Concept
The neuroscience of religion, also known as neurotheology and as spiritual neuroscience, attempts to explain religious experience and behaviour in neuroscientific terms. It is the study of correlations of neural phenomena with subjective experiences of spirituality and hypotheses to explain these phenomena. This contrasts with the psychology of religion which studies mental, rather than neural states. Proponents of the neuroscience of religion say there is a neurological and evolutionary basis for subjective experiences traditionally categorized as spiritual or religious. The field has formed the basis of several popular science books. "Neurotheology" is a neologism that describes the scientific study of the neural correlates of religious or spiritual beliefs, experiences and practices. Other researchers prefer to use terms like "spiritual neuroscience" or "neuroscience of religion". Researchers in the field attempt to explain the neurological basis for religious experiences, such as: The perception that time, fear or self-consciousness have dissolved Spiritual awe Oneness with the universe Ecstatic trance Sudden enlightenment Altered states of consciousness Aldous Huxley used the term neurotheology for the first time in the utopian novel Island. The discipline studies the cognitive neuroscience of religious experience and spirituality. The term is also sometimes used in a less scientific context or a philosophical context. Some of these uses, according to the mainstream scientific community, qualify as pseudoscience. Huxley used it mainly in a philosophical context. The use of the term neurotheology in published scientific work is already common. A search on the citation indexing service provided by Institute for Scientific Information returns 68 articles (December/2020). A search in Google Scholar, also in 2020 December, gives several pages of references, both books and scientific articles. In an attempt to focus and clarify what was a growing interest in this field, in 1994 educator and businessman Laurence O.