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Author: Ralph D. Mecklenburger
Publisher: Jewish Lights Publishing
Published: 2012
Total Pages: 226
ISBN-13: 1580235085
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis is a groundbreaking, accessible look at the implications of cognitive science for religion and theology, intended for laypeople. Avoiding neurological jargon and respectful to all faiths, it examines:
Author: Andrew Newberg, M.D.
Publisher: Ballantine Books
Published: 2009-03-24
Total Pages: 369
ISBN-13: 0345512790
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGod is great—for your mental, physical, and spiritual health. Based on new evidence culled from brain-scan studies, a wide-reaching survey of people’s religious and spiritual experiences, and the authors’ analyses of adult drawings of God, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and therapist Mark Robert Waldman offer the following breakthrough discoveries: • Not only do prayer and spiritual practice reduce stress, but just twelve minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process. • Contemplating a loving God rather than a punitive God reduces anxiety and depression and increases feelings of security, compassion, and love. • Fundamentalism, in and of itself, can be personally beneficial, but the prejudice generated by extreme beliefs can permanently damage your brain. • Intense prayer and meditation permanently change numerous structures and functions in the brain, altering your values and the way you perceive reality. Both a revelatory work of modern science and a practical guide for readers to enhance their physical and emotional health, How God Changes Your Brain is a first-of-a-kind book about faith that is as credible as it is inspiring.
Author: John J. McGraw
Publisher: AEGIS PRESS
Published: 2004
Total Pages: 422
ISBN-13: 0974764507
DOWNLOAD EBOOKFrom its beginnings in prehistoric religion to its central importance in Western faith traditions, the soul has been a constant source of fascination and speculation. Brain & Belief seeks to understand mankind's obsession with life, death, and the afterlife. Exploring the latest insights from neuroscience, psychopharmacology, and existential psychology, McGraw exhaustively researches the various takes on the human soul and considers the meaning of the soul in a postmodern world. The ambitious scope of the book is balanced by a deeply personal voice whose sympathy for both science and religion is resonant.
Author: Patrick McNamara Ph.D.
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
Published: 2006-09-30
Total Pages: 918
ISBN-13: 0313054762
DOWNLOAD EBOOKSpiritual practices, or awakenings, have an impact on brain, mind and personality. These changes are being scientifically predicted and proven. For example, studies show Buddhist priests and Franciscan nuns at the peak of religious feelings show a functional change in the lobes of their brain. Similar processes have been found in people with epilepsy, which Hippocrates called the sacred disease. New research is showing that not only does a person's brain activity change in particular areas while that person is experiencing religious epiphany, but such events can be created for some people, even self-professed atheists, by stimulating various parts of the brain. In this far-reaching and novel set, experts from across the nation and around the world present evolutionary, neuroscientific, and psychological approaches to explaining and exploring religion, including the newest findings and evidence that have spurred the fledgling field of neurotheology. It is not the goal of neurotheology to prove or disprove the existence of God, but to understand the biology of spiritual experiences. Such experiences seem to exist outside time and space - caused by the brain for some reason losing its perception of a boundary between physical body and outside world - and could help explain other intangible events, such as altered states of consciousness, possessions, alien visitations, near-death experiences and out-of-body events. Understanding them - as well as how and why these abilities evolved in the brain - could also help us understand how religion contributes to survival of the human race. Eminent contributors to this set help us answer questions including: How does religion better our brain function? What is the difference between a religious person and a terrorist who kills in the name of religion? Is there one site or function in the brain necessary for religious experience?
Author: Malcolm Jeeves
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
Published: 2013-05-14
Total Pages: 226
ISBN-13: 0830895620
DOWNLOAD EBOOKIn this hypothetical correspondence, Malcolm Jeeves urges Christian students to enter the brave new world of neuroscience ready to have their faith examined and their experiences of God put to the test. When we do this, he argues, being mindful of oversimplifications as we go, the integration of Christianity and psychology becomes possible.
