Addressing God in his Confessions, Saint Augustine once wrote, "Thou has formed us for Thyself, and our hearts are restless till they find rest in Thee."

In an age of science, what might this mean? Surely our muscular pump of a heart does not fit into a divine resting place! It sounds just as odd to say that the gray matter inside our skull might include a special place for God.

But recently the popular press reported the "discovery" of just such a niche and dubbed it "the God module." This supposed niche in fact was said to have a specific location, in the left temporal lobe, near the ear. The press was drawing on the work of the eminent neuroscientist V. S. Ramachandran, especially as described in a book coauthored with science writer Sandra Blakeslee, Phantoms in the Brain. Although these authors stopped short of identifying a "God module," they did conclude that there are circuits in the human brain that are specifically involved in religious experience.

Ramachandran's work focused especially on manifestations of epilepsy originating in the left temporal lobe. Besides causing seizures, epilepsy can lead to unusual mental experiences, and many patients report:

Not surprisingly, persons who have such spiritual experiences during seizures tend to become preoccupied, even obsessed, with God and religion during periods between seizures as well. The authors suggest that the seizure experience may establish or reinforce brain "tracks" dedicated to this kind of thinking. From such observations, some have drawn the inference that the left temporal lobe is either (a) the seat of a God-given human faculty for experiencing the divine or (b) the seat of religious delusions. Ramachandran is careful to note that patients may in fact be experiencing God—who can say?

Although temporal-lobe epilepsy may be induced by trauma, it often has a genetic component. V. Elving Anderson's research group at the University of Minnesota is closing in on genes that predispose to epilepsy, including temporal lobe epilepsy. Is religious experience, then, attributable to a genetic defect? Or, as Ramachandran suggests, by removing a portion of the temporal lobe, could we perform a "Godectomy"?

There are several possible responses to the query. One, of course, is to define religion as a delusion. Another is to reaffirm dualism, and the belief that the human spirit has an existence independent from the brain and the rest of the body. Still another response is to explore a wholistic approach to religious experience, affirming that human experience—including religious experience—is indeed embodied: intricately interactive with the brain and the rest of the body.

There is precedent for the last two responses in the faith traditions. Although many believe in the immortality of the soul, Christians and Muslims traditionally confess a belief in the resurrection of the body. Judaism tends to emphasize right action in the here and now, with consequences for future (embodied) generations. And as neuroscience and medicine unravel the secrets of the human psyche, it becomes increasingly difficult to envision a soul—a self—that has no connection to the marvelously complex brain with which we have been endowed.

But a person who accepts the embodiment of religious experience must also avoid the assertion that such experience is "nothing but" a manifestation of activities of the left temporal lobe, or any other particular part of the brain. Human religious experience is too multifarious and pervasive to assign it to any one cerebral location. Consider that religious experience includes not only mystical experience, but also ritual, music, and dance; experiences of love and connection, guilt and forgiveness, renewal, and empathy; selection of values and courses of action; and, over time, spiritual growth. A survey of neuroanatomy would place these experiences in various parts of the brain, and in several parts of the brain at once.

Furthermore, values and faith commitments not only are embodied, but they themselves influence other embodied processes as well—in the mind and in other parts of the body. For example, suppose you are about to undergo major surgery. You believe God loves you and God's spirit will guide the surgeon's hand. You know the chaplain is sitting with your spouse, and that folks from your church will bring a casserole dinner for your family. You are calmer and steadier than the patient next in line who shares none of these experiences. Other things being equal, your outcome is likely to be better.

Recent research supports this claim: (1) Heart surgery patients who are religious have 20 percent shorter postoperative hospital stays than nonreligious patients. (2) In a study of 1,718 older adults, plasma interleuken-6 levels (a measure of immune function) were lower among frequent church attenders than among infrequent attenders. (3) In a sixteen-year mortality study of 3,900 carefully matched subjects in eleven religious and eleven nonreligious kibbutzim in Israel, 69 persons in religious settings died, compared with 199 in secular settings.

Apparently, though, not all religious beliefs are equally healthful. In a study of 577 hospitalized medically ill patients age fifty-five or over, for example, beliefs in a punitive God and demonic forces were associated with worse mental and physical health, while beliefs in a benevolent God, collaboration with God, and giving religious help to others were associated with more positive outcomes.

If religious belief is indeed embodied, how does it get that way? Like our other beliefs and inclinations, our faith is shaped through interactions among genetically-based abilities and proclivities, experience in our culture and close associations, and our own conclusions. The genome does not carry nearly enough information to specify the content and connections of all the neurons in an ordinary human brain. There are something like one hundred thousand million neurons in the brain—a number that rivals the number of stars in our galaxy. The number of connections among them is about one thousand million million, and the total length of this "wiring" is roughly one hundred thousand kilometers. The design of the wiring varies from person to person. Genes set up the basic design of an infant's brain, which comes equipped with more neurons than it needs. Especially during the first two years of life, neurons that are put to use continue to live, but those not used are programmed to self-destruct. The surviving neurons thrive with activity.

In adults, the number of neurons remains fairly constant, but neurons can still sprout new connections among themselves. Experience stimulates new connections, so active neurons become more densely interlinked. Brain circuits that are seldom used become less responsive, and less neuronal space is devoted to them. Thus, while the basic potential for religious experience is inborn, our experiences and thoughts shape not only our convictions, but also the neuronal connections that embody them.

In humans, the parts of the brain that enable thought, emotion, sensation, and bodily functions all interact. Religious eperience comprises emotion, understanding, relationships, action—and metabolic activity. Our commitments are embodied. They are part and parcel of our thoughts and behaviors—and our neurons and physiology as well.

Saint Augustine. "The Confessions of St. Augustine," Book First, Chapter 1, para. 1. In The Great Confessions. New York: Tudor [c. 400] 1934.

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