Fingerprints of God: What Science Is Learning About the Brain and Spiritual Experience

by Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Overview

From the award-winning NPR religion correspondent and author of Life Reimagined: The Science, Art, and Opportunity of Midlife comes a fascinating investigation of how science is seeking to answer the question that has puzzled humanity for generations: Can science explain God?

Is spiritual experience real or a delusion? Are there realities that we can experience but not easily measure? Does your consciousness depend entirely on your brain, or does it extend beyond? In Fingerprints of God, award-winning journalist Barbara Bradley Hagerty delves into the discoveries science is making about how faith and spirituality affect us physically and emotionally as it attempts to understand whether the ineffable place beyond this world can be rationally -even scientifically-explained.

Hagerty interviews some of the world's top scientists to describe what their groundbreaking research reveals about our human spiritual experience. From analyses of the brain functions of Buddhist monks and Carmelite nuns, to the possibilities of healing the sick through directed prayer, to what near-death experiences illuminate about the afterlife, Hagerty reaches beyond what we think we know to understand what happens to us when we believe in a higher power.

Paralleling the discoveries of science is Hagerty's own account of her spiritual evolution. Raised a Christian Scientist, she was a scrupulous adherent until a small moment as an adult triggered a revaluation of her beliefs, which in turn led her to a new way of thinking about God and faith.

An insightful examination of what science is learning about how and why we believe, Fingerprints of God is also a moving story of one person's search for a communion with a higher power and what she discovered on that journey.


From the Hardcover edition.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781101052600
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	05/14/2009
Sold by:	Penguin Group
Format:	eBook
Pages:	336
File size:	470 KB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Barbara Bradley Hagerty is the award-winning religion correspondent for National Public Radio. She’s the recipient of the Templeton Foundation-Cambridge University Journalism Fellowship in Science and Religion, and a Knight Fellowship at Yale Law School. Before joining NPR, she was a reporter at The Christian Science Monitor for 11 years. She lives in Washington, D.C.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Crossing the Stream 1

Chapter 2 The God Who Breaks and Enters 16

Chapter 3 The Biology of Belief 45

Chapter 4 The Triggers for God 63

Chapter 5 Hunting for the God Gene 81

Chapter 6 Isn't God a Trip? 104

Chapter 7 Searching for the God Spot 134

Chapter 8 Spiritual Virtuosos 164

Chapter 9 Out of My Body or out of My Mind? 192

Chapter 10 Are We Dead Yet? 216

Chapter 11 A New Name for God 243

Chapter 12 Paradigm Shifts 268

Acknowledgments 287

Notes 291

Index 313

Readers Guide 324

Editorial Reviews

In this moderate, thoughtful book, award-winning National Public Radio religion correspondent Barbara Bradley Hagerty writes about what recent scientific research reveals about human spiritual experiences. These studies are far-reaching, covering not only the mental activities of Buddhist monks and Carmelite nuns but also faith healing through directed prayer and near-death experiences. In interviews with several of the world's leading scientists, Hagerty probes what science can tell us and not tell us about faith and spirituality. Talking about the ineffable; a believer's honest search for truth.

In another writer's hands, much of the material in this book might have become fodder for ridicule…But throughout the book, one is struck by the humility Hagerty brings to her subject—something lacking in many contemporary debates over the meaning of faith and the existence of God—and her skepticism about the science offered up as proof of spiritual experience…Hagerty's engaging book poses a provocative challenge to anyone who has ever wondered where faith comes from, and what it can do for—and to—us.
—The Washington Post

Christine Rosen

In her first book, National Public Radio correspondent Hagerty acts as a tour guide through the rocky terrain of scientists who study religious experience. Is there a so-called "God gene"? Why do some people have mystical experiences while others never see the so-called light? Right up front, Hagerty reveals that this is not an entirely objective exercise. As a Christian, she wants to understand her own mystical encounter with the divine and why she believes when others do not. Yet to each interview, whether with a world-renowned neuroscientist or a back-road mystic, she brings a suitably skeptical eye. Along the way, she manages to explain some pretty cutting-edge science-psychoneuroimmunology, anyone?-and unravel some people's pretty hard-to-comprehend religious experiences without sacrificing depth or complexity. Then, with equal aplomb, she dances off to peyote ceremonies, church services and Alcoholics Anonymous meetings. The real beauty of this book lies in watching Hagerty gracefully balance her own trust in faith and science and, in the end, come down with one foot planted firmly in both. (May)

