The Role of Cognition and Feeling in Religious Experience

Abstract

Inquiry into religious experience is informed by conceptualizations of emotion. Although a long history of theoretical and empirical work has provided considerable insight into the philosophical, psychological, and (more recently) neurobiological structure of emotion, the role of cognition and feeling in religious emotional states remains poorly conceived, and, hence, so does the concept of religious experience. The lack of a clear understanding of the role of emotion in religious experience is a consequence of a lack of an adequate interdisciplinary account of emotions. Our primary aim here is to examine the consequences of a properly interdisciplinary understanding of emotions for the analysis of religious experience. To this end, we note points of convergence between psychological, philosophical, and neuroscientific accounts of emotion and between such accounts and reports on the neurobiology of religious experience, in particular two recent human brain imaging studies. We conclude that emotions are richer phenomena than either pure feeling or pure thought and that, rightly understood, emotion affords religious experience its distinctive content and quality. Accordingly, we argue that religious experience cannot be reduced to pure feeling or pure thought. Rather, on our analysis, religious experience emerges as "thinking that feels like something." Keywords:emotion; human brain imaging; neuroscience; religious experience.One of the presuppositions operative in inquiries into religious experience is that religious experience has a necessary emotional component. A long

From Brain Imaging Religious Experience to Explaining Religion: A Critique

“…Th is particular finding not only challenges the 'limbic marker hypothesis' of religious experience, but, as well, supports the conviction that religious experience and emotion, while related, are not exactly the same thing (Azari & Birnbacher, 2004).…”

The Religious Brain: A General Introduction to the Experimental Neuroscience of Religion

“…In contrast, social constructivists continue to draw inspiration from Èmile Durkheim, George Herbert Mead, Peter L. Berger, and Cliff ord Geertz by claiming that even basic feelings and common sense notions are products of society. Azari and colleagues join this discussion by analyzing imaging data of the same experiment from diff erent angles (Azari et al 2001(Azari et al , 2004(Azari et al , 2005. Th e study measured the brain activity (PET) of six Christian fundamentalists and six non-religious participants under six conditions: reading and reciting the Bible (Psalm 23), reading and reciting a nursery rhyme (non-melodic), reading a neutral text, and simply resting (baseline).…”

Religious Studies as a Life Science

“…The experiment also revealed something quite novel. Contrary to expectations, the team found no evidence of recruitment in those areas of the brain associated with feelings (the mesolimbic system and the insula) (Azari and Birnbacher 2004;Azari, Missimer, and Seitz 2005). The authors suggest that, during biblical reading, anyway, religious emotion may depend more on interpretations than on feeling states, for such experiences do not appear to recruit trembling, fear, awe, or affection.…”