The Shaman’s Brain:
Neurotheology and Neuromythology
Medical materialism seems indeed a good appellation for the too simple-minded system of thought which we are considering. Medical materialism finishes up Saint Paul by calling his vision on the road to Damascus a discharging lesion of the occipital cortex, he being an epileptic. It snuffs out Saint Teresa as an hysteric, Saint Francis of Assisi as an hereditary degenerate…
—William James 177
As neuroscientists push deeper into the crevices of the brain and unveil the workings of the most complex organ in the universe, religious researchers follow close behind them. The attempt to understand religious experiences in terms of biology and the brain is an old and important one and will doubtless make profound contributions.
But there are also many problems. First, current neural measures are still too gross to really understand the subtleties of an almost inconceivably complex organ. Additionally, very few neuroscientists have personal experience of contemplative practices. Consequently, they are unaware of the subtle yet crucial differences between states of consciousness or of the enduring higher stages and capacities that contemplative disciplines aim to develop.398
When there is no deep understanding of the real nature or transpersonal potentials of spiritual practices and experiences, the temptation to interpret profound experiences as nothing but neuronal fireworks is a recurrent risk. “We’re a bunch of chemical reactions running around in a bag,”52 claims Dean Hamer, who in his book titled The God Gene claims to have found—well, the God gene.142 This, by the way, is the same scientist who earlier claimed to have found the “gay gene” underlying homosexuality, a claim that quickly fizzled. To suggest that genes and neuronal activity play crucial roles in religious experiences is fine; to state that they adequately explain these experiences is a matter of pseudoscientific faith and reductionism.
There is a perennial problem in scientific studies of religion. This is the tendency for speculation to outrace data, for elaborate theories to be founded on little evidence, and for medical materialization to rise from the dead to explain religion (away) yet again in terms of the most recently discovered neural process.
Yet none of these concerns have slowed the torrent of books purporting to finally explain God, religion, and ecstasy in neural terms. Zen and the Brain,16 Why God Won’t Go Away,256 and more pour off the presses, supposedly creating the fields of “neurotheology” and “theobiology” and showing Where God Lives in the Human Brain5 (in the Big G spot, presumably). Yet when one looks carefully, it is clear that many claims outstrip the data. They offer massive speculation atop little information and also suffer from a plague of logical and philosophical fallacies.136, 313 In many cases, neurotheology turns out to be neuromythology.
The same is largely true of shamanism. While there is now considerable neuroscience data on some spiritual practices, especially the effects of meditation,43, 398 we know almost nothing about neural activity during shamanic practices, and some oft-cited studies, such as those on EEG effects of drumming,253, 254 are badly flawed.3 Yet this has not stopped enormous speculation, much of it presented as simple fact. Michael Winkleman, who contributed so much to cross-cultural studies, devoted several papers and much of a book to the “neural ecology of shamanism.”418 However, many claims float in air without a solid foundation in actual data. Unfortunately, this has not stopped many other people—who have either not read them or have no background in neuroscience—from citing his claims as fact.
Hopefully, future research will provide such data, but for now we all need some neurohumility.