#22. The Other Half of "Person"

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I entitled my previous blog entry (#21) "Struggling with Words" to make the point that in sharing my thoughts about the convergence of science and religion, I continually feel the need to say that neither "science" nor "religion" mean today what they once meant. I also feel the need to say the same about the word "person." That's what this post is about.

The immense transition in human self-understanding which began at the end of the 19th century was essentially a shift from the static worldview of past centuries to the evolutionary perspectives of modern science. Thanks to it, we can see that personal consciousness is not something separate from, but an integral part of, the evolution of the universe.

I've devoted many previous blog postings to spelling out some of the details of this awesome fact, that each human person is nothing less than an utterly unique expression of the universe become conscious of itself.

But I still struggle with using the word "person." Like the words "science" and "religion," the older 18th and 19th century meanings of "person" still persist today in the conventional understanding of popular culture. The ideal of person as a "rugged individual," left over from America's frontier days, is clearly inadequate for our times. It leaves out the communal and relational aspects of person, precisely those perspectives which are needed for dealing with contemporary problems such as social equality, peace and justice issues and the ecological crisis.

So each time I say "person" I feel the need to add that, just as "science" doesn't mean rationalism and "religion" doesn't mean dualism, so "person" doesn't mean individualism.

There's another half to person.

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Readers won't be surprised to hear me say that in struggling to express a fuller understanding of person I've found the Biogenetic Structuralist view especially useful.

Just as the combined neurological and anthropological perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism help us to see the place of individual persons in an evolutionary perspective, so it also allows us a much better sense of the communal and relational aspects of the mystery of personal consciousness. It attempts to understand persons in the broadest possible scientific perspectives of cosmic, biological and cultural evolution.

It's those cultural aspects that I find especially challenging here. Just as we don't yet have good words to talk about post-rationalist science and post-dualistic religion, so we also still lack an appropriate language to talk about the post-individualist understanding of person.

As I said in the previous post, "The communal and relational aspects of person are part of the perspectives of both contemporary science and contemporary religion, but in trying to express those converging perspectives well, the very words we do have available tend to get in the way as much as they are helpful."

Even with that statement I feel the need to add that by "contemporary" I mean a growing edge understanding, one that includes the communal and relational aspects of the mystery of person and not the conventional assumptions of the media where "person" seems to mean nothing more than the ego-centric personalities of politicians, sports figures and the celebrities of the entertainment world.

Ours is such an individualistic society that the very idea that there might be something beyond the ego-stage of personal development is incomprehensible to many. And yet if we don't have a good sense of the communal-cultural nature of person-- of our communion with others and of our inter-connectedness with all things-- we have only half a sense of our own personal reality.

So what I hope to do in the next few entries is to take the ideas about person which I've presented in the earlier postings to the next step: to emphasize, with help from the perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism, our communion, connectedness and inter-relatedness with all things. It's here that I find the convergence of science and religion to be most explicit.

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A key idea in an understanding of this "other half of person" from the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective is that the development of human consciousness takes place in three clearly defined stages. Seeing these stages as Biogenetic Structuralism sees them is particularly helpful in understanding the communal-cultural aspects of our personal existence.

The Biogenetic Structuralist view offers insights which simply are not available in either the mechanistic-rationalist perspectives of 19th century science or in the static worldviews of dualistic religion.

I hope to spell out those stages of personal consciousness development as Biogenetic Structuralism sees them and to offer an interesting example of their convergence with the emerging sapiential-religious perspectives in the next posting.

Before that, I feel the need to say a few words about the term "culture" from an evolutionary perspective. It's a word we take for granted and one I've used frequently without trying to spell out its meaning, but a clear idea of what "culture" means as it's used in the human sciences is a big help in understanding the religious aspects of "the other half of person."

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"Culture" obviously refers to something more than attending operas or visiting museums. In the broadest sense, from the point of view of anthropology, "culture" refers to everything humans do that's beyond what's controlled by our genes and instincts.

