Religion: An Integral Human Experience (1/2)

The following anecdote - widely circulated among scientists familiar with the Bateson's history – interestingly manifests an ineradicable intimacy with religious experience.

Although Gregory Bateson's parents were steeped in atheism, the father would regularly read the Bible to his family after breakfast, so that, the father urged, they would ―not grow up to be empty-headed atheists.”[1].

The centrality of religion in the sphere of human existence cannot be overemphasized. It never dies away and systematic attempts to eradicate it from the lives of human beings have been abject failures. Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche may provide good examples. To Marx, religion was 'the opium of the people'. To Nietzsche, God was dead. Both of them swam against the tide. They both died and became history; religion outlived them and continues to live. Freud and many other positivists believed that religion represented an immaturity which science can overcome[2]. It was only the passage of time that proved the downright falsity of such a claim. Ken Wilber, regarded by some as one of the most important thinkers of our century, explains:

"Sociologists have long predicted that modernity would simply sweep away all religious factions, since the latter are supposedly based on nothing but pre-modern and primitive superstition. And yet the modern world is still chock-a-block with various religious movements that simply refuse to go away"[3].

Karen Armstrong, the renowned writer on comparative religion, has also observed that "Even though so many people are antagonistic to faith, the world is currently experiencing a religious revival. Contrary to the confident secularist predictions of the mid twentieth century, religion is not going to disappear"[4].

Today, Darwinian neuroscientists and philosophers[5] maintain that mind, consciousness, and the self are only byproducts of the brain‘s electrical and chemical processes and that Religious/Spiritual/Mystical Experiences (RSMEs) are only brain states or delusions[6] created by neural activity[7].

"Accordingly these scientists and philosophers believe that there is no spiritual source for RSMEs; that is, they think that the human brain creates these experiences and, in so doing, creates God"[8], relates Mario Beauregard, a neuroscientist who researched the neurobiology of RSMEs in his groundbreaking work The Spiritual Brian.

Beauregard and his colleague Denyse O'Leare analyzed these claims in the light of neurobiological evidence and came to the conclusion that "the transcendental impulse to connect with God and the spiritual world represents one of the most basic and powerful forces in Homo sapiens" and "for that reason, RSMEs point to a fundamental dimension of human existence". RSMEs "are at the heart of the world‘s great religions" and "are commonly reported across all cultures"[9].

 (Continued)