Credo, ergo sum — I believe, therefore I am — was the central message Andrew Newberg emphasized yesterday in a lecture in McCormick Hall.
In "Born to Believe: God, Science and the Origin of Ordinary and Extraordinary Beliefs," Newberg, a medical professor at Penn, described why people believe what they believe and how they arrive at those beliefs.
Newberg said he heard audience members questioning the connection between medicine and religion before the lecture began. "Why on earth would an M.D. be talking about religion and spirituality," he said they asked.
His answer: Beliefs are an essential part of being human.
Newberg's research at Penn's hospital and at its Center for Spirituality and the Mind focuses on the interface between science, religion and spirituality. He studies what happens when the brain and religion mix.
Out of all the information humans take in each day, they only retain a small portion. Beliefs help people determine what information is important to retain, allowing them to navigate the world effectively, Newberg said. "We use our beliefs to survive. We use our beliefs to make sense of the world."
Belief starts with what people perceive, and differences in perception are what lead to varied beliefs, Newberg argued. Two people hear different meaning in the same message, and therefore, they will have different beliefs about that message.
"We like to pretend we are our own person," Newberg said, but since beliefs are based on perception, they do not actually come from inside. Rather, beliefs are influenced by parents, peers and society.
Beliefs are deeply rooted in what people remember. "We tend to remember things that have a great deal of emotional salience," which is why beliefs are often emotionally charged; it also explains why beliefs are frequently associated with controversy and antagonism and is a source of hatred, violence and war.
Newberg has studied several groups of religious people to examine what happens in the brain during religious experiences.
In monitoring the brains of Buddhist monks during deep meditation, Newberg and his team found that activity in the frontal lobe of the brain increased, allowing them to focus.
At the same time, activity in the parietal lobe of the brain decreased, lowering the sensory perception of the monks as they concentrated when meditating. Newberg said this brain activity is why people often feel disconnected from reality while having a religious experience.
When Newberg showed a Franciscan nun her brain scan and the changes in activity while she prayed, she thanked him for confirming that something unique happened in her brain when she thought about God.
But when he showed an atheist his brain scan, however, the atheist thanked Newberg for reaffirming his nonreligious beliefs, underscoring Newberg's point that different people draw different conclusions from the same message.
Throughout the lecture, Newberg used humorous anecdotes and visual images to help the audience understand the connections between religion and the brain.
Avital Ludomirsky '11 said she thought Newberg was "a very powerful speaker," adding that she appreciated "the point he made about how all the people of different religions thanked him for reaffirming their beliefs."
The lecture was sponsored by the Cognition and Religion Initiative in the Center for the Study of Religion. The initiative's goal is to "bring recent findings from neuroscience and cognitive psychology into closer conversation with studies of religion in the social sciences and the humanities," said Rebekah Massengill, the initiative's program coordinator.
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