New Frontier of Religion and Science Religious Experience, Neuroscience, and the Transcendent

by Hick, John

• ISBN13: 9780230507708
• ISBN10: 0230507700
• eBook ISBN(s): 9780230626430
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2007-01-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This is the first major response to the new challenge of neuroscience to religion. There have been limited responses from a purely Christian point of view, but this takes account of eastern as well as western forms of religious experience. It challenges the prevailing naturalistic assumption of our culture, including the idea that the mind is either identical with or a temporary by-product of brain activity. It also discusses religion as institutions and religion as inner experience of the Transcendent, and suggests a form of spirituality for today.

Author Biography

JOHN HICK is a world-renowned philosopher of religion. He is the author of numerous books, translated into sixteen languages. He has taught in Britain and the United States and lectured in many countries. His Gifford Lectures, An Interpretation of Religion, received the Grawemeyer Award for new religious thinking.

Table of Contents

Preface	p. xi
Religion as Human Institutions	p. 3
Pre-axial religion	p. 3
The axial age	p. 4
The new axial insights	p. 6
Religion as institution and religion as spirituality/mysticism	p. 7
The institutional balance sheet	p. 8
The 'scientific' study of religion	p. 11
Spirituality and Mysticism	p. 14
'Spirituality' and spirituality	p. 14
Spirituality/mysticism	p. 19
Unitive mysticism	p. 21
What Is Religious Experience?	p. 27
What do we mean by religious experience?	p. 27
The kinds of religious experience	p. 28
A transformed world	p. 29
The sense of presence	p. 31
Visions and auditions	p. 33
Some rarer forms of religious experience	p. 35
The relation between the inner and outer aspects of religion	p. 36
'By Their Fruits You Will Know Them'	p. 39
From the sublime to the ridiculous	p. 39
Within the monotheisms	p. 41
Within Buddhism	p. 43
Individual and social fruits	p. 45
The Neurosciences' Challenge to Religious Experience	p. 55
The contemporary naturalistic world-view	p. 55
Religious materialism?	p. 57
Brain to consciousness causality	p. 58
God and the limbic system	p. 62
Meditation and the brain	p. 63
Caveats and Questions	p. 67
Religious experience as mental aberration	p. 67
Religious experience and epilepsy	p. 70
Meditation and the brain	p. 75
Drugs and religious experience	p. 76
Pure consciousness	p. 78
Mind/Brain Identity?	p. 81
Identifying the questions	p. 82
The correlation = identity fallacy	p. 82
Begging the question	p. 83
The identity theory	p. 85
The mystery of consciousness	p. 89
Current Naturalistic Theories	p. 92
Epiphenomenalism	p. 92
The Libet experiments	p. 92
Consciousness as a social product	p. 94
Consciousness and evolution	p. 97
Consciousness as an emergent property	p. 99
Biological naturalism	p. 103
The Alternative Possibility	p. 106
The plasticity of the brain	p. 106
Brain plasticity observed in Buddhist meditation	p. 108
Free Will?	p. 112
Compatibilist and non-compatibilist freedom	p. 112
Experimental evidence	p. 115
Quantum indeterminacy	p. 118
The problem of self-reference	p. 119
The Epistemological Problem	p. 127
Our epistemic situation	p. 127
The principle of critical trust	p. 129
Critical trust and religious experience	p. 130
Differences and contradictions	p. 133
The Epistemological Solution	p. 137
Experiencing as interpreting	p. 137
Levels of meaning	p. 140
Cognitive freedom	p. 142
Any Particular Religion?	p. 146
Which religion?	p. 146
Salvation	p. 149
Responses to religious diversity	p. 150
Responses to Religious Diversity	p. 154
Multiple aspect pluralism	p. 154
Polycentric pluralism	p. 156
A Philosophy of Religious Pluralism	p. 162
The Transcendent	p. 162
The premises	p. 162
The basic distinction	p. 163
The Transcendent as beyond human description	p. 164
The problem	p. 166
The solution	p. 167
Pluralism and the Religions	p. 172
The problem	p. 172
But is pluralism compatible with existing religious practice?	p. 175
The existing religions	p. 176
Spirituality for Today	p. 181
Cosmic optimism	p. 181
Inspiration from the saints	p. 182
Prayer	p. 184
Meditation	p. 186
After Death?	p. 191
The origin of after-life beliefs	p. 191
Heaven and hell in the Christian tradition	p. 192
Reincarnation	p. 194
Where?	p. 197
Many lives in many worlds	p. 197
Concluding Summary	p. 201
Religion as institutions and as spirituality	p. 201
The primacy of religious experience	p. 202
Religion and neuroscience	p. 204
Epistemology and religious experience	p. 205
Notes	p. 207
Reference Bibliography	p. 214
Index	p. 225
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