Book Review: The God Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper

Many psychologists explain spiritual experiences as results of certain stimuli, quite natural to our physical brain. As psychologist Frank S. Hickman stated, “Religious experience is not haphazard or whimsical in the manner of its appearance, for it is a natural reaction to certain kinds of stimuli.”(1) Based on this information, these psychologists, basically, conclude that spirituality is all in the head.

Matthew Alper argues that since spirituality is a behavior “universal to any species”(2) it must have been passed down from generation to generation in genes the same way the “genes from which our linguistic capacities emerge”(3) have been passed down; “Just as all human cultures have demonstrated a propensity to develop a language, all human cultures have just as clearly demonstrated a propensity to develop a religion as well as a belief in spiritual reality.”(4) 

Alper further explains that the spiritual mind that man began to pass down years and years ago came about because of mankind’s fear of death. “In perceiving ourselves as immortal,” he states, “we are relieved of a great deal of the psychological strain that comes as a result of our unique awareness of inevitable death.”(5)

Since this does not explain spiritual experiences, Alper went on to explain in his chapter “The Transcendental Function” that the symptoms of religious experience that have been described by people are a result of a repression of the ego function, which he states results in a detachment “from any coherent sense of self, a state universally depicted as cosmic, boundless.”(6)

You may ask how this repression of the ego happens. Alper explains that transcendental meditation causes this, as well as spiritual contemplation. He says that “if we close our eyes and focus our concentration on some higher power or god, it alters our neurochemistry in such a way as to transform our conscious experience, and in such an unusual manner, compels us to believe that our beliefs in a spiritual realm are genuine.”(7)

Because this argument does not explain sudden, involuntary religious experiences, Alper went on to show that this happens to a person as a result of anxiety. He quotes psychologist E.T. Clark who studied 2,174 cases and concluded that “Sudden conversions were associated with fear and anxiety.”(8) Fear and anxiety, then, have the power to cause the repression of the ego involuntarily.

He also explained the religious experience of speaking in tongues. He stated that it was found that when those who enter into “an “anointed” state of consciousness” in which they begin to speak in tongues, “their brain wave patterns suddenly [shift] from alpha to beta, thus confirming that such experiences have direct correlation to neurological activity.”(9) This explanation does not confirm any such thing. If someone enters into an anointed state of consciousness, it is obvious that there would be a drastic change in brain activity. If there wasn’t a change in brain activity, the argument could be made that the spiritual experience is not genuine.

Nevertheless, with all of this, Alper concludes that “what we perceive as spiritual/mystical/transcendental experiences can be reduced to workings of our basic neurobiology—this and nothing more.”(10) Along these lines, psychologists Eugene D’Aquili and Andrew Newburg wrote in their book The Mystical Mind, “We feel certain . . . that any specific theological idea may eventually be reducible to neuropsychological functions.”(11)

However, D’Aquili and Newburg go on to state, “We are still left with the problem that, based on such an analysis, all of reality, including the analysis itself, can be similarly broken down.”(12) The fact that spiritual experiences and theologies can be reduced to the “workings of our basic neurobiology,” “to neuropsychological functions” does not rule out their existence. “As to what the further cause of such an experience may be,” says psychologist C. G. Jung, “the answer to this lies beyond the range of human knowledge.”(13) There can be a further cause to the spiritual phenomena in the brain, and that further cause could be God. After all, the brain activity that spurs from ideas about a metaphysical spiritual realm and from spiritual experience would appear the same if the spiritual realm actually did exist.

What Alper suggests does not disprove God's existence. The so-called “God part of the brain” could have been established by God Himself. Obviously, if there is a God that created us, a part of the brain would respond to ideas about His metaphysical world. With that, I will let William James have the last word:

In the psychopathic temperament we have the emotionality which is the sine qua non of moral perception; we have the intensity and tendency to emphasis which are the essence of practical moral vigor; and we have the love of metaphysics and mysticism which carry one’s interests beyond the surface of the sensible world. What, then, is more natural than that this temperament should introduce one to regions of religious truth, to the corners of the universe?(14)

Notes:

[1] Hickman, Franklin S.. Introduction to the Psychology of Religion (New York: The Abingdon Press, 1926), 115.

[2] Alper, Matthew. The "God" Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God. 5th ed. (Naperville: Sourcebooks, 2006), 80.

[3] Ibid 79.

[4] Ibid 80.

[5] Ibid 139.

[6] Ibid 151.

[7] Ibid 40.

[8] Ibid 173.

[9] Ibid 192.

[10] Ibid 154.

[11] Aquili, Eugene G., and Andrew B. Newberg. The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 1999), 175—176.

[12] Ibid., 176., emphasis added.

[13] Jung, C. G.. The Undiscovered Self (Boston: Little, Brown, 1957).

