Spirituality and the Brain: A Scientific Approach to Religious Experience

Hosted by Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology at Boston University's Danielsen Institute

Wesley J. Wildman, a School of Theology associate professor of theology and ethics, takes a scientific approach to the discussion of religious and spiritual experiences in the second lecture in the six-part series Religious Experiences: From the Mundane to the Anomalous at Boston University’s Danielsen Institute. Attempting to address the centuries-old question of how human consciousness — known to some as the soul — interacts with the brain, Wildman discusses the possibilities, limitations, and implications of using scientific observation of the brain to interpret religious experiences.

He says brain-imaging technologies, such as EEGs and MRIs, can help to legitimize the study of religious and spiritual experiences. Yet while scientific studies can eliminate some of the problems of the field, he says, such as a lack of long-term quantifiable data, neurology does not give a full picture of religious experiences. He advocates studying unique individual experiences to give studies “ecological validity.”

Ultimately, Wildman concludes, contemporary science has made great progress in showing how some of our feelings, including religious and spiritual ones, are expressed in the brain. Still, he argues, a better scientific understanding of these experiences does not lead to proof or refutation of a higher power — the human soul and its origins, he says, remain a mystery.

Part of a research project at the Danielsen Institute’s Center for the Study of Religion and Psychology, the lecture series is funded by a Templeton Foundation grant from the Metanexus Institute, which administers the Templeton Research Lectures.

October 1, 2007, 7:30 p.m.
Sargent College

Video length is 01:27:27.

About the speaker:
Wesley J. Wildman is an associate professor of theology and ethics at the Boston University School of Theology, where he directs the doctoral programs in Christian theology, in comparative theology, and in science, philosophy, and religion. Wildman has a bachelor’s in mathematics from Flinders University and a graduate degree in divinity from the University of Sydney, both in Australia. He earned a doctorate in philosophical and systematic theology and philosophy of religion from the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, California. He has published more than 60 articles and the book Fidelity with Plausibility: Modest Christologies in the Twentieth Century. Wildman is the coeditor of the Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, as well as a collection of debates on contemporary issues in religion and science. He has studied the nature and problems of religious experience for over a decade through his involvement with the Divine Action Project at Boston University, sponsored by the Vatican Observatory and the Center for Theology and Natural Sciences, in Berkeley, and the Crosscultural Comparative Religious Ideas Project at BU. An ordained minister in the Uniting Church in Australia, Wildman has served churches in Sydney, Australia, and Piedmont, California.

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