Religion and Science

One of the most intensively studied elements of the science-religion relationship is the relation of psychology to the theology of personhood and of agency. Here the theological language of soul and spirit has had to be clarified in the light of scientific descriptions of mental functioning. There have been claims, again simplistic and reductionistic, that religious experience merely reflects enhanced activity in a particular area of the brain. This claim overestimates our current understanding of the functioning of the brain and of consciousness and ignores the possibility that brain function can reflect both a complex pattern of the firing of neurons and a human being relating to God. Key areas in this exploration are the question as to what happens to an individual's spiritual state in a case of profound damage to the brain, for example, through Alzheimer's disease, and the scientific evaluation of accounts of "near-death" experiences, in which individuals claim to have seen not only bright and gentle light but also things that could not be perceived by their ordinary senses.

Another contribution psychology has to make to theology is in our understanding of agency. The three great monotheisms, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, all speak of the divine in personal terms; God is a personal agent who interacts with the world. Much energy has been devoted to trying to understand how such interaction relates to the law-governed descriptions of the world that science offers. So psychology can contribute to the theology of providence through the increase in our understanding of agency (as long as it is understood that human, embodied agency is at best a weak analogy with the relation of God to the universe); theology can contribute to psychology through its long study of divine and human freedom.