Is God all in our heads--a product of brain chemistry?

[mia]

Or is the human brain like a radio that can tune into the divine?

...In the past few years, another new “science,” called “neurotheology,” has drawn some interest. Neurotheologists look at how religious experience plays out in the brain, and then changes the brain. Like most brain processes, meditation or contemplative prayer involves many areas of the brain, from the brain stem to the prefrontal cortex. But researchers like Andrew Newberg, the director of research at the Marcus Institute of Integrative Health at Thomas Jefferson University and Hospital in Pennsylvania, have noticed a peculiar response by the parietal lobe. After scanning the brains of Tibetan Buddhists as they meditated, he found that the parietal lobe, which orients your body in time and space, went quiet. But that “orientation” area, conscientious little beaver that it is, is still trying to do its job. “It’s still trying to create for you a sense of yourself and a spatial relation between you and the rest of the world. But it has been deprived of the information that normally has to do that, so you wind up with this sense of no self, no space, no time.” Newberg spotted the same physiological quirk when he imaged the brains of Franciscan nuns praying: They, too, said they felt timelessness and oneness with, in this case, God....

But does that mean transcendent experiences are only a physiological event? Or, is this how the brain is wired to connect with a dimension of reality that our physical senses cannot perceive — in other words, does the brain activity reflect an encounter with the divine?

I want to propose that how you come down on this issue depends on whether you think of the brain as a CD player or a radio. Most people who believe everything is explainable through material processes believe the brain is like a CD player. The content — the song, for example — is playing in a closed system. If you take a hammer to the machine, then the song won’t play. In other words, there is no song — or God — that exists outside the brain trying to communicate. All spiritual experience resides inside the brain, and when you alter the brain, God and spirituality disappear.

But suppose the brain is not a CD player. Suppose it’s a radio. In this analogy, the sender is separate from the receiver. The content of the transmission does not originate in the brain, any more than the hosts of “All Things Considered” are sitting inside of your radio. If you destroy the radio, you won’t hear the show, but the show is still being transmitted across the airwaves. If the brain is a receiver, then theoretically “God’s” communications never stop — even when the brain is altered, even when it stops functioning well, or at all. In this analogy, everyone possesses the neural equipment to receive the radio program in varying degrees. Some have the volume turned low. Perhaps Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris have hit the mute button. Other people hear their favorite programs every now and again, like those who have brief transcendent moments....

https://medium.com/s/reasonable-doubt/the-science-of-miracles-e7cc19f31c8d