The neurological basis of culture is the understanding which Biogenetic Structuralism expresses by its jargon term cognitive extension of prehension. I tried to spell out that concept in some detail in posting #12. The main idea is that because of the human brain's specific structural developments beyond that of other primates, humans can function in such a way that we have a certain amount of freedom, which the other primates lack, in our responses to whatever we encounter in our external environment.

It is a limited but real freedom from an automatic or instinctive response to the threats and opportunities encountered in our world. It accounts for our spiritual nature and for all of our specifically human characteristics such as language, technology and creativity. It also accounts for our relationships with one another and for our behavior in groups-- indeed, for all that's meant by human culture.

A traditional anthropological definition of culture is "passed on learning." It refers to skills and information needed for survival which older, more experienced persons pass on to the younger and less experienced. It has to be passed on precisely because it's not part of our instinctual or genetically-based behavior.

A common example is the fact that even as three-year-olds we seem to have a clear aversion to spiders; it's "in our genes." From a very young age we tend to be cautious about such potentially dangerous creatures in our external environment. But electricity is a recent technological invention and three-year olds don't have an in-born aversion to playing with electrical wires. They have to be taught to avoid them. That's culture.

And it's "culture" in this sense that's what I mean by the "other half of person." Even from that common example it's clear that culture involves communal relationships. What's easy to overlook is the fact that such communal relationships are biological components of the evolutionary process.

We need to see that culture evolves just as planets and stars do. The "other half of person" is this dynamic-evolutionary communal-cultural nature of human consciousness. It's only when we can see that the communal nature of personal consciousness is a part of cosmic evolution that it becomes clear why culture is such an important concept in the converging perspectives of science and religion.

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Everyone with a sense of history knows that culture evolves. We know, for example, that our early human ancestors learned to hunt cooperatively in groups, that Paleolithic hunting camps evolved (roughly eight thousand years ago) into settled agricultural villages, and that those Neolithic villages eventually evolved (roughly four thousand years ago) into the earliest cities of the civilization period. In this sense, we easily can see the developmental nature of global human culture.

But I want to say something more here, something even larger: we need to see humanity's communal-cultural evolution as itself part, and indeed a significant part, of the entire cosmic process-- from the Big Bang through the evolution of galaxies and stars to life on Earth and the development of the primate brain and the emergence of personal self-awareness.

And as I see it, it's only when we have this sense of human cultural development within the broadest cosmic context that the insights of the core of humanity's religious perspectives begin to make a great deal of sense. It seems to me that a contemporary understanding of the convergence of science and the sapiential religious perspective depends on our seeing human culture on Earth as part of the evolution of the universe.

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For example, there clearly are aspects of humanity's sapiential perspective, such as the pre-Christian idea of the resurrection of the dead, that make some sense in terms of a neurological understanding of our relationship with the physical universe. I offered an example in the previous blog entry (#20), where I pointed out the similarity between the Biogenetic Structuralist concept of cognized environment and theological understanding of Sophiologist Sergius Bulgakov with regard to the possible meaning of bodily resurrection. Even though they are coming from very different starting points, they seem to share a common insight into how personal consciousness is related to the rest of the material cosmos.

Scientific rationalists would, of course, dismiss the very idea of resurrection as childish wishful thinking. But even the fact that humans desire a life beyond the grave seems to make some sense when we understand humanity's cultural evolution as part of "the other half of person."

An interesting article about this desire, written by the award-winning Canadian scholar Charles Taylor, professor emeritus of philosophy at McGill University, appeared in a recent issue of Commonweal.

In his article,"The Sting of Death, Why We Yearn for Eternity", Taylor notes that a recent sociological study of unbelievers indicated that the point of their “creed” hardest for them to hold to is the thought that there is no life after death. He observes that even many rationalists-- with their often dismissive attitude which assumes that our desire for eternity is simply a desire not to have our lives stop-- frequently want to have religious funerals.

But it's not that we just want life to continue, says Taylor. Rather, it's the permanent loss of our relationships which is most difficult to accept. As he puts it: "Joy strives for eternity."

