Mariane Glaser
Neurotheology: This is Your Brain on God
Religious ideas are continually constructed and reconstructed in dynamic fluctuation with contemporary sensibilities and prevailing attitudes. Religious traditions claim to have access to fundamental truths, when it may just be a generation’s attempt to find truth in their sociopolitical reality. Religious views infiltrate daily life and permeate thought processes. Ancient shamanism evidences biological underpinnings for religious ideas, and following this stream of thought, the current generation has chosen the authority of science to sort authenticity from falsehood and established truth. Even though modern brain imaging technology claims to have discovered correlations between objective neurochemistry and subjective religious experience, is this ample evidence to prove or disprove anything for certain in a highly complex system of neural networks? Philosophical frameworks explore the physical and metaphysical functions of the pineal gland while scientific discourse examines the immense conceptual and methodological challenges brain localization research encounters. Neurotheology aims to re-imagine and redefine religious experience through an organic basis: the human brain.
Thesis Supervisor: Prof. Naomi Janowitz