Recent functional neuroimaging data, acquired in studies of religious experience, have been used to explain and justify religion and its origins. In this paper, we critique the move from describing brain activity associated with self-reported religious states, to explaining why there is religion at all. Toward that end, first we review recent neuroimaging findings on religious experience, and show how those results do not necessarily support a popular notion that religion has a primitive evolutionary origin. Importantly, we call into question (...) an assumption—key to that account of religion—concerning a conceptual relation between 'religion' and 'religious experience'. Then, we examine the conditions that must be met in order to explain religion on the basis of brain imaging findings. Moreover, we list principled reasons to be sceptical of explanations of religion in terms of the neural underpinnings of experiences. We conclude that the data from neuroimaging studies are not suited for an explanation of religion. (shrink)

This paper inspires new questions, possibilities, and challenges for the scientific study of spirituality, and other experiential phenomena. First, the authors offer a refreshing conceptualization of spirituality, one that is similar to that proposed for, and supported by recent neuroscientific study of, religious experience. To what extent are spirituality and religious experience similar at the neural descriptive level? How might they be different? Second, the authors draw creatively upon Weak Quantum Theory to suggest a potentially useful and powerful theoretical model—generalized (...) entanglement—to account for/describe spirituality, parapsychology, and possibly other experiential phenomena. This framework has potential not only to legitimize the study of such phenomena within 'mainstream science' , but also guide new scientific inquiry on spirituality and other experiential phenomena. To what extent, though, must 'scientific' paradigms and assumptions be re-imagined to pursue such studies? Ultimately, this paper raises challenging questions regarding the identity of 'science' today, the answers to which are needed to forward meaningful inquiry of spirituality . What is the 'job' of 'science' today ? Do all 'sciences' hold the same set of assumptions/have the same interpretive limits? To what extent is 'mainstream science' monolithic? (shrink)