Neuroscience, Psychology and Religion

This unusual book is a collaboration between two neuropsychologists who are also Christians. They give an overview of various aspects of the field, including science and religion, how the soul became the mind, the mind-brain relationship, evolutionary psychology and the neuroscience of religious experience. All these concepts are clearly explained, and the underlying view of the authors is one that combines emergence and non-reductive physicalism or dual-aspect monism. In other words, they eschew any form of dualism as outdated. In theological terms, this means embracing a Hebrew rather than a Platonic understanding of the nature of personality, so that spirituality is both embedded and embodied. This model works well when applied to conventional research areas, but arguably has less explanatory power when dealing with phenomena such as near-death experiences and evidence for survival of consciousness, which questions the contention that the mental and spiritual aspects of ourselves 'are nested in, and dependent upon, our bodily systems.'