Full Description
This innovative book examines what can be learnt about the brain mechanisms underlying religious belief and practice from studying people with neurological disorders, such as stroke, epilepsy and Parkinson's disease. Using a clinical case study approach, the book analyses the interaction of social influences, religious upbringing and neurological disorders on lived religious experience in a number of different religions. The interdisciplinary contributors to the book ensure a variety of perspectives to help understand how the religious life is affected when different cognitive functions are impaired; how faith modifies the effects of neurological disorders; and how awareness of faith practices may assist in the treatment of these conditions.
Contents
Editor's introduction; Part I. Basic Issues in the Neurological Study of Religion: 1. The discipline of neurology Alasdair Coles; 2. The scientific study of religion Joanna Collicutt; 3. Methodological hazards in the neuroscientific study of religion Stuart Judge; 4. Embodied cognition and the neurology of religion Warren Brown; 5. Phenomenology, neurology, psychiatry, and religious commitment Ian Kidd; 6. Philosophical hazards in the neuroscientific study of religion Daniel de Haan; 7. The glass onion and the mereological fallacy Sophie Grace Chappell; 8. Toward an Islamic neuropsychiatry: a classification of the diseases of the head in Abul-Hasan 'Alibn Sahl At-Tabari's paradise of women Neil Agarawak; Part II. Neurology and Religion: 9. Temporal lobe epilepsy, Dostoyevsky and irrational significance Alasdair Coles; 10. Parkinson's disease, religious belief and spirituality Clare Refern and Roger Baker; 11. Beyond reasonable doubt: cognitive and neuropsychological implications for religious disbelief Gordon Pennycook, Daniel Tranel, Kelsey Warner and Erik W. Asp; 12. Ramadam fasting and neurological disorders Ashraf El-Mitwalli; 13. Autism and the panoply of religious belief, disbelief and experience Kelly Clark and Ingela Visuri; 14. Personhood and religion in people with dementia Julian Hughes; 15. Religion and frontotemporal dementia Nicolas Block and Bruce Miller; 16. Religion and spirituality in neuro-rehabilitation: a case study Joanna Collicutt; 17. Eastern spirituality, mind-body practices and neuro-rehabilitation Giles Yeates; 18. Examining the continuum of life to determine death: a Jewish perspective Aron Buchman; 19. Near death and out of body experience: a case for dialogue between scientist and theologian? Michael Marsh.