Author: Kenneth M. Heilman
Publisher: Psychology Press
Published: 2014-01-21
Total Pages: 188
ISBN-13: 1317812891
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAbout 90% of people have faith in a supreme being, but our yearning for the divine, and whatever it promises, involves a large divergence in mental states and behaviors. Some adhere to doctrine, supplication, and fastidious religious practices; others have a strong sense they are part of something greater and more universal. However, all religious and spiritual paths are mediated by complex brain networks. When different areas of the brain are stimulated, a person can have a variety of experiences, but there is no specific ‘God spot’ where stimulation enhances religiosity or spirituality. Functional brain imaging shows that there are specific areas of the brain that ‘light up’ when subjects perform certain religious activities, but imaging only provides anatomic correlations, not functional explanations. The Believer's Brain takes a step beyond these singular methodologies, providing converging evidence from a variety study methods of how humans’ brain networks mediate different aspects of religious and spiritual beliefs, feelings, actions, and experiences. Although the book reveals how our brain is the home to the religious and spiritual mind, understanding this gift will not diminish our spirituality or our love or our belief in a supreme being, but will increase appreciation of the apparatus that mediates these mental states.
Author: Brad Sickler
Publisher: Crossway
Published: 2020-07-07
Total Pages: 186
ISBN-13: 1433564467
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe human brain is incredibly complex. Both Christian and secular scholars alike affirm this fact, yet the traditional view of humanity as spiritual beings made in the image of God has come under increased pressure from humanistic and materialistic thinkers who deny that humans are anything more than their physical bodies. Christians have long affirmed that humans are spiritual beings made by God to know and fellowship with him, while the humanist position views humans as merely evolved animals. Bradley Sickler provides a timely theological, scientific, and philosophical assessment of the human brain, highlighting the many ways in which the gospel informs the Christian understanding of cognitive science. Here is a book that provides a much-needed summary of the Bible’s teaching as it sheds light on the brain, with careful interaction with the claims of modern science, arguing that the Christian worldview offers the most compelling vision of the true nature of humanity.
Author: Rhawn Joseph
Publisher:
Published: 2003
Total Pages: 0
ISBN-13: 9780971644588
DOWNLOAD EBOOKAuthor: Volney P. Gay
Publisher: Lexington Books
Published: 2009-08-16
Total Pages: 299
ISBN-13: 0739133934
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThis is a unique set of multidisciplinary reflections on how the neurosciences shape our understanding of religious experience and religious institutions. Twelve scholars and scientists assess how advances in the neurosciences affect our traditional sense of mind, self, and soul.
Author: Michael Shermer
Publisher: Macmillan
Published: 2011-05-24
Total Pages: 401
ISBN-13: 1429972610
DOWNLOAD EBOOKThe Believing Brain is bestselling author Michael Shermer's comprehensive and provocative theory on how beliefs are born, formed, reinforced, challenged, changed, and extinguished. In this work synthesizing thirty years of research, psychologist, historian of science, and the world's best-known skeptic Michael Shermer upends the traditional thinking about how humans form beliefs about the world. Simply put, beliefs come first and explanations for beliefs follow. The brain, Shermer argues, is a belief engine. From sensory data flowing in through the senses, the brain naturally begins to look for and find patterns, and then infuses those patterns with meaning. Our brains connect the dots of our world into meaningful patterns that explain why things happen, and these patterns become beliefs. Once beliefs are formed the brain begins to look for and find confirmatory evidence in support of those beliefs, which accelerates the process of reinforcing them, and round and round the process goes in a positive-feedback loop of belief confirmation. Shermer outlines the numerous cognitive tools our brains engage to reinforce our beliefs as truths. Interlaced with his theory of belief, Shermer provides countless real-world examples of how this process operates, from politics, economics, and religion to conspiracy theories, the supernatural, and the paranormal. Ultimately, he demonstrates why science is the best tool ever devised to determine whether or not a belief matches reality.
