In this article, I will be addressing the presented question about the claims of neuroscience and the findings of the empirical data providing rational grounds to reject any forms of religious or theological beliefs.
Neuroscience's epistemic capacity to falsify or verify theism is categorically limited. Not only does it not demonstrate that religious belief is caused by particular brain activations, it does not present a problem for theistic belief even if that premise was granted.
For the logic to be valid, suppose the
following syllogism:
Premise 1: Neuroscience demonstrates "religious belief is only caused by particular brain activations"(A)
Premise 2: If Neuroscience demonstrates (A), then theistic belief is false.
Conclusion: Therefore,
theistic belief is false.
This conclusion is important for an affirmative answer to the presented question ".. does this present a problem for those who believe in God? " If a single premise is false, this conclusion is unwarranted. Dr. Sara Lane Ritchie (Research Fellow of Theology & Science, the University of St. Andrews) argues that both of these premises are not accessible through the mechanisms of Neuroscience, and therefore cannot be established as a bona fide defeater for theistic belief. This process is therefore unable to verify or falsify the truth of the premises needed for the inference.
I believe not only that these premises are not established, but I believe both of them are demonstrably false. Since only one premise not established renders the argument unsound, I will argue here that one of the premises are false. I will be defending the following contention:
The underlying logic of Premise (2), that "the correlation of brain activations to beliefs falsify the beliefs", can be shown to be invalid if the same logic can falsify a belief that we're otherwise rational to believe.
To begin, I will first establish the framework that is claimed to demonstrate
the correlation of brain activity to belief through neuroscience by Dr.
Ritchie.
She addresses the field of Cognitive
Science of Religion or "CSR"
and its connection to the neuroscience of belief:
One key figure in the cognitive science of religion is Justin Barrett, whose work has largely shaped the CSR field. He and others emphasize the naturalness of religion thesis which views religious belief as a product of cognitive tools that may have evolved for more general survival purposes. In other words, belief isn't a unique or abnormal phenomenon having only to do with the spiritual world, but is an expected product of the same cognitive tools that facilitate the formation of all beliefs. Say, our beliefs about other people's intentions, or about what football team will win the World Cup. Barrett and others argue that our minds are structured in such a way that religious belief is a natural, a sub-type of belief more generally. Moreover, such researchers argue that religious belief does not require mystical experiences but develops naturally from the rather mundane cognitive tools used for ordinary mental tasks.
She continues with connecting this foundation to biological adaptations predicated in evolutionary theory through natural selection.
One cognitive tool emphasized by CSR researchers is agent detection, or the cognitive response that attributes events to the work of an intentional being. This agent detection can occur whether there is actually an agent responsible for the event. So, for example, if I'm alone in the forest at night and hear movement behind me, I am likely to unconsciously conclude that I am being hunted by a bear, even if that movement was due only to the wind in the trees. It's not that I consciously reasoned myself to the conclusion that a bear is following me, this is an instinctual response that helps me stay alive. Though ultimately wrong, my cognitive response in the woods is a helpful adaptation. My ancestors would be much more likely to survive in the forest if they treated all sudden movements as evidence of hungry predators. After all, nothing is lost by falsely attributing agency to a gust of wind.
There are two problems with using this as evidence to establish the correlation of beliefs to the brain as a premise to falsify the beliefs:
First is the Genetic Fallacy (or Fallacy of Origins), where arguments or beliefs are dismissed or validated based only on their source of origin rather than their content. This is trivial to understand and to demonstrate. If I believe the sun is at the center of the solar system because I thought the sun god Heliod from the plane Theros came to me in a dream and spoke to me about the celestial bodies are doing a spiritual dance around him, does that mean my belief is false? Even though the source of my belief is unreliable and not derived from evidence, the content of the belief heliocentrism is still true. Any implication that these beliefs are false because of how they originated, either religious beliefs or content of survival would be fallacious.
Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism
Second is the epistemic principle that the underlying subtext is suggesting can be flipped as an knock-down argument against Metaphysical Naturalism, the belief that only the physical realities of nature exist. This is argued by the philosopher Dr. Alvin Carl Plantinga from the University of Notre Dame in his Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism. In short summary, Plantinga uses the same premise argued by Ritchie in natural selection only selecting beliefs for survival value rather than true content. Plantinga goes on to argue that this premise on metaphysical naturalism giving no other mechanism for reliably detecting truth, since we are only composed of our physical bodies, is self-defeating. You would not be able to trust your own belief that metaphysical naturalism is true. He uses a similar example of a more extreme nature, but no less valid. He imagines a person wanting to pet a wild tiger, but believes that the best way to pet the tiger is to run away. This is a false belief, but nevertheless will likely result in high survival success, thus being advantageous for natural selection.
While this may strongly call into question that premise, a more direct way of defending the contention would be applying it directly to phenomena we're all rational to believe. If we accept the logic of (2), there are many better established, dedicated sections of the brain demonstrated through neuroscience with much more scientific precision and predictive power on visual perception. Would that mean our beliefs as a result of these visual perception qualia are false or irrational? The argument would look like the following:
Premise 1: Neuroscience demonstrates "visual perception beliefs are only caused by particular brain activations"(A)
Premise 2: If Neuroscience demonstrates (A), then visual perception beliefs are false.
Conclusion: Therefore,
visual perception beliefs are false.
This argument is clearly unsound, both premises are very plausibly false. Premise (2) is demonstrably false in the same nature that Dr. Plantinga's Evolutionary Argument Against Naturalism is a defeater against metaphysical naturalism. Our rational beliefs in the objective world of physical objections through our visual perception is not falsified through any evidence of correlation between brain activity and beliefs, both through direct invalidity of the Genetic Fallacy, and a knock-down syllogism as follows:
Premise 1: The statement "correlation of brain activations to beliefs falsify the beliefs"(B), can be shown to be invalid if the same logic can falsify a belief that we're otherwise rational to believe, then it is invalid.
Premise 2: Visual perception being rational to believe in the objectivity of physical objects is the same logic.
Conclusion: Therefore,
(B) is invalid
The epistemic principle to infer from this conclusion is that the mechanism of science (in this case neuroscience) is not able to access, verify or falsify content of metaphysical or theological beliefs by themselves. While they can serve to be evidence in a neutral premise in a philosophical argument with theologically or metaphysically significant conclusions, science alone is limited in epistemology. This is also the summarized conclusion of Dr. Ritchie herself:
Science might tell us how our brains naturally manifest religious experiences and why religious belief has evolved, but we must look elsewhere for our knowledge of God's existence or nonexistence.