is justified by the assumption that all environmental factors must
    be ‘filtered’ by the brain (pp. 87-88), so that a full understanding of human

    Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 11 (2011) 134


    Nathaniel F. Barrett, Review of Principles of Neurotheology

    experience, religious and otherwise, must await a thorough investigation of these


    neural ‘filters’ (p. 64). At the heart of Newberg’s vision of neurotheology, then, is
    the unexamined notion that we are trapped within the worlds created for us by
    our brains, so that brain science is crucial to any attempt to understand what
    reality is really like ‘out there.’ This results in a highly truncated view of what is
    relevant to the scientific study of religion.
    It should be noted that many of Newberg’s presuppositions about the brain
    and cognition are commonplace in cognitive science, where the standard
    epistemological stance seems to be a kind of ‘evolutionary Kantianism,’ i.e. a
    formalist and representationalist view bolstered by evolutionary biology and
    given specious clarity by the computational metaphor of the brain as an
    information processor. This view is so widely held that it may seem unfair to take
    Newberg to task for being insufficiently critical about its premises. But as a self-
    conscious attempt to establish the theoretical and methodological groundwork of
    a new field of research, Principles of Neurotheology is precisely the sort of work
    that should take pains to examine its premises. Newberg not only fails to address
    the many criticisms of brain-centered, representationalist epistemology, he
    shows no sign of even being aware that they exist. This is an egregious oversight
    given the prominence of ‘extended,’ ‘embodied,’ and ‘situated,’ theories of mind
    in recent years.1
    Another major flaw of the book is that it does not engage important
    predecessors and peers. Newberg only briefly acknowledges other proponents of
    what he calls ‘neurotheology’ (p. 12) and does not examine the history of the
    term’s usage. Although he does provide a helpful review of relevant scientific
    research (pp. 170-178), for the most part Newberg settles for extensive citations
    rather than detailed engagement with others’ views. If Newberg truly believes
    that neurotheology is essentially a collaborative endeavor, that conviction needs
    to be reflected in the way that he writes about the subject.
    Newberg also fails to address important objections to neurotheology.
    Lurking in the background of Newberg’s project is the question of whether
    ‘immaterial’ or ‘supernatural’ entities can really be the objects of empirical
    inquiry. Of course this question cannot be pursued without more precise
    definitions. Despite his claim that ‘religious beliefs virtually always begin with a
    supernatural foundation’ (p. 51), Newberg does not define the supernatural, and
    never faces up to the questions begged by his insistence that neurotheology
    remain open to supernatural explanations. As far as I can tell, Newberg is not
    shielding a specific theological agenda; rather he is trying to remain true to his
    principles of open inquiry. But an open mind still must be clear about what it
    means for any entity to be susceptible to empirical investigation: these key
    principles of inquiry are missing from Newberg’s book. When Newberg ventures
    to speculate about what empirical evidence of an immaterial cause would look
    like, he provides what amounts to an inference from the absence of evidence: no
    detectable material cause, therefore… (see pp. 182-183). I suggest that those who

    1
    For instance, see Alva Noë, Out of Our Heads: Why You Are Not Your Brain, and Other Lessons from
    the Biology of Consciousness (New York: Hill and Wang 2009).

    Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 11 (2011) 135


    Nathaniel F. Barrett, Review of Principles of Neurotheology

    wish to emulate Newberg’s bold empirical stance revisit the early history of
    psychical research, when a group of exceptionally open-minded scientists (such
    as William James) embarked on a futile search for empirical evidence of the soul.
    Such criticisms aside, Newberg’s intellectual courage and passion for
    interdisciplinary research are extraordinary, and I have no doubt he will continue
    to make significant contributions to the scientific understanding of religion. He is
    an ideal scientific collaborator for humanistic scholars of religion, the flaws of his
    proposed ‘ideological foundations’ notwithstanding. Which brings me to my last
    point: does interdisciplinary research really need necessary principles or
    foundations in order to be successful?

    Ars Disputandi [http://www.ArsDisputandi.org] 11 (2011) 136

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