Varieties of Religious Experience and Volitional Surrender : A Review of Patrick McNamara ’ s The Neuroscience of Religious Experience

Patrick McNamara has made a thoughtful and nuanced contribution to a growing field centered on questions concerning brain activity required for, and involved in, religious life. In a field spanning the disciplines of neuroscience and religious studies it is often hard to find a perspective that has been thoroughly developed on both frontiers for the obvious reason that both are so expansive. But in McNamara’s book we find both. This is exemplified by McNamara’s discussion of the intimate relationship between—and not merely the juxtaposition of—reason and religious faith (cf. 7-11), as well as the depth to which he dissects the neurophysiological data (cf. ch. 5 & 6). McNamara’s point of interest—as the title indicates—is religious experience. McNamara is particularly interested in what research into the relevant brain activity can reveal about the possible benefits religious experience has to human life. In his words, “Religious experiences are realized by the brain in human beings, and knowing how the brain mediates religious experiences can tell us something about potential functions of religious experiences” (11). But what are religious experiences? This question must be addressed before neuroscientific research into religious experience can start. McNamara seems to primarily focus on a type of religious experience rather than on religious experience altogether. This narrowed purview seems to be a function of McNamara’s research purposes and methods. But it does have its costs. In chapter 1, McNamara provides a list of 17 “properties” he claims, along with others, characterize religious experience (15-16). Most of these are sensations (e.g. “sense of integration”, “noetic quality”, a feeling that is “beyond words”, “euphoria”) or some other momentary experience (e.g. visual imagery). Others do not seem to be properties of experiences but instead are enhanced or newfound abilities (e.g. ability to respect opposing views, “enhanced awareness”), or changes in patterns of behavior (e.g. ritualistic behaviors). However, McNamara does not provide an extensive discussion of “religious experience” until chapter 7. In this discussion he primarily focuses on experimental research he has performed with Wesley Wildman. In their research participants were asked to recount a recent episodic religious experience, along with “a recent happy experience, and a recent emotionally neutral experience” (149). Participants were then asked to rate each experience along 12 “dimensions” (or “properties”). And, as McNamara reports, the episodic, “religious experiences” individuals were asked to focus on were distinguished as “significantly more meaningful, with stronger altered states of awareness, increased inwardness of attention, higher amounts of imagery, more internal dialogue, lower volitional control and more negative affect” than other episodic experiences. McNamara uses these characteristics to form a theoretical model of the distinctive aspects of religious experience (149-50). McNamara’s focus on exceptional episodes serves his purpose well. It allows him to isolate and study a particular phenomenon. This being said, by characterizing religious experiences this way, McNamara seems to (a) exclude some of what are rightly called