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.

Antonio R. Damasio, University of Iowa neurology professor, studies fundamental mechanisms of cognition. He is the author of The Feeling of What Happens: Body and Emotion in the Making of Consciousness (Harcourt, 2000).

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.

John Haught, an emeritus professor of theology at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C., believes that spiritual experiences are connected to the brain processes and dependent on them but not reducible to them. He says it is possible to distinguish between the chemical basis of experiences and the experiences themselves. Life and mind cannot be reduced […]