By Julia C. Keller
Science & Theology News
Getting the brain to see God may require more than just magnets.
In December, Swedish researchers reported that exposing the brain to low-level magnetism doesn’t induce spiritual experiences as shown in previous research studies. Even if magnetism might not reliably excite the brain’s “God spot,” the debate continues over the importance of studying the scientific side of religious experience.
The scientific method uses reproducibility to validate experiments. A researcher in a lab in Sweden should be able to reproduce an experiment first done in Canada and get the same results. The Swedes’ findings, or lack thereof, raise the specter of bad science, in which the inability to reproduce an experiment calls neurotheology’s methodology into question.
Pehr Granqvist, a researcher at Uppsala University in Sweden, attempted to replicate earlier neurotheology research done by Michael Persinger at Laurentian University in Montreal. By pulsing the temporal lobe of the brain with weak magnetic fields, Granqvist tried to induce spiritual feelings in his subjects.
However, Granqvist’s team found no significant effect of magnetism on the brain when it came to feeling something otherworldly.
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