Why has religion been part of humanity since the beginning? Religious scholar Reza Aslan, PhD, clinical psychologist Lisa Miller, PhD, and former pastor Rob Bell, MDiv, explore innate spiritual instincts, the neuroscience of belief, and how faith and science both seek truth. They discuss substance dualism, religion’s role in resilience and mental health, and why our brains may be wired to find meaning, connection, and a sense of something greater.
We created this video for Brain Briefs, a Big Think interview series created in partnership with Unlikely Collaborators. As a creative non-profit organization, they’re on a mission to help people challenge their perceptions and expand their thinking. Often, that growth can start with just a single unlikely question that makes you rethink your convictions and adjust your vantage point. Visit Perception Box to see more in this series.
REZA ASLAN: Religious thinking has been a part of the human experience from the beginning. The question then becomes: why?
Studies of children have shown that we are born with this instinct for what’s called substance dualism — the idea that the body and the mind or soul are separate. Religious experience is a universal phenomenon. If it can be traced throughout all time, then there must be some adaptive advantage, otherwise it wouldn’t exist.
The problem is that the countless different answers that have been given for why religion failed, primarily because they’re functionalist answers. What religion does, not why religion exists.
LISA MILLER: We are a point and we are a wave. We are magnificently distinct and unique and diverse, and we are part of one field of life, one sacred consciousness.
So it turns out that every single one of us are all born with the neuro docking station for awakened awareness.
Together with my colleagues, we looked at people who recovered from depression through an awakening. We could see that people who suffered the most really derive profound support and even renewal when connecting to their higher power — to God, the universe, whatever their word might be.
They were more likely to perceive and reflect in a profoundly spiritual way. This tendency to see life on spiritual bedrock was mirrored by a thickening of the cortex, offering some evidence that sustained spiritual life is neuroprotective against depression.
And in addition, when we looked at the awakened brain, what we saw is that universally, we are drawn into an experience in which we are loved and held, guided, and never alone.
ROB BELL: If you think about the past three or four hundred years of human history, especially the history of the Western world, we’ve had this explosion. Some call it the age of certainty — the explosion of scientific rationalism.
But we’ve had this explosion of knowledge about how the world actually works: weight, height, gravitational pull, electromagnetic force.
And yet the same questions are still gnawing at the soul. What’s it mean? What are we doing here?
This idea somehow that faith and science are in opposition I’ve always found to be complete insanity. Both are searching for the truth.
REZA ASLAN: There is something in the way that our brains work that compels us to believe that we are more than just the sum of our material parts.
LISA MILLER: Is it possible that you have been on a quest, that you already are walking a spiritual path?