When we recognize "the other half of person" as the communal and relational nature of personal consciousness resulting from cosmic and biological evolution, it looks like our very "yearning" for the continuation of our communion and relatedness may be itself an aspect of the cosmic process-- rather than simply reducible to childish wishful thinking.

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The doctrine about resurrection isn't exclusively Christian, of course, nor is the desire for the persistence of our relationships. But there are also some religious ideas specific to the Christian tradition which seem to me to become especially clear when we see them in terms of "the other half of person."

Probably the most significant is the very nature of the Christian tradition itself which, in its formative period, saw itself precisely as the communal growing edge of humanity's cultural development. That dynamic ecclesial perspective was lost to the western world for a thousand years, but it emerged again in 20th century theological thought with the recovery of the sapiential core of the Judeo-Christian tradition and it makes good sense in terms of the dynamic-evolutionary and communal-cultural nature of our personal consciousness. I hope to share some thoughts along those lines in future postings.

There are also some "in-between" ideas which are much more clear in light of our awareness of "the other half of person." I have in mind things like symbol, myth and ritual, and related concepts such as shamanism and cosmology.

I call them "in-between" ideas because, while we don't think of them as scientific concepts and we know they're not religious doctrines, they are in fact perennial aspects of humanity's global religious practice and they are in fact objects of study in the human sciences.

Much like what Charles Taylor calls our "yearning for eternity," however, the very idea of things such as symbolic rituals or shamanistic cosmologies tend to be dismissed as belonging to an earlier and more immature stage of human development. But they all make some sense in terms of the "other half of person" and Biogenetic Structuralism's understanding of the stages of personal development.

I see them as nothing less than central aspects of the contemporary convergence of science and religion and it was my life-long interest in such things, along with my life-long interest in evolutionary science, that made my discovery of the Biogenetic Structuralist perspective so fascinating.

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I entitled my previous blog entry (#21) "Struggling with Words" to make the point that, as I said above, in sharing my thoughts about the convergence of science and religion, I continually feel the need to say that neither "science" nor "religion" nor "person" mean what popular culture takes them to mean. Even the word "culture" has a much more cosmic meaning than is clear from the term "popular culture."

This struggle to find good words is due to the immense transition in our human self-understanding which began with the 19th-century shift from the static to a dynamic-evolutionary worldview.

Today, we can see personal consciousness as an integral part of the dynamic cosmic process, and precisely for that reason we can see that there is an "other half of person"-- the cultural and relational aspects of the mystery of our personal awareness-- in a way former generations could not.

My whole purpose in writing this blog is to share what I see as the riches of these deeper perspectives with anyone interested, and to do so with that rather odd and mostly unknown branch of the human sciences which calls itself Biogenetic Structuralism and offers more help than anything else I know to spell out the convergence of science and religion.

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So that's where I'm going with all this. With this posting on the "other half of person" I feel that I'm at a turning point in these efforts. It's a good time to say "thank you" to all who have offered encouragement so far with this project.

Thanks, especially, for hanging in there when you repeatedly come across phrases like cognized environment and cognitive extension of prehension and see them linked up with things like myth and ritual. I see them, in terms of Biogenetic Structuralism's understanding of the stages of personal development, as nothing less than central aspects of the contemporary convergence of science and religion.

So... Thanks, thanks, thanks!

sam@macspeno.com

#12. The Cognitive Extension of Prehension

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This is the first of three blog postings dealing with the Mystery of Person in light of the neurological perspectives of Biogenetic Structuralism. It is intentionally being posted on Independence Day: it's about the neurological basis in the brain and nervous system for human freedom.In contrast to the static worldview of former times, the essence of the modern scientific perspective is that we live in a dynamic world, much bigger, older and more complicated than our ancestors ever dreamed.

