“The Spiritual Brain” by Mario Beauregard, Denyse O'Leary is subtitled “A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul”, but it represents as much a philosophical examination of modernity and materialism as it does a thoughtful examination of the brain and its abilities/limits explored by scientific methodological rigor.
Before the authors enter deeply into tests, hypothesis and results, they delve deeply into the conundrum of how the current scientific community predisposes itself to the modernist and materialist worldview, even (at times) in the face of scientific evidence that points elsewhere. The authors seek to expose some of these philosophical foundations to allow them to confront some of the underlying worldview issues.
But before going deep into reviewing “The Spiritual Brain” and its premise, let me examine the context of thought that is being dealt with here. How can we question and evaluate a framework (IE. modernity and materialism) that has served mankind for the last few hundred years with increasing absolution from critique? In this, post-modernity does us a service in opening the door for questioning long established assumptions. The most essential assumptions to be confronted are modernity and materialism (in the classic philosophical sense).
Modernity and materialism (both scientific and cultural) have played key roles in western thought for the last 300-400 years. The impact of these ideologies has been felt not only in secular life but the Christian community as well. The deep impact of modernity in the church, and even in its pastoral leadership, is echoed well by Thomas Oden, who says:
Modern chauvinism has assumed that all recent modes of knowing the truth are vastly superior to all older ways, a view that has recently presided over the precipitous deterioration of social structures and processes in the third quarter of the twentieth century. My frank goal has been to help free persons from feeling intimidated by modernity, which while it often seems awesome is rapidly losing its moral power, and to grasp the emerging vision of a postmodern classical Christianity.[1]
Oden’s statement scratches the surface of a festering boil within our faith community - we have lost our foundational trust in the classic wisdom of our tradition. We have replaced it with an underlying trust in society’s secular pillars of modernity and materialism, and those have influenced almost every pastoral and leadership discipline in Christianity. We have tried to nuance our statements and practices with faith language, but our underlying assumptions were still founded on the principles within modernity and materialist reductionism.
Challenges to the materialist worldview have not only come from pastoral and theological leaders such as Oden (above), but also from scientific experts themselves, such as Dr. Mario Beauregard. He and Denyse O’Leary are the authors of the recent book “The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul.” Hence, we get to our promised review of this book.
In this work, Beauregard appropriately confronts the philosophical constructs of materialism before getting to the scientific theories, experiments and studies. He does this to explain how the scientific findings are being interpreted through the materialist mindset, and bent to reinforce the same. The following extensive quote gives an example of one such point where Beauregard deconstructs the materialist arrogance that has been injected into the scientific work of neuroscience.
American culture critic Tom Wolfe put the matter succinctly in an elegant little essay he published in 1996, “Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died,” which expounds the “neuroscientific view of life.” He wrote about the new imaging techniques that enable neuroscientists to see what is happening in your brain when you experience a thought or an emotion. The outcome, according to Wolfe, is:
Since consciousness and thought are entirely physical products of your brain and nervous system—and since your brain arrived fully imprinted at birth—what makes you think you have free will? Where is it going to come from? What “ghost,” what “mind,” what “self,” what “soul,” what anything that will not be immediately grabbed by those scornful quotation marks, is going to bubble up your brain stem to give it to you? I have heard neuroscientists theorize that, given computers of sufficient power and sophistication, it would be possible to predict the course of any human being’s life moment by moment, including the fact that the poor devil was about to shake his head over the very idea.
Wolfe doubts that any sixteenth-century Calvinist believed so completely in predestination as these hot young scientists. The whole materialist creed that Wolfe outlines hangs off one little word, “Since”—“Since consciousness and thought are entirely physical products of your brain and nervous system…” In other words, neuroscientists have not discovered that there is no you in you; they start their work with that assumption. Anything they find is interpreted on the basis of that view. The science does not require that. Rather, it is an obligation that materialists impose on themselves. But what if scientific evidence points in a different direction? As we will see, it does. But before we get to the neuroscience, it may be worthwhile to look at some other reasons for thinking that the twentieth-century materialist consensus isn’t true. Neuroscience is, after all, a rather new discipline, and it would be best to first establish that there are also good reasons for doubting materialism that arise from older disciplines.[2]
We don’t have to be neuroscientists to understand the implications of the materialist reductionism being presented by Wolfe and his contemporaries. Beauregard works with careful tension between scientific and philosophical arguments to bring his thesis to the forefront - that we have built both our worldview and our scientific methodologies on a foundation that has begun to crack. We cannot move forward with true exploration (scientific or otherwise) without resetting those foundations in a system that incorporates the possibility of something non-materialist. Like the labels of modernity and post-modernity, Beauregard has no nomenclature for the new worldview, other than calling it the antithesis of its predecessor- “non-materialist”.
Without giving a essay length review of Beauregard’s excellent book, we can summarize his efforts to
- articulating the presumptions of materialist reductionism within scientific thought
- presenting an alternative non-materialist philosophical viewpoint
- detailing scientific studies and findings that support the non-materialist viewpoint
- presenting the specific details and summary findings proving the existence of the mind outside of the brain.
This work has some excellent power points made along the way. Each one confronting a remnant of materialist thinking that is answered with thoughtful nuance. One such example is this:
A teleologically oriented (i.e., purposeful rather than random) biological evolution has enabled humans to consciously and voluntarily shape the functioning of our brains. As a result of this powerful capacity, we are not biological robots totally governed by “selfish” genes and neurons.[3]
This is in direct response to scientific claims that genes force not only our structure and biology, but our actions and choices. Beauregard's response here is supported with much detail, but I wanted to highlight just such a conclusion that he comes to so you can understand the scope of the work he is attempting to do- to provide both a scientific and philosophical reset on the materialist/reductionist worldview which he says is wrongly assumed and embedded in the modern scientific community and work.
The book ultimately provides extensive study and data related to Beauregard’s thesis, along with summation of the reasons that he attributes the human soul with existence beyond the brain. But you cannot get to that conclusion without first travelling long (and sometimes hard) through the depths of his philosophical deconstruction and reconstruction. That said, it is a worthwhile journey and I highly encourage you to make it if you are interested in the topics brought up here.
Amazon Book Link: http://amzn.to/OCjQhg
Review by Kim Gentes
[1]Thomas C. Oden, “Care of Souls in the Classic Tradition” (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), Pg 24
[2]Mario Beauregard, Denyse O'Leary, “The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Case for the Existence of the Soul”. (New York, NY: HarperCollins Publishers Inc., 2007), Pg 4
[3] Ibid., Pg 45
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