Kelly Bulkeley, a visiting scholar at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif., is the author of The Wondering Brain: Thinking About Religion With and Beyond Cognitive Neuroscience (Routledge, 2004). He says there is great concern among theologians and scholars of religious studies about whether brain research destroys the notion of the soul. They also […]

Gregory Peterson, philosophy and religion professor at South Dakota State University, is the author of Minding God: Theology and the Cognitive Sciences (2002) His primary area of research is the dialogue of science and religion.

Carol Rausch Albright is a visiting professor of religion and science at Lutheran School of Theology at Chicago and is co-author or contributor to several books on science and religion, including The Humanizing Brain: Where Religion and Neuroscience Meet and NeuroTheology: Brain, Science, Spirituality, Religious Experience. Albright believes that human beings’ experience of God involves virtually […]

Samuel Brinkman, neuropsychologist and adjunct psychology professor at Abilene Christian University in Texas, has lectured on how studying the brain can lead to insights about morality, spirituality and personal responsibility.

Sohee Park, a professor of psychology and psychiatry at Vanderbilt University in Nashville, has studied shamanism and the brain.

Matt Rossano, Southeastern Louisiana University psychology professor, studies consciousness, the evolution of the brain and religion and science. He teaches a seminar on religion and science.

Charles L. Raison, psychiatry professor at Emory University in Atlanta, has studied Tibetan Buddhism’s effects on the brain.

George Graham, philosophy professor at Georgia State University, says it can be difficult to distinguish between signs of illness and religious insight, particularly when the purported insight raises doubts about the emotional health of the religious person.

Matthew Alper, New York-based author of The “God” Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God (Rogue Press, 2001), proposes a biological basis for human perception and the spiritual realm. He believes that evolutionary adaptations account for the existence of regions in the brain that generate spiritual consciousness. These regions, he […]