A pair of articles published in the May 7, 2001 edition of Newsweek concerning religion and the brain describe recent attempts by neuroscience to explain religious experience in terms of brain function. The main issue at hand is to determine the extent to which biological function, in terms of brain structure and behavior and genetics, play a role in influencing religious experience. Clearly, some role is played by both; the question then becomes what reasoning and observations helps to characterize the extent and meaning of these roles. While the second article aptly details the inadequately narrow interpretation of religious experience as physically transcendent, here only further inadequacies of insight preventing truly meaningful conclusions in these topics will be discussed.

The case for genetic influence upon one's religiosity is left unresolved by the articles at best and when offering support for the possibility of such influence, leaves conflict between rationale supporting the influence and circumstances of the offered case study unresolved. The article begins by explaining that even in cases highly characteristic of a transcendent spiritual experience, the individual may not interpret the experience as such. In the case of neurologist Dr. James Austin, although he claims in his experience to have “[seen] things 'as they really are'” and that “Time was not present... I had a sense of eternity... I had been graced by a comprehension of the ultimate nature of things,” he opposes entertaining the experience as solid evidence of spiritual reality (Religion and the Brain). Instead, he regards it merely as “proof of the existence of the brain.” Ironically, although Dr. Austin's research offers solid evidence for the key role the brain's biological function plays in realizing spiritual transcendence, his own story opposes the intuitive reasoning of many who hypothesize the strong role of genetics in predetermining one's mystical ability. For instance, one advocate of the role played by genetics, David Wulff, reasons that the spiritualists have a tolerance for ambiguity and a “tendency toward fantasy” while those more “rational [and] controlled... will probably resist the experience” (Religion and the Brain). However, the character of Dr. Austin reflects a person who is very rational, controlled, and unambiguous in all respects, even in reflecting upon his spiritual experience, yet clearly still had the experience nonetheless. While his case cannot alone rule out the tendency for one's rational dispositions to influence the likelihood of even transcendent spiritual experiences, does provide strong evidence as a case study that even extremely controlled, rational, and scientific individuals may not resist transcendent spiritual experiences.

To be fair in assessing the genetic case presented by the article, it should be noted that the focus of the article is heavily devoted to the biological function of the brain with regard to spiritual experience, rather than to the possibility of genetic influence. In total, the root “genetic” is only used once throughout both articles, appearing solely in Robert Forman's proposition that because “not everyone who meditates encounters... unitive experiences,... this suggests that some people may be genetically or temperamentally predisposed to mystical ability” (Religion and the Brain). However, his basis for this proposition is not presented in the article and taken by itself, the opposite of his reasoning might just as well be true. On the other hand, Dr. Austin's rationale is presented in the absence of explanation from Forman, but the logic presented there suffers from the conflicts previously discussed. More importantly though, notice that because Forman's proposition considers temperament, which the may be a result of environmental factors in addition to genetics, to be an equally possible influence upon one's mystical ability, further doubt remains as to the role played by genetics even if his proposition is taken at face value.

In regards to the question of whether one is more religious because of how one's brain works, one must first define the monistic or dualistic tradition from which the question is being approached. The need for this qualification arises because the field of neurotheology, as a component of neurobiology, is in fact psychology's first step towards addressing the mind-body problem - which, as the article points out, has been long neglected by psychology. If one assumes the most psychologically conservative and scientifically monistic position of materialism – that the only thing which can be truly said to exist is matter – then the answer is clearly, yes, the brain is wholly responsible for the behavior of individuals and by extension, their religious experiences. While this monistic approach fits best with the recent psychological tradition of scientific inquiry and is therefore the path embarked upon by the neuroscientists described in the article, one less invested in psychological tradition might ask whether this is the a valid assumption at this point.

