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Binding: HardcoverDewey Decimal Number: 200.19 EAN: 9780060858834 Edition: 1 ISBN: 0060858834 Label: HarperOne Manufacturer: HarperOne Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 384 Publication Date: August 01, 2007 Publisher: HarperOne Release Date: September 04, 2007 Studio: HarperOne Related Items:
Browse for similar items by category: Click to Display Editorial Review: Product Description: Do religious experiences come from God, or are they merely the random firing of neurons in the brain? Drawing on his own research with Carmelite nuns, neuroscientist Mario Beauregard shows that genuine, life-changing spiritual events can be documented. He offers compelling evidence that religious experiences have a nonmaterial origin, making a convincing case for what many in scientific fields are loath to consider—that it is God who creates our spiritual experiences, not the brain. Beauregard and O'Leary explore recent attempts to locate a "God gene" in some of us and claims that our brains are "hardwired" for religion—even the strange case of one neuroscientist who allegedly invented an electromagnetic "God helmet" that could produce a mystical experience in anyone who wore it. The authors argue that these attempts are misguided and narrow-minded, because they reduce spiritual experiences to material phenomena. Many scientists ignore hard evidence that challenges their materialistic prejudice, clinging to the limited view that our experiences are explainable only by material causes, in the obstinate conviction that the physical world is the only reality. But scientific materialism is at a loss to explain irrefutable accounts of mind over matter, of intuition, willpower, and leaps of faith, of the "placebo effect" in medicine, of near-death experiences on the operating table, and of psychic premonitions of a loved one in crisis, to say nothing of the occasional sense of oneness with nature and mystical experiences in meditation or prayer. Traditional science explains away these and other occurrences as delusions or misunderstandings, but by exploring the latest neurological research on phenomena such as these, The Spiritual Brain gets to their real source. Average Rating:
 Rating:  - Mind is not brainThe author writes a necessary book which starts out be describing limits to the current approach to neuroscience, which is based on a materialistic philosophy. He cites paradoxes, including the placebo effect, which the current research programs cannot adequately answer. He then goes on to explore many examples by which physical changes in the brain are invoked through concentrated will and belief, 2 entities that hard-core materialists won't acknowledge. Through a multi-disciplined argument he hints ... Read More Rating:  - In defense of spirituality.Beauregarde argues that the entire edifice of today's accepted science is based on the twin pillars of materialism and scientism. Materialism insists that everything in the universe consists of only one substance, matter. Scientism asserts that only the methods of natural sciences, like physics and chemistry, provide real knowledge. Both postulates, however, are at odds with the occurrence of what the author calls "Religious, Spiritual, and Mystical Experiences" (RSMEs). He defines these as "specific, ... Read More Rating: - An excellent bookIn The Spiritual Brain, Dr. Beauregard explains why his research on the brain states of 15 Carmelite nuns shows that religious, mystical, and spiritual experiences cannot be explained away as merely a "God spot" in the brain or a "God gene". He states that the findings of his study do not "prove that mystics contact a power outside of themselves", but that "to the extent that spiritual experiences are experiences in which we contact the reality of our universe, we should expect them to be complex. We can certainly ... Read More Rating: - Good for the open minded materialistsIf you are open minded, it will demonstrate that the current theories of some materialist fall short in evidence from a scientific point of view. The author used many references and was very methodical and objective in his critique of the most popular myths about mainstream materialists science. He uses science to show that the consciousness remains after bodily death or it at least shows that the materialist theories are wrong. I also recommend "Creation solved?" by Ron Pearson (google it) Rating:  - Neuroscience meets...God!!XXXXX "As we have seen throughout this book, materialist [materialism is a philosophy that holds that the only thing that can be truly proven to exist is matter] neuroscientists and philosophers hold that mind, consciousness, and self are by-products of the brain's electrical and chemical processes, and that RSMEs [religious, spiritual, and/or mystical experiences] are `nothing but' brain states or delusions created by neural activity. Accordingly these scientists and philosophers believe that there is ... Read More 
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