[14] James, William. "Religion and Neurology." In The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature (London: Longmans, Green 1903), 25.

What we can learn from Schleiermacher about Christianity and missions

Romanticism was flourishing in the 18th-19th century when Friedrich Schleiermacher began his ministry. According to Roger Olson, Romanticism was 

  "an emotional reaction to an overemphasis on objective reason in the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. The Romantics reveled in "feelings," by which they meant not irrational emotions but deep, human longings and appreciation for beauty in nature."(1)

This movement created a cynicism towards traditional Christianity. Schleiermacher wanted to find a way to transcend the Romanticism-Christianity divide by showing that there is a point at which the two meet without difficulty.

Schleiermacher "explained that the essence of religion lies not in rational proofs of the existence of God, supernaturally revealed dogmas or churchly rituals and formalities, but in a . . . feeling (Gefühl) of being utterly dependent on something infinite that manifests itself in and through finite things."(2) Gefühl is a German word without an English equivalent, but could be described as a "deep, inner awareness." The word denotes "the distinctly human awareness of something infinite beyond the self on which the self is dependent for everything."(3) It was through this idea that Schleiermacher appealed both to the Romantics and to the Enlightenment thinkers. He explained that the religious "path was to discover and foster that universal human religiousness within themselves . . . and discover their link with the infinite that was already there within themselves."(4) He came to refer to this deep, inner awareness as "God-consciousness" and believed that the essence of Christianity is this "deep awareness of being dependent upon God (God-consciousness) and upon Jesus Christ as one's link to God."(5)

However, we must separate the wheat from the chaff with Schleiermacher, for he was a liberal theologian who attempted to adapt Christianity to modern beliefs. He believed that the Bible is not infallible or inspired but rather "a record of the religious experiences of the earliest Christian communities," because, to him, "talk about God is always talk about human experience of God."(6)
He degraded the importance of the Old Testament because he, like many others, believed it to be inconsistent with the New Testament.
 
Though he did not reject the doctrine of the Trinity, it didn't fit with his doctrine of God-consciousness and so he had doubts about it and deemed it meaningless to theology.
Furthermore, Schleiermacher seemed "to discourage or forbid belief in special divine interventions."(7)
 
He also believed that Jesus Christ was completely human in nature, but "because of [his] potency of God-consciousness, [he] was the Savior of humanity because . . . Through his life and death . . . Christ draws believers into the power of his own God-consciousness and imparts it to them in some measure."(8) Thus, Christ to him was not actually the incarnate God.
It seems like he tried to adapt Christianity to fit everything he thought it should be. 

What can we learn from Schleiermacher about Christianity?
 
Though I wouldn't say that the heart and soul of Christianity is a deep, inner awareness of God (for there is so much more), there is a lot of truth in his teaching on God-consciousness. Every single person was created with a longing for the divine, or, as a friend of mine likes to call it, the unseen. In this, we are dependent upon God. We need God. Human frailty gives evidence to this.

Why are we never satisfied? Why do we always want more? Because there is something beyond everything that we all need and for which we all have a burning desire. It lies in all humans but, of course, many--if not most--are not aware of it. That is why God-consciousness is important. We become aware of our need for God.
Blaise Pascal says it brilliantly;

What else does this craving, and this helplessness, proclaim but that there was once in man a true happiness, of which all that now remains is the empty print and trace?
This he tries in vain to fill with everything around him, seeking in things that are not there the help he cannot find in those that are, though none can help, since this infinite abyss can be filled only with an infinite and immutable object; in other words by God himself.(9)

What can we learn from Schleiermacher about missions?

He spoke the language of his age. He found a way where Christianity could appeal to his generation.
There is a danger in this. The danger is that we would compromise Christianity in order to adapt it to modern thinking. We cannot do this. But we can and should find a way where Christianity as the Bible teaches it meets the need of the human longing we see around us.

What is significant to America today? Love!

How many movies are about love? It seems like every single movie has to have a love relationship in it or it is incomplete.
How many songs on the radio are about love?
 Jefferson Airplane sang,

Don't you want somebody to love?
Don't you need somebody to love?
Wouldn't you love somebody to love?
You better find somebody to love

The Beatles sang,

All you need is love!
Love is all you need!

I could go on because it's everywhere.
Love seems to be the one thing that everybody wants.
Allen Ginsberg wrote, "All we do is for this frightened thing we call Love!"(10)
This should be good news to Christians! Why? Because what does the Bible say that God is? LOVE!
And we have a nation obsessed with the pursuit of love!

People everywhere have fires in their hearts longing for love. Like Paul wrote in Roman, "all creation groans" (Rom. 5:22) because the nature of all things has been upset for all of human history.
Unfortunately, the love our generation finds is not the water they think will put out their fires, but is actually oil labeled "Water." They pour this oil on themselves, completely unaware of the Ocean right behind them.

