s God a creation of the human brain? Are religion and spiritual experiences all in our heads?

A number of neuroscientists answer yes on both counts. They are part of a worldwide effort to understand the biological basis of spirituality in a new field of study dubbed �neurotheology.�

According to a cover feature in the May 7, 2001, issue of Newsweek, �Religion and the Brain,� researchers are studying the effects of Buddhist meditation, Christian prayer, and other spiritual experiences on the brain. Using powerful brain imaging technology, they have correlated a sense of being one with the universe with decreased activity in the parietal lobe, divine feelings of love and compassion with changes in the frontal lobe, and a profound awareness that religion has changed a person�s life with activation of the temporal lobe.

And in Canada, reports the June 17, 2001, Washington Post, Michael Persinger fits people with magnetized helmets that produce �spiritual� experiences. According to Persinger, even secular people have �a mystical experience, the feeling that there is a sentient being or entity standing behind or near� them (in �Tracing the Synapses of Our Spirituality,� pp. A1, A9).

Many of the scientists engaged in this research are noncommittal as to the implications for God and religion. Some are themselves religious people. But for others like Persinger, a professor of neuroscience at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, the research leaves no doubt: �Religion is a property of the brain, only the brain and has little to do with what�s out there.�

I expect we will hear more about this research and its implications. I anticipate that atheists and others will seize upon it in attempts to discredit all religion. Young people in schools and universities who express faith in Jesus may become objects of the scorn and derision of professors and fellow students.

So let�s take a clear, calm look at what is being claimed by those who belittle God and religion.

Are the purported results surprising? Not at all. The brain is the organ for all our experiences. If we are able to know God, it will be only through the brain. That certain parts of the brain may be associated with particular spiritual experiences is just what might be expected.

But it�s a far cry from understanding the brain as the organ through which God communicates with us to viewing the brain as creating the notion of God. Daniel Batson, a University of Kansas psychologist, quoted in the Post report, put the point well: �To say the brain produces religion is like saying a piano produces music.�

Thus the Newsweek article is amazingly shortsighted as it concludes: �But it is likely that they [scientists] will never resolve the greatest question of all�namely, whether our brain wiring creates God, or whether God created our brain wiring. Which you believe is, in the end, a matter of faith.�

Come on, Newsweek. This incredibly intricate organ, this super computer we call the brain�did it just happen? To suggest that it did flies in the face of reason, of all that we can see and test in our experience. Our very brain cries out that it�s the work of a Superbrain, a Supermind. The alternative view can�t be just a matter of �faith�!

A third objection: the view of religion and spirituality held by many of the �neurotheologians� is shallow and unsatisfactory. It collapses religions into one homogeneous mass; it levels distinctions between Eastern mystics and Christian saints; it suggests that spiritual experiences are simply a brain function that anyone�believer or unbeliever, secular or religious�can access under the right conditions.

The mistake lies in identifying religion with particular experiences. But religion is much more; indeed, its essence�certainly for biblical religion�lies elsewhere. For the believer in Jesus Christ, the heart of it all isn�t mystical experiences or particular feelings, but faith�which is quiet, committed trust. Knowing God means that Jesus is Savior, Lord, and Friend, whether we feel He is close or whether He seems far away, whether we sense our prayers are answered or whether the heavens above us seem like brass.

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William G. Johnsson is editor of the Adventist Review.