The dynamic worldview of modern science allows us to see not only that the physical matter of the Earth has become alive in the form of self-transforming structural systems (plants and animals), but also that a portion of the living world has so increased in complexity, via the development of the vertebrate brain and nervous system, that it has become self-aware. Matter, life and mind are three distinct levels of development in the cosmic process.

Teilhard felt that this new scientific perspective was the biggest development in human history since humans first appeared on Earth; we can expect that anything this big will have a major impact on humanity's religious perspectives. Exploring those perspectives is what my efforts with this blog are all about.

I called the previous entry "The End of Dualism," for example, to make the point that we no longer need to think of ourselves as spirits trapped in bodies, as did Greek thought and those dualistic religious perspectives of western culture based on it. As I said in that posting, the modern evolutionary view "marks the end of philosophical and religious dualism which has influenced every aspect of human life for several thousand years." Thanks to contemporary science, we have a much better understanding of the relationship between mind and matter.

Although we know by personal experience what self-awareness means, we find it extremely difficult to put into words. We are indeed a mystery to ourselves. But contemporary neurological studies, set within a biogenetic (evolutionary) context, offer much help in our understanding of the "mystery which we are."

In this posting and the next I hope to share my understanding of the two closely related but distinct ideas about personal consciousness which in the jargon of Biogenetic Structuralism are referred to as the "cognitive extension of prehension" and the "cognized environment." Both have especially significant religious implications.

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To make sure we get off to a good start, we need to keep in mind that the word "matter" means far more today than it did in previous times. Our knowledge of the very small (summed up in Quantum Mechanics), of the very large (summed up in Relativity theory), and of the very old (summed up in Astronomy and Geology), allows us to see that the physical stuff of the universe is something very different from the dead, inert, passive material which for many centuries it was thought to be.

With our dynamic-evolutionary perspective, we can see that the three distinct stages of the material world's development are what is studied respectively by the physical sciences, the biological sciences and the human sciences. But the fact that the findings of the human sciences remain less well known than those of physics and biology, and indeed sometimes are hardly considered authentic science at all, indicates how much we have still to learn.

And of course it is in the "sciences of the mind," those which study the third level of the material world's development, that the implications for humanity's religious understanding are greatest.

But it is the unified perspective-- that matter, life and mind are three stages of the one same cosmic process-- which constitutes the modern scientific worldview.

From an anthropological point of view this unified view is called the "New Cosmology." It is, in fact, a New Story of the World, and one which-- despite religious, ethnic and cultural differences-- all humanity can eventually come to share based on the findings of objective science: plants and animals are the natural result of the evolution of cosmic matter, and human beings are the pinnacle of the development of life on Earth.

This is the new, modern context which we have for understanding the mystery of ourselves as conscious persons.

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One of the most interesting things about personal consciousness is that we have so many names for it. In different situations, we use a variety of words-- mind, soul, spirit, person, psyche, self, inner self, consciousness, cognition, awareness, knowledge, understanding, gnosis and episteme-- to name the inner experience of personal consciousness.

Because we see ourselves from so many different points of view, it's sometimes difficult to recognize that all those terms refer, in fact, to the one same thing. We really are a mystery to ourselves in the most profound sense: we can never exhaust understanding ourselves.

But modern science, especially that combination of neurology and cultural anthropology called Biogenetic Structuralism, offers much help along these lines; and this is one of the places where science and religion converge considerably.

As I said above, I see two big ideas especially worth exploring. The first is Biogenetic Structuralism's jargon phrase, "the cognitive extension of prehension." It deals with the fact that due to the cosmic evolutionary process, the matter of the Earth has become not only alive but self-aware.

The second is a closely related but distinct concept: the amazing fact that we human persons are "the matter of the Earth which has become not only alive but self-aware." "Cognized environment" is the jargon phrase for this concept. I'll try to spell out that idea in some detail in my next blog entry, and offer some thoughts about its religious implications in entry #14.

This present posting focuses on "the cognitive extension of prehension."