Our job as disciples of Christ is to become aware and make people aware of that Ocean, to dive in and invite them to dive in with us.
Our job is to introduce them to the salvific love of Christ.

Notes:
(1) Roger E. Olson, "The Father of Modern Liberal Theology: Friedrich Schleiermacher," The Story of Christian Theology: Twenty Centuries of Tradition & Reform (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 1999), 543.
(2) Ibid. I do not say it here but I would like to add that I agree that the essence of Christianity does not lie "in rational proofs of the existence of God, supernaturally revealed dogmas or churchly rituals and formalities."
(3) Ibid., 544.
(4) Ibid.
(5) Ibid.
(6) Ibid., 545.
(7) Ibid., 546.
(8) Ibid.
(9) I couldn't find the exact reference for this. Apparently it's in his Pensees, page 425.
(10) From his "Wichita Vortex Sutra."

Christianity, Politics, and King Josiah's Reform

In ancient Israel, King Josiah initiated his famous religious reform as the collapse of Assyria assured freedom for Judah. Around this time, in 622 B.C.E., the temple law book was found. The finding of the law book gave direction to the King's reform. C. Hassell Bullock observes that the "early years of religious reform were marked by renewed hope for Judah, and the discovery of the scroll of the law in 622/21 reinforced and abetted the renewal."(1) This reform did a lot of good for Judah, but, as John Bright observes, it "produced no profound change in the national character."(2)

The prophet Jeremiah accepted his prophetic call the same year the temple law book was found. It is not clear what exactly Jeremiah thought about the reform, but the best explanation I have found is from Bright. He concludes that, though he did not participate in the reform, Jeremiah was in favor of it. However, Jeremiah did not formulate his opinion concerning the spiritual state of Israel merely on the fact that an official reform initiated by the king was taking place. Indeed, that would never satisfy Jeremiah. He would only be satisfied by “a sincere and heartfelt repentance, an inner change in the national character, a wholesale turning on the part of the people to loyal obedience to Yahweh—and this the reform did not produce.”(3)

King Josiah's reform was a good thing, but the people of Israel needed more than a legislative reform. They had sin written on their hearts (Jer. 17:1). No law of man could change that. The reform they needed could only be initiated by God. They needed Him to heal their incurable wound (30:17) and create in them new hearts with His law written inside (31:33).

So many Christians today want King Josiah's reform more than the reform of which the prophets spoke.

Our nation needs more than legislature imposing Christian moral values on all people. Our nation needs more than a law that says homosexuals cannot get married. Our nation needs more than a monument of the Ten Commandments in every school in the country.

The people in our nation need a thorough reform of the soul. They need God to change them from the inside out. They need the gospel. They need the love of Christ to be expressed to them in the deepest way.

Christians today are too busy fighting for moral laws, getting offended by what people do and say, and kicking & screaming every time people make a move away from Christianity.

Why do people move away from Christianity?
Intolerance? Narrow-mindedness? Hypocrisy? Rejection? A lack of love?

Surely none of them would leave because of an exposure to too much love!

Even if Christians could claim power over our nation and establish moral laws that line up with Christianity, would it even be a good idea?
Can you give me a situation in church history when it was a good idea?

How about Calvin's Geneva? Under Calvin, the city council decided that Servetus deserved to die for denying the doctrine of the trinity.
How about Zwingli? He and the city council sentenced thousands upon thousands of Anabaptists to death by drowning simply because they believed that infant baptism isn't biblical.
How about the Roman Catholic Church? Need I say more about it?

Maybe power isn't what Christianity should be fighting for.

Instead of asking how we can help put Christianity in power, maybe we should ask how we can love people.
We need to change this nation from the inside out, not from the outside in with laws establishing our Christian values.
In our country, we should look like Jesus dying on the cross to transform lives.
We should not look like a bunch of angry citizens fighting to "re-establish" a "Christian nation".

The Greek word used for ministry is διακονίᾳ (diakonia) and it means “waiting a table.” It also carries the meaning, “‘discharge of service’ in genuine love”—service being “all significant activity for the edification of the community."(4) Christ is the bread of life (Jn. 6:35) and the Word of God (1:1). Ministry is the act of serving the Word of God to the world. We are to be waiters and waitresses serving the bread of life to our tables—our communities. How do we do that? LOVE  
The world will know we are Christians by our love! (John 13:35)

Notes:

(1) C. Hassell Bullock, An Introduction to the Old Testament Prophetic Books (Chicago: Moody Press, 1986), 192. 

(2) John Bright, Jeremiah (Garden City: Doubleday, 1965), XXVII

(3) Ibid., XCIV.

(4) Herman W. Beyer, “διακονία,” in Vol. 2 of TDNT, ed. Gerhard Kittel (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Pub Co, 1964), 87–88.