What is Neurotheology - Term Paper Example

Traditionally, the human mind, spirituality, beliefs, and ideas have not been considered by science. Partially, it was due to lack of proper methods and techniques applicable to study the mind and non-material phenomena; partially due to specific philosophic paradigms underlying the scientific approach. Contemporary science lacks tools and methodologies to be applied in studies of non-physical phenomena. For example, not existing scientific discipline is capable of explaining the influence of beliefs – the core stem of the mind – on our thoughts, feelings, and experience.

A series of disciplines have emerged to fill this vacuum with neurotheology taking the lead in the scientific study of the minds and belief phenomena. Neurochemistry, neurophilosophy, neuroeconomics, and neuro politics are examples of this tendency when neuroscientific tools and findings are applied to improve our understanding of problems or issues within the existing discipline. One of such recent and interesting perspectives on brain, mind, and belief establishes the connection between mind and matter through epigenetics.

Bruce Lipton, the most renowned representative of this approach, maintains that neither genes per se nor DNA determine who we are: it is the cell and its membrane that regulates its contact with its environment. Lipton postulates humans have direct influence over that environment through nutrition, the energy of our thoughts and the conviction of our beliefs1. Gene-based theories of spirituality represent another approach to relate brain, mind, and belief.