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Publishers Weekly

Articles about research on spirituality and the brain are usually written from the point of view that religious experience can be understood from a purely scientific perspective. Hagerty's (religion correspondent, NPR) book does not have this naturalistic or materialistic tendency. Rather, as both a reporter and a religious person, she seeks insight on spirituality and science while being open to the possibility that spirituality may still have a transcendent component. The book is interesting to read because the author has interviewed many scientists as well as many people who attest to having mystical or near-death experiences. In a way, the reader feels like a participant in Hagerty's own encounter with the various pieces of information and evidence, struggling with her to make sense of it all. Highly recommended.
—John Jaeger

Library Journal

A deep spiritual quest from NPR religion correspondent Hagerty. After renouncing Christian Science, the stoic religious heritage of her New England upbringing, Hagerty remained a spiritual seeker. She writes that she experienced numinous episodes in which she physically felt the presence of something not of this world. The author's debut is an attempt to straddle two schools of thought: reductionist materialism (voiced in the extreme by Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens et al.), which denies the validity of natural phenomena yet to be explained; and organized religion (James Dobson, Pat Robertson et al.), which discourages serious inquiry into science's understanding of the brain, mind and consciousness. Hagerty offers neither church sermon nor secular argument. This is a serious journalist's courageous, ambitious investigation into what science says about "a spiritual world . . . that eludes physical sight and hearing and touch?" Hagerty weaves together interviews with scientists, psychologists, neurologists and dozens of people who share her metaphysical experience, including mystics, or "spiritual virtuosos." She also explores the so-called God gene, drug-induced vision quests, the neurochemistry of faith, out-of-body experiences and the psychological aftermath of near-death experiences. Ultimately, the book ends where it began, echoing psychologist and pragmatist William James, who said that science can't prove or disprove God. At best, science is agnostic. While this may be comforting for believers, Hagerty's conclusions may prove ordinary for dedicated students of science and philosophy. A commendable, witty attempt to ground spirituality in established fact that will providedeeper understanding to people of faith but few surprises for nonbelievers.

Kirkus Reviews

With honesty, discernment, humor, grace— and an enormous amount of reporting—Barbara Bradley Hagerty takes on one of the fiercest controversies of the last 500 years: Can we measure faith? Fingerprints of God reads like an elegant mystery story as Bradley Hagerty launches a search for evidence of God within us and the universe as a whole. People of faith and science will be grateful for the chance to join her on her quest."—E. J. Dionne Jr., author of Souled Out and syndicated columnist

“Barbara Bradley Hagerty has done something truly remarkable here. She has brought her considerable reporting skills and wonderfully wry writing to the question of who or what is God. By meticulously documenting scientific studies and interspersing them with the experiences of a number of individuals, including herself, she opens doors to those answers. Fingerprints of God is its own scientific and spiritual journey, one well worth taking.”—Cokie Roberts, author of Ladies of Liberty and news analyst

“Fingerprints of God is a courageous and immensely enjoyable book. In Barbara Bradley Hagerty's investigation of the science of spirituality, I found answers for questions I've pondered for years. Many people will find themselves in these pages.”—Donald Miller, author of Blue Like Jazz

“What a book! The pages crackle with fresh insights into the nexus of faith and science. Striking just the right balance between skepticism and open-mindedness, Bradley makes for the perfect guide on this journey of discovery. Read this book. It'll inform and entertain – and just might change the way you view the world.”—Eric Weiner, author of The Geography of Bliss

“You can find God in many places, from the condemned on death row to the deepest folds of the human brain. In this groundbreaking book on the emerging science of faith, Barbara Bradley Hagerty discovers the links between science and spiritual experience. Fingerprints of God will provoke you, intrigue you, and inspire you.”—Sister Helen Prejean, author of Dead Man Walking

From the Publisher