Ebook: The Neuroscience of Religious Experience

Dr. McNamara is a neuroscientist with a passion for understanding religious phenomena. This book is a welcome breath of life into the science of religion, in that McNamara is not interested in tiresome "debunking" arguments that so often cloud the issue in comparative works like this. McNamara examines some of these arguments in depth in the first part of the book in fact, such as the "religion is delusion" argument, and several of the variations that attribute religion to "neural misfiring" or "mistaken cognitive apparatus". These arguments are mostly based on arbitrary assumptions that have not themselves been established empirically.

At the same time, McNamara is no religious apologist. Nor is he interested in criticizing atheism, a position he states has "a great deal of integrity". He is, rather, interested in establishing a firm comparative work that looks critically in a sober unbiased way at the neurology, neurochemistry, and neurodynamics that occur in religious thinking, ritual and other activities deemed religious. In so doing he constructs a model of the "Self" which he defines in terms of various brain circuits such as the prefrontal cortex, frontotemporal area and limbic regions, and shows how even with what little solid empirical data we have, one can put together a coherent theory regarding the function and mechanisms of religious activity, and why it is so ubiquitous and, in many cases, effective at producing real changes for better or worse. A welcome companion to the works of Justin Barrett, Scott Atran, David Wilson or Harvey Whitehouse--in fact, I think McNamara would be well served spending some time with the writings of Carl Jung or Anthony Stevens, since many of McNamara's ideas are clearly presaged by Jung. McNamara's concepts of "ideal selves" (Jung's archetypal images), transformation of Self (transformation of the ego) and his biological view of the spectrum between schizophrenia and normal mental function, fractionated Self (complexes and figures of the collective unconscious) and so on form a relatively clean match up.

My only minor quibble is that McNamara is for the most part only able to compare his theory to the more mainstream religions such as Christian or Buddhist traditions--this is not due to any preexisting agenda, however, but merely a matter of his own personal experience. Early on he admits this limitation plainly and expresses a hope that his research can be applied to other traditions such as the many polytheistic or indigenous religions of the world. Since he does not dismiss these traditions and treats them with respect, but only professes his lack of qualification in them, it seems clear that his agenda is a purely scientific and non-dismissive stance. Moreover, he does use several examples of reports of indigenous religion to show how it can be understood from his perspective, he is just not able to pursue them in any great depth. Future work, I suspect, will fill in the details as more studies come in.

Overall an excellent monograph on the neuroscience of religious phenomena. Who is the audience for this book? I have no idea; being a psychiatrist I found no difficulty in following McNamara's carefully reasoned arguments. I suspect, however, that some may get lost in the neurology and neurochemistry sections, though these were clearly not written for a technical audience. I imagine that an educated lay reader would be able to navigate this book with relative ease, but take that with a grain of salt. Hope this review has been helpful to you.