BizCar - English Language Books: International supplier of books in the English language
|
|
|
| The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul | 
 enlarge | Authors: Mario Beauregard, Denyse O'leary
Publisher: HarperOne
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95 (61.09 RON)
Buy New: $17.13 (40.33 RON)
You Save: $8.82 (20.76 RON) (34%)
Avg. Customer Rating:  29 reviews
Sales Rank: 80199
Media: Hardcover
Edition: 1
Number Of Items: 1
Pages: 384
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5
ISBN: 0060858834
Dewey Decimal Number: 200.19
EAN: 9780060858834
ASIN: 0060858834
Publication Date: August 1, 2007
Shipping: Eligible for Super Saver Shipping
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
|
| Editorial Reviews:
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.
|
| Customer Reviews: Read 24 more reviews...
 Mind is not brain July 8, 2008
1 out of 3 found this review helpful
The 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 that there are workings in the human being that are not merely physical. The book is a good overview but stops short of the science of that which is not merely physical, such as quantum mechanical gaps operating at the electrical states in the brain, and the shared mind concept which operates across society and which may be related to memes. There is also very little in the way of theology supporting the word spiritual in the book's title.
 In defense of spirituality. May 25, 2008
2 out of 8 found this review helpful
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, deep felt, transcendental experiences that make those who experience them aware of a benevolent non-physical power which appears to be partly or wholly beyond, and far greater than the individual self." Such experiences, says Beauregarde, have been at the heart of every religion that came to existence.
The author studied cases of RSMEs and Near Death Experiences, which he considers similar, and argues that not only they are real but they (or even just their memories) activate simultaneously certain large areas of the person's brain. This last is in direct contradiction to the recently proposed theory that RSMEs result from the activation of one specific spot in the temporal lobe, and can be thus related to epileptic seizures and other brain malfunctions.
Beauregarde does a credible job of proving that normal mechanistic theories cannot explain such things as mind, ego, and consciousness, or even properly define them. As an example he discusses the power of the thinking mind over the body's reactions: the placebo effect, and its reverse, the nocebo; how fearful thoughts increase the secretion of adrenaline in the brain, whereas happy thoughts increase endorphin secretions.
Arguing that Near Death Experiences prove that RSMEs occur even when the brain is not functioning and clinical criteria of death have been reached, he concludes that consciousness is independent of the physical brain. He thinks that no person experiences more than two such events in his lifetime, which, if true, would explain Mother Teresa's complaint that she had lost "touch" with her God. He goes on to discuss that people's lives are greatly changed by RSMEs, and that they become more loving and have greater empathy than before.
The book concludes with his measurements of the brain activity of some Carmelite nuns while they were in a deep contemplative state. Although none of them experienced any actual RSMEs during these tests, their brains did exhibit simultaneous activation in many areas usually associated with self-consciousness, emotion, body representation, visual and motor imagery, and spiritual perception. He asked them to think back on their RSME experiences, and concluded that people remember them with the same detail they remember real experiences, in contrast to the vaguer way in which they remember hallucinations, delusions, and dreams.
Does all this prove that the soul exists as the title states? Unfortunately, the author does not define anywhere in the book what the soul is, and only mentions it briefly once. He does argue, however, that consciousness is external to the brain and not related to its operation. Does the book prove that God exists? Again this is true only if you restrict your definition of God to something loving and all-encompassing. Even with these limitations, I still wish that this book had been published a couple of years earlier so that I could have made reference to the author's findings in my own book.
(The writer is the author of "The Way of the Butterfly: A Scientific Speculation on God and the Hereafter," and of "Christianity Without Fairy Tales: When Science And Religion Merge.")
An excellent book May 25, 2008
3 out of 9 found this review helpful
In 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 say that the patterns of the serious mystics definitely are."
An excellent book, and not just for the insight you will gain into how Dr. Beauregard's neuroscience research has led him to conclude that religious, spiritual, and mystical experiences are real and not merely a product of the functioning of a brain, but also for the shear scope of topics covered in addressing the validity of a non-materialist belief system. No stone is unturned as the reader is introduced to the leading thinkers, researchers and ideas related to the subject of a non-material mind in fields ranging from quantum mechanics and artificial intelligence to PSI phenomena and near death experiences. I highly recommend his book.
