Rebecca Sachs Norris, religion professor at Merrimack College in North Andover, Mass., argues that religious states are transmitted and learned through the body, that particular qualities of perception and memory are necessary for this process and that neurobiology and cognitive science provide material to support this claim. Scientific and experiential perspectives, she says, can coexist. […]

The Rev. Nihal C. deLanerolle is a professor of neurosurgery and neurobiology at Yale University School of Medicine and chaplain-in-residence of the Episcopal Church at Yale in New Haven, Conn. A specialist in the analysis of human seizure foci, he believes that the dialogue between science and religion informs and clarifies assumptions of both endeavors.

Steven Pinker, psychology professor at Harvard University, formerly with the department of brain and cognitive sciences at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is the author of How the Mind Works and The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature (Penguin, 2002). He says seeing morality as a product of the brain is less dangerous than the […]

Nancey Murphy, professor of Christian philosophy at Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif., is the author of Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (Cornell University Press, 1990). She thinks that how God acts in the natural world is one of the most pressing theological questions. And she believes that God’s action in human life must be […]

Robert John Russell is the founder and director of the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences and a professor of theology and science at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, Calif. He’s a leading researcher committed to a positive interaction between the fields of theology and science.

Michael Persinger, psychology professor at Laurentian University in Sudbury, Ontario, has conducted experiments with a helmet that pulses bursts of electrical activity to the brain, stimulating what he calls a “God experience.” The experience of God, he says, is definitely produced in the brain.

Andrew Newberg, director of research at the Myrna Brind Center for Integrative Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital and Medical College, is a co-author of Why God Won’t Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief (Random House, 2002). Newberg and his colleagues used high-tech imaging techniques to examine the brains of meditating Buddhists and Franciscan […]

Glen H. Stassen is the Lewis Smeades Professor of Christian Ethics at the Fuller Theological Seminary in Pasadena, Calif. He is an expert on religion and social justice and specializes in war, peace and ethics. He wrote Just Peacemaking: Ten Practices for Abolishing War.

John G. West Jr. is a senior fellow at the Seattle-based Discovery Institute. He co-edited the book The Theology of Welfare (University Press of America, 2000).