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When I first discovered that the field of Biogenetic Structuralism is what I've called "the parent generation" of research for contemporary neurological studies being done at the University of Pennsylvania by Andrew Newberg and associates, it took me a half-dozen readings of their original text Biogenetic Structuralism [Columbia University Press, 1974]) to make sense of their ideas about the cognitive extension of prehension.

So you might like to look back at posting #10 (Overview of Biogenetic Structuralism) where in the sections on Chapters III and IV I've tried to describe these challenging ideas. As I've said a number of times, they are not easy to understand, but they're not impossible either; they are well-worth whatever time and energy we can give them.

The main idea encapsulated in the phrase "cognitive extension of prehension" is that, thanks to the way the human brain works, we are to some extent free of the affective or emotional ties our primate relatives have to their immediate environment.

The structure and organization of the human brain is such that we have a real, if limited, independence of the brain's limbic system, the part of the brain we share with all vertebrate animals going back to our reptile ancestors. It is this relative freedom from instinctual action and response to things in our immediate surroundings which enables us to imagine possible causes of things not present in the external environment; it allows us to deal with things in their absence, to plan ahead and to make choices. This cognitive ability obviously had great survival value for our earliest human ancestors and accounts for contemporary humanity's predominance among the living things of the Earth.

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At first hearing, this idea of the "cognitive extension of prehension" doesn't sound too helpful as an understanding of the mystery of personal consciousness. But in fact it is.

"Prehension" comes from a Latin word which means to seize or grasp; we're familiar with its use in describing the prehensile tail of South American monkeys who use their tails as an additional appendage for wrapping around and holding on to tree branches.

But "prehension" also has a conceptual meaning, as when we say of something which we've previously had a difficult time understanding, "Oh, now I get it". We're saying that we have "grasped" the issue, that we have been able to "wrap our minds around" it. That's what's meant by the cognitive extension (at the human level) of primate prehension.

As I said above, the findings of the human sciences remain less well known than those of the physical and biological sciences, so these words sound strange. But in fact we know what they mean from personal experience.

The main point which the phrase "cognitive extension of prehension" conveys is that human behavior isn't just a matter of instinct, as it is with our primate cousins. We are less stimulus-bound and have a certain amount of autonomy because of the way the structures of our brain are organized. And, obviously, this behavioral freedom from "instinct," limited as it is, is what distinguishes us from our primate cousins and accounts for our characteristically human traits of speech, creativity, technical know-how and imagination.

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What's less obvious-- and this is my whole point in this post-- is that this partial independence of the human brain from the vertebrate limbic system is precisely what was meant in earlier times by our spiritual nature.

In the centuries before anything was known about neuro-physiology, it made good sense to say that "humans have a spiritual soul." In the context of the pre-scientific static worldview, talking about the spiritual nature of the soul was a good way of expressing the fact that what distinguishes homo sapiens from the rest of the animal kingdom is our limited but real autonomy from the world around us. Liberty or freedom is the very essence of what we mean by the human spirit.

Thanks to 20th-century scientific studies of the brain, we can understand even better what the freedom of a human person means. And the great advantage of seeing our spiritual aspect from a neurological perspective is that it doesn't separate us from the rest of the living world but situates us within it. Today, we can see more clearly than other generations that personal consciousness doesn't exist apart from the Earth's biological evolution but, rather, that we are an integral part of the evolution of the universe.

And it's this neurological-evolutionary perspective-- that the human spirit is rooted in the Earth-- which I described in posting #11 as marking the end of religious and rationalist dualism.

When we see what the cognitive extension of prehension means, it becomes clear that we neither have to deny as do scientific rationalists that we have a spiritual soul, nor to claim as religious fundamentalists do that only our spiritual side has value.

And this New Cosmology, this New Story of our place in the living world, coming out of 20th century science, takes away nothing of the awe, wonder and astonishment we experience at the mystery of being a person. Indeed, it enhances it tremendously.

And it opens the door to a much more healthy religious understanding of ourselves not as aliens to, but as participants in, the cosmic process.

