Here is a repost of a book review I did when I first started blogging. I reposted this here because I will be reviewing another book that talks about the human brain being "mystically wired for prayer." Fingerprints of God is a good starting point for the conversation. * * * * *
In Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality, Barbara Bradley Hagerty, a former Christian Scientist, seeks to answer questions surrounding spirituality. The questions she seeks to answer include:Is spiritual experience real? Or is it a delusion? When we pray, what happens? Does consciousness depend entirely on your brain and the unique way it works? Or can it operate when the when the brain doesn't?
In the course of her research, which included talking to numerous scientists, Hagerty has concluded that "science cannot prove God - but science is entirely consistent with God." [1] However, the God Hagerty is talking about here is not "the diety in a thirty-three-year-old carpenter or the unseen divider of the Red Sea," rather this is the God "in the math of the universe...that rigged existence to create life." [2]
I will review this book beginning at Chapter 2 (because Chapter 1 tells the story of how the idea for the book was thought up). And before I begin, I should point out that I am no scientist. I am a seminary trained layperson. And, I am a skeptic when it comes to miracles and mystical experiences and I tend to discount these types of experiences.
Hagerty first looks at spiritual experiences: conversion stories and mystical experiences. For the longest time, science has written these off as a medical or psychological condition, or as a drug induced hallucination. Recent studies in neurotheology, the study of the brain as it relates to spiritual experiences, are starting to break down this paradigm. And science cannot explain away every spiritual experience, especially those which show what Dr. William Miller, a Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of New Mexico, calls a quantum change, a spiritual experience that leads to a complete transformation of the individual.
Hagerty then turns her attention to belief. I think belief was a bad word to use as this section was more about the power of positive thinking, which has been shown to slow down the progression of diseases such as cancer and AIDS/HIV. She also looks at studies involving prayer for patients in hospitals. Even to me as a Christian, the studies on both sides are inconclusive. For every study that shows prayer has some benifit, there is one that shows it doesn't. Plus, there are problems with all the studies. This was a section that I had some difficulty with, but I will admit, there is something to the power of positive thinking.
The discussion on what triggers spiritual experiences was discussion that bothered me slightly. For the most part, it makes sense, that people who have spiritual experience are those people who are those have experienced "emotional and physical trauma...poor relationsips with one's parents, or stress, or even low self-esteem...[and] brokenness." [3] Most of the discussion is spent on the brokenness, that people who have hit rock bottom might have a total transformative moment. But in the end, science is unable to explain the experience away, but it can help explain the biology of the experience. [4]
The discussion then turns to the "God gene," which scientists from both sides of the belief spectrum will admit there is no one single gene that regulates spirituality, although there are genes that regulate chemical process such as the production of dopamine and serotonin, that can explain spiritual feelings and religious behavior.
At this point, the pace picked up a little big as we went from the "God gene"to psychadelic research to replicate spiritual experiences. This was another one of those sections that bothered me because spiritulaity seemed to be winnowed down to nothing more than a drug induced high, be it peyote or serotonin.
The discussion then turned to locating the "God spot," where the research focuses on the temporal lobes of the brain in an attempt to find out if spirituality is somehow wired into our brains. Of all the chapters to this point, this one made the most sense to me. As a Christian, I believe that we (humankind) were created by God and are made in God's image. So it makes sense to me that our desire to meet the divine is hard wired into our brains. It doesn't explain why some people "have religion" and others don't, but I think it's a good palce to start.
All this leads to a discussion that the brains people who are "spiritual virtuosos" are hard-wired differently than the rest of us.
The discussion quickly turns to the "fringe" of both science and spirituality: out of body experiences, near-death experiences, and parapsycholocy. This was where I started to loose interest because the book was moving into that area where things tend to get a little foggy.
This book has clearly transformed Hagerty's beliefs. The book has also shown that there is room for both science and religion; although it will require more than one paradigm shift. The walls surrounding mainstream science appear to be chipping away as more scientists such as Mario Beauregard. Dean Radin, Larry Dossey, and Andrew Newberg continue to examine the scientific data surrounding spiritual experiences.
The Good: This book was written for us non-science types. Hagerty did a good job of translating the scientific jargon as to make her book available to everyone. She also talked to the scientists (both religious and non-religious) doing reasearch or seeking to explain spiritual experiences.
The Bad: The big chapters of the book, the ones that were hyped on NPR...all the good stuff from the chapter in the book excerpt. I was also leary about some of the statements made concerning spirituality (I will admit, this is a me issues as I am bringing my Christian beliefs into the book as I am reading it). The other problem I had with the book was, if I didn't know any better, Hagerty seems to be providing alternative explanations to spiritual encounters. We go from epilepsy to psychedelic trips to stimulating the temporal lobes of the brain in an attempt to scientifically explain spirituality. The one reassuring thing I heard throughout the book was "I don't care where it [the spiritual experiences] comes from." [5] The people did not care, because they liked the experiences. They made the individuals feel that there was more to this life.
The Ugly: For me, there comes a point when I don't want to hear about someone else's story. By Chapter 5, I was sick to death of those little stories that seemed to be filler to talk about the practical side of the science. I can see one good example, maybe two. But story after story after story wears on my nerves. At some points, I skimmed over them because, quite frankly, I didn't care. At other points, the stories just made me feel like I was lacking something because I have never experienced what they have.
Those stories that drove me nuts aside, I thought the book was descent. It was a relatively quick read for me at a little over two days. There was nothing faith shattering presented in the book, but there were those scientific explanations that made me say "a-ha." Some of the scientific reasons made sense, I could clearly see the connection between the science and the spirituality. Other times, I was left scratching my head thinking, "That makes no sense at all." There were several times that I had to re-read entire sections because on my first read-through I was left wondering "What was just said?" This book did re-affirm for me that there is room for both science and religion. Science should not merely dismiss or ignore the spiritual experience claimed by religions. But at the same time we have to keep in mind that science can only explain so much about religious experience. I came away from this book in about the same place as the author, that "science is entirely consistent with a Being who organized the universe and created life." [6]
This book is not for everyone. I would recommend it to anyone who is interested in the Science/Religion debate and those interested in Natural Theology.
[1] Barbara Bradley Hagerty, Fingerprints of God: The Search for the Science of Spirituality, (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), 11.
[2] Ibid., 12.
[3] Ibid., 62.
[4] Ibid., 78.
[5] Ibid., 150.
[6] Ibid., 274.
