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Title: The Humanizing Brain: Where Religion and Neuroscience Meet by James B. Ashbrook, Carol Rausch Albright, Anne Harrington ISBN: 0-8298-1200-8 Publisher: Pilgrim Pr Pub. Date: October, 1997 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $21.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3 (3 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Theologians Need a Broader View
Comment: I was very excited to get my hands on this book, the promise of bringing science and religion together in the brain appeared sound. My excitement however lasted only a short while, as I began to turn the pages of the book.
Page after page of description of theological points of view, view of self, view of emotion, view of perception. Then a very surface analysis of how these things relate to the structure of the brain. Rather than being a blending of the ideas where one enhances the other, it is a "See! Theology can be constructed on a neuroscientific basis." This structure is purely ad hoc, and does not emerge from neuroscience, much less erupt from their descriptions.
The authors take such pains to preserve their triune brain structure for the book, that all credibility is lost. They make a strict division of reptilian, mammalian, and neo-cortical regions of the brain resulting in elaborated behavior. Anyone familiar with behavior of creatures cannot claim that a non-mammalian structures cannot be nurturing, as the authors claim Some snakes rear their young. Geese live with their offspring for years. Octopus are highly socially evolved. Instead of looking for the exception to the rule and using such to elaborate on the validity of their personal view, the authors turn a blind eye in the interest of preserving their viewpoint.
Any serious student of neuroscience should stay away from this book, it may make you nauseated. Any student of theology should stay away from this book for the facile use of neuroscience that is almost laughable.
This area of inquiry is of intense interest to me and it has been done well in other places, for instance, "Why God Won't Go Away." It is not done well here.
Rating: 5
Summary: A Supplemental Reading for a Neuroscience Course
Comment: Excerpts from my 1999 Teaching of Neuroscience poster at the Soc for Neurosci annual meeting (Abstracts Vol 25, #104.77):
Top-down conjectures about parts and processes, from observations of larger phenomena, are a vital aspect of science. Neuroscience teachers should regularly look to broad human considerations. The Humanizing Brain is by two theologians who competently review a good deal of modern neuroscience for the layperson. They address a modern dilemma: Advances in science during the past three "Enlightenment Centuries" have associated much doubt with religious mythologies, yet religions continue to carry wisdoms for living and are frequently a good source of orientation in human lives. "Beginning with Descartes in the early seventeenth century, the Baconian tradition of science - with its drive for prediction and control - shoved aside awe and wonder. Pieces swallowed up the whole. The simple strangled the complex."(p. xv) I use THB as the basis for three discussions appended to three of the shorter laboratory sessions in my undergraduate behavioral neuroscience course. (The main text is Biological Psychology by Rosenzweig, Leiman, & Breedlove (Sinauer); I've also used the excellent Neuroscience text by Bear, Connors, & Paradiso (Williams &Wilkins).) For example, a discussion of the THB chapter on the upper brain stem and attention follows our lab on EEG and sleep in humans. One of my short-paper assignments requires a critical commentary on one chapter of THB, after the student looks up two of the cited sources and reviews a relevant chapter in the main textbook for the course. THB's main purpose is to educate religious people while illustrating that the discovery of areas of potential accommodation is more interesting than simplistic oppositional dialectics. For the same reason, the book may be read by students of neuroscience.
Rating: 2
Summary: Not for the scholar
Comment: As someone trained in neuroscience, I was curious about what kind of marriage could be made between science and theology. Reading this work, though, was disappointing for me. Supposing a Christian world-view [although this was not made plain up front], both the neuroscience and the theology were facile, lacking depth and scholarship. If you're a theology student looking for a scientific link, the level of neuroscience in this book is just about right; but for scientists, or those fluent in both fields, the book is lacking.
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Title: NeuroTheology: Brain, Science, Spirituality, Religious Experience by R. Joseph, Andrew Newberg, Matthew Alper, William James, Friederich Nietzsche, Eugene G. d'Aquili, Michael Persinger, Carol Albright ISBN: 0971644586 Publisher: University Press Pub. Date: 15 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $44.00 |
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Title: Where God Lives in the Human Brain by Carol Rausch Albright, James B. Ashbrook, Anne Harrington ISBN: 1570717419 Publisher: Sourcebooks Trade Pub. Date: April, 2001 List Price(USD): $22.95 |
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Title: The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them by Owen Flanagan ISBN: 0465024602 Publisher: Basic Books Pub. Date: 28 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $27.50 |
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Title: The Quest for Consciousness: A Neurobiological Approach by Christof Koch ISBN: 0974707708 Publisher: Roberts and Co. Pub. Date: March, 2004 List Price(USD): $45.00 |
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Title: Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy by Patricia Smith Churchland ISBN: 026253200X Publisher: MIT Press Pub. Date: 02 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $25.00 |
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