Good for the open minded materialists May 5, 2008
2 out of 9 found this review helpful
If 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)
 Neuroscience meets...God!! April 28, 2008
13 out of 20 found this review helpful
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 no spiritual source for RSMEs, that is, they think that the human brain creates these experiences and, in doing so, creates God...this book has been a refutation of their views from a number of angles...I think [or CONCLUDE] that the evidence supports the view that individuals that have RSMEs do in fact contact an objectively real 'force' that exists outside themselves."
The above comes from this book authored by "non-materialist" neuroscientist Mario Beauregard (the main author) and Christian journalist Denyse O'Leary. Also, the above quotation basically sums up the entire book. (Neuroscience is the field devoted to the scientific study of the nervous system.)
For those who have read the above quotation carefully, this book is really about mind. Historically, mind has been viewed in two ways:
(1) mind has been viewed as a metaphysical entity separate and apart from the mechanistic systems of the brain (the part of the central nervous system encased within the skull).
(2) it has been viewed as a biological metaphor representing the manifestation of the, still not understood, neurophysiologic processes of the brain.
The structure of this book (as can be deduced from the above quotation) views the mind as given in (1) above but with a religious twist. This view is favoured by vigorously refuting the materialistic or biologic view given in (2) above.
Unfortunately, errors abound in this book. Here are a few of my favourites:
(1) The "standard assumption" in current neuroscience is that "there really is no YOU in you at all, that consciousness, soul, spirit, and free will are merely illusions bolstered by folklore." This is untrue.
(2) The brain is a "quantum system." There is no evidence of this.
(3) We are told that the Hippocratic Oath contains the phrase "First, do no harm." It does not.
(4) This is my absolute favourite:
"The average neuron [or nerve cell], consisting of about 100,000 molecules...The brain is home to about 100 billion [neurons] and thus about [1 followed by 15 zeros] molecules. Each neuron gets about 10,000 or so [synaptic] connections from other cells in the brain."
There's something wrong here. Take sentences one and three. If you divide (100,000) molecules by (10,000) connections, you get (10) molecules making up each synaptic connection!! That's impossible!!! There's no way you could make up an adequate connection with such a small amount of material.
Take sentences one and two. Multiplying (100,000) molecules by the brain's (100 billion) neurons gives (1 followed by 16 zeros) molecules in the brain not (1 followed by 15 zeros) molecules. The author's are in error by a factor of 10!!
As you can see, the authors' numbers are suspect and they can't get the basic math in their own estimate right!!!!
This book is rife with anecdotal stories and inferential conclusions. There is actual minimal science and neuroscience presented.
There are also endless quotations from others, and some of these quotations appear to be taken out of context so as to bolster the authors' argument. After a while, these became a tedious chore to read. There is also a mistake in a key quotation by Albert Einstein:
The book has the quotation as:
"The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mystical."
The last word should be "mysterious." This is an important distinction because "mystical" as used in this book implies "God power." Einstein did not believe in God.
Even though there is a glossary, many terms that are important to understand the main narrative do not appear in it.
The CONCLUSION of the book given in the quotation that begins this review can be restated as follows: the brain is a receiver for supernatural forces. The "evidence" for this seems to be that since science can't explain certain process of the brain adequately enough to satisfy the authors, then God is responsible for them. This is called "God in the Gaps."
Finally, the biggest problem I found concerns the book's subtitle: "A neuroscientist's case for the existence of the soul." The world "soul" is not defined in the book's glossary or in its main narrative. I've read this book thoroughly and am unclear as to what the "neuroscientist's case" for the soul's existence exactly is.
In conclusion, this is a strange book where neuroscience unconvincingly meets God.
(first published 2007; acknowledgements; introduction; 10 chapters; main narrative 295 pages; notes; glossary; bibliography; index)
<>
XXXXX
|
|
|