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In the dualistic religious perspectives of pre-scientific times, humanity's main task was to escape from the world. Today, thanks to the modern evolutionary perspective, we can see that we not only belong to the world but also that we have a role to play in it.

The modern scientific worldview doesn't take away human dignity, it restores the age-old religious insight of the value of the human person. It allows us to see that each of us has a cosmic vocation, called by our very existence to make a personal contribution to the evolution of the world.

This is one of the most significant places where religion and science at their best converge: in helping us recover the sense that our personal existence has meaning and purpose.

sam@macspeno.com

#2. Spirituality Research Symposium

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I e-mailed this UPenn Symposium report to friends back in April 2006.

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Because of my long-term interest in the links between science and religion, I was aware for some time of research being done at the University of Pennsylvania by Andrew Newberg and others in the area of health and spirituality. They are leaders in the field and have been at it since the early 1990s.

This was their 9th Annual Symposium, but the first I was able to attend. Its theme was "Beliefs In Health," with the word "beliefs" referring both to beliefs about health as well as to religious beliefs. It was free and open to the public: "chaplains, nurses, social workers, physicians, students and members of the community."

There were about 200 people present, slightly more woman than men, and many young people. While the speakers sometimes referred to the work of female colleagues, and one woman was scheduled to take part in the final hour's panel discussion, the speakers were all male.

It was a delight to listen to intelligent people speaking intelligently about important issues. Most of them had too much to offer in the time-frame available. They often skipped over more of their power-point slides than they discussed. It was a delight, too, to see how they voluntarily and consciously adhered to their time limits. (Quite different from speakers at religious gatherings!)

Most of the science-religion discussions I've been exposed to have a theological starting point; they explore how scientific findings support the basic intuitive perceptions and feelings of religious perspectives. Teilhard himself is a good example, as well as "geologian" Thomas Berry and the New Cosmology "evangelist" Michael Dowd. They begin with a basically religious-spiritual point of view open to findings from the contemporary scientific worldview which they see as providing a dynamic new context for understanding the world, ourselves and God. A special characteristic of this evolutionary starting point seems to be a sense of human responsibility for the health of the Earth.

Work in "spirituality research" starts from the opposite direction. These are not people with a theologically-oriented perspective taking science seriously, but scientists-- specifically medical science practitioners and researchers-- taking religion seriously. It's a very different perspective.

There was no talk at the symposium of astrophysics or quantum mechanics or complexity theory, for example. This was a symposium of medical practitioners and researchers concerned with the impact of spirituality and religious beliefs on the mental and physical health of ordinary people.

As an acceptable area of scientific research, spirituality research is only about 15 years old; and the overriding view seemed to be "we've only just begun." The emphasis from these medical practitioners was that we don't yet have good definitions of what we're dealing with and so hardly know what the right questions are to ask and what the right research tools might be to get answers to our questions.

The basic issue is: How does being religious or being spiritual or having beliefs-- even those basic terms aren't yet clearly defined-- help people stay physically and emotionally healthy... and recover from major illnesses... or deal with a non-recoverable illness.

The speakers had a wide understanding of religion-spirituality and its practice. While it was emphasized that they intended to exclude nothing-- from native or tribal religions to New Age practices and the "spiritual-but-not-religious" perspectives from the 60's-- most of the research mentioned seemed to focus on the conventional institutional forms usually expressed by attendance at "worship services." And while the word "God" was used often, there was no attempt to define or describe what was meant by "God." And "God" was always a "he" or "him."

I have to assume a more sophisticated understanding is operative, but it was not evidenced in the short time the speakers had. I also picked up a lack of a sense of the current movement beyond conventional religious understanding to less institutional and less patriarchal forms of religious practice. It may be that the current movement toward a post-institutional understanding of religion and spirituality is something that's more obvious from the theological side of the science-religion focus; or, again, it may be simply that the speakers' time was quite limited.