Even assuming a dualistic point of view, in which mind and matter are fundamentally separate entities, common experience reveals that the biological perspective is a valid approach to the question – that is, the physical state of the brain and body clearly has an effect upon a person's behavior in general and religious experience in particular. For example, a brain undergoing physical assault can be rendered permanently or temporarily inoperable; a person consuming caffeine may have temporarily increased learning capacity; and perhaps relevantly, a person under the influence of psychedelic or other mind-altering drugs may have experiences of timelessness and spacelessness indiscernible from the spiritual experiences loosely defined as religious by the article. Assuming a more traditionally religious definition, physical factors with effects on the later biological state of an individual, such as the exposure to the Bible or other religious texts seems to have an effect on people's later spiritual experiences. Thus, we can see that the answer as to whether physical and biological factors in general play some sort of causal role in influencing spiritual experiences is true, even from strongly dualistic standpoint. Alternatively, whether biology is the only factor remains highly uncertain from a dualistic standpoint – and as we shall see, unproven even from a monistic standpoint.

If a dualistic explanation of the mind is considered permissible, which is implicitly assumed by one who either believes in freedom of will, recognizes one's subjective experience of consciousness as materialistically unexplainable, or has simply been graced by the incommunicable qualia of sensory experience - which has properties which are by definition epistemologically unknowable (and thus, outside the reach of conventionally scientific psychology) – then it is possible that the function of the mind and thus, religious experience, may be subject to both physical and extra-physical factors. Two main considerations may lead one to accept such an explanation. The first relates to the innate essence of existence of an individual; primarily, that one possesses the subjective experience of consciousness. The recognition that the possession or non-possession of such a subjective experience is wholly indiscernible via natural inquiry leads one to the newly discovered knowledge that materialism is incapable of completely describing the mind. The next question is whether materialism can completely describe its behavior. The question is more difficult, because the existence of a so-called “philosophical zombie” in the neurological sense remain conceivable and its behavior could conceivably one day be described completely and deterministically, if science were to ever overcome from the current probabilistic model of eventuality. This leads to the second consideration in support of dualism, which is the absence of a scientifically verified model to be put forth by neuroscientists to adequately address the issue of brain function at a fundamental level. Despite impressive efforts to advance techniques leading to somewhat admirable findings, cognitive and neuroscience remains in its extreme infancy relative to its ultimate potential. Cognitively, an understanding of the mind should eventually lead to a complete model of the human mind. Materialistically, at least, this should be a possibility and this understanding could culminate impressively by the design and simulation of a mind indistinguishable from that of a human. Materialistically, implementation would be difficult but not impossible. This understanding has not yet been attained however, which is why neuroscience seeks to unravel the inner workings of the brain from a materialistic approach. At this point, however, natural scientific techniques are too crude to achieve a truly meaningful cognitive model from a physical perspective. Scientists hope for and will likely attain at some point, what is considered by some to be the holy grail of neuroscience; the neural correlate of consciousness. Even at this point, though, an explanation of subjective experience remains out of reach.

Interestingly, even under the assumption of favorable scientific progression, a foreseeable stumbling block seems to arise in the materialistic neuroscientist's fundamental quest to explain human behavior as a result of reductionism. Just as reductionism towards materialism in analysis of the world in general leads to the materialistic interpretation of the mind, allowing for a monistic coherence, reduction of psychology to neuroscience leads to the subsequent reduction of biology to physics. While physics is generally explainable, it is at a fundamental level without raison d'être and at the quantum level both uncertain and probabilistic. A serious question arises as to whether the system of a myriad physical elements in the brain which form the most complicated object in the known universe in terms of density, all with characteristically fundamental uncertainty and operating individually and probabilistically even has a deterministically convergent and thus meaningfully describable behavior.

Furthermore, the fundamentally probabilistic nature of the materialistic explanation opens the door for scientifically undetectable causality from the subjectively conscious, and perhaps spiritual, realm central to a coherent dualistic model. In truth, such an explanation transforms the seemingly different dualism of the non-materialistic approach into a still unscientific, but monistic, model potentially indistinguishable from the original monistic model. The scientist might wonder why one would favor an indistinguishable non-scientific model over a scientific one. The reason, of course, is that the mind-body problem presents the one – and perhaps only – case where strong evidence, the subjective experience of consciousness, remains by definition unverifiable, and is yet paradoxically known above all else to be true.