I was especially interested in looking for sensitivity to the fact that we're currently in a major transition to a more dynamic understanding of the world and our place in it: to those evolutionary perspectives known as the "New Cosmology." I picked up no evidence of it, nor of any awareness of the religion-ecology link that seems so central to it. It may be that this was simply not the focus of the research, of course, and I also need to note that my comments here are only impressions from three hours of speakers.

There was a fourth hour scheduled: a panel of the six speakers, with audience discussion. But I left as it was about to start; my head simply couldn't hold any more thoughts. It was a beautiful day. The Penn campus was glorious with dogwoods and azaleas and young bright-eyed students; many actually reading books. (There was even a drumming group!) I walked the 20 blocks from UPenn down to 16th and Locust to get the train back to Jersey. On the way, I sat in Rittenhouse Square for a while, which was also at its springtime peak, to make some additional notes.

While the symposium was heavily academic, the orientation was always in terms of research rather than theory, and on research as applied to the real world of the illness and health of real people. Jargon was minimal. (Delightful!) It was a privilege to be present to hear such a renowned group.

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A few words about the four primary speakers. David Hufford (Penn State) spoke of the fact that a major study in 2005 of the literature in the field reflects a lack of awareness and understanding regarding American cultural diversity in spirituality, religion and health.

Stephen Post (Case Western Reserve ) focused on the scientific study of phenomena such as altruism, compassion, and service (referred to as "love" for short). His emphasis was that while "love" has a major impact on human health and behavior, and is a fundamental motivator of human beings, influencing everything from family dynamics and health to inner peace and global politics, it has been virtually ignored by modern science as a valid source of practical and useful knowledge.

George Fitchett (Rush University Medical Center, Chicago) spoke about what he called "religious struggle" or "anger at God" (or church or clergy). Negative beliefs about themselves and about the meaning and purpose of their lives can have serious negative impact on the health of patients.

Andrew Newberg (UPenn), organizer of the symposium and Program Director of the University of Pennsylvania's newly inaugurated Center for Spirituality and the Mind, uses nuclear medicine and radiology to study the underlying neurophysiology of the brain's functions to get at questions about how beliefs form and how they affect mental and physical health. It was Newberg's work that I was especially interested in.

Here are some things I learned which I found especially interesting...

1. I was impressed by these scholars and doctors being able to acknowledge that theirs is a new field in terms of research. Especially impressive is their willingness to acknowledge that they have no clear definitions yet about the nature of, or distinctions between, religion, spirituality and beliefs. They said quite explicitly, "we don't know yet what the right questions are to ask." (This, too is quite different from what's often experienced at religious conferences!)

2. One of the speakers noted that attempting to understand the workings of the mind and brain in terms of religion is a major scientific issue of the 21st century. (This reminded me of the comment of British theologian and Orthodox bishop, Timothy Ware, at Princeton a few years ago that the major task of the 21st century is to understand what we mean by "person." Whether we're talking religion, health or science, we are just beginning to understand ourselves. And that perspective is itself more clear from the evolutionary worldview.)

3. One speaker noted that while understanding the science-religion connections isn't easy, it is somewhat easier when dealt with in terms of health and spirituality. As he put it, we're are just now "on the brink" of understanding the links between religion and health. Research has a great need for developing good measuring instruments, as well as for coming up with good definitions and asking the right questions.

4. One example of this kind of research is a fascinating study relating HIV virus blood components to patients' primary sense of God. The presence of certain blood factors (I didn't get the specific terms) of HIV patients was compared with HIV patients' perspectives about the nature of God in relation to human persons. Is God essentially good and loving with regard to us? Or basically punishing and vindictive? Patients with no view about God in this regard were twice as likely to have positive anti-HIV factors as those who thought of God as especially punishing. And those who thought of God as essentially good had positive anti-HIV factors six times as much as those with no view. That is: if you believe in a God who is basically loving rather than as basically punishing, you have a 12-times better chance of having anti-HIV factors. Fascinating!

5. I don't get all the terms right, but these findings were presented in typical scientific fashion in terms of percentages, probability, etc. They are objective measurable data which other researchers can attempt to duplicate. Duplication of research findings by others is perhaps the very essence of the methods used by science to know about the world.

6. Much of the interesting data concerned what was called "religious struggle." About 15% of patients with major illnesses struggle with anger at God (or church or clergy).

7. One study compared the religious struggle of patients with various illnesses (grouped into patients with cancers, heart problems, and a third area which I didn't get to record). Their "struggle" was measured in terms of both recovery rate (how long it took) and mortality (i.e., non-recovery). The resulting data offers a especially good example of how complex science research is.

8. The example: the data is that the older patients show less "religious struggle" about serious illnesses. That's a reproducible bit of data. But it doesn't necessarily mean, as might seem obvious, that older people are more resigned to having a major illness. It was pointed out that it may be, instead, that the data reflects social views: the conventional perspectives of a half century ago were quite different from those of today, so that younger people may be much less inhibited in expressing their negative views about God and religion than older people. This is a really good example of the kinds of distinctions researchers need to make. Obtaining objective data is one thing; interpreting it is another!

9. Another interesting bit of data regarding anger at God: The lowest level of religious struggle was found in seriously ill people who attended worship services weekly. But the second lowest level occurs in people who never attend church services.

10. A personal observation: while church attendance may be a measurement of religiousness, it needs to be noted that church attendance is not, in itself, the conventional indicator of being religious it was in previous generations. I didn't hear that mentioned, however, by the researchers.

11. While age made a significant difference in terms of seriously ill people expressing anger at God, there was no indication that race, education and marital status made any difference at all.

12. Many people expressed their religious struggle with phrases such as "I am no longer talking to God." The speaker pointed out that this is perhaps the most common expression of the religious struggle. He also noted that it seems to be quite similar to a breakdown of communication in a marriage; i.e., while the couple may be "no longer speaking," in fact "there is still a relationship."

13. Many struggling with "anger at God" attributed their religious perspectives to parents and religion teachers in childhood. A bit of data with vast implications for authoritarian religion.

14. An interesting tidbit: Who would have guessed that the contemporary concern for health foods originated among Seventh Day Adventists.

15. The lecture on altruism, ethics, morality in terms of health was summed up by the speaker as "It's good to be good." Or "It's better to give than receive." (Isn't it fascinating that scientific data is being accumulated-- even that it needs to be accumulated-- about the fact that the primary recipient of the effects of our actions is ourselves!)

16. From my personal perspective, I was most interested in Andrew Newberg's talk. I'd been wanting to hear him for several years. He is a practicing MD, with patient calls coming in, as one speaker pointed out, even during the symposium. In his work using nuclear medicine to study brain activity, he has done neurophysiology studies of the meditation states of Tibetan monks, Transcendental Meditation practitioners, Franciscan nuns doing centering prayer, and persons who have had near-death experiences. He, too, emphasized that we've only just begun to get some clear ideas about how brain-functions and religious-spiritual attitudes are connected. One very important idea from those studies is that profound religious experience is always colored by previous beliefs: what we understand and experience depends on where we started and where we're coming from.

Newberg is author (with Eugene D'Aquili) of The Mystical Mind: Probing the Biology of Religious Experience (Augsburg Fortress, 1999), (with Vince Rause) of Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (Ballantine, 2001), and of Why We Believe What We Believe: Uncovering Our Biological Need for Meaning, Spirituality, and Truth (due out soon).

17. In a wonderful affirmation of my long-time interest (from Jungian personality types and the Native American medicine wheel, for example) in the mandalic (or quaternary) nature of the psyche, Newberg described the workings of the brain in terms of a four-fold activity, too. He says we experience the world through our senses, try to understand it via cognition, react to it via feeling-emotion, and we turn to others to hear what they think is going on via social consensus. While we start with a perception of the cosmos ("the whole of reality," as he called it), we can only be conscious of a small part of it at any one time; he had a drawing of a large brain with a very small dot to indicate the limited extent of its conscious contents. Fascinating stuff!

sam@macspeno.com