뇌의 종교적 경험에 대한 신학적 고찰 = 둘(the Two)의 탄생

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

A core argument in this paper is that the brain and the mind are not one but the Two. Recent developments in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology appealingly argue that the human mind is nothing but the byproduct or product of the brain activities. In this vein, the neuroscientists like B. Libet, A. Newberg, E. d`Aquilli, and M. Persinger have led some scientific experiments to test whether religious experience is purely spiritual or it is based upon the wired structure of the brain. The results of their experiments seem to point to the fact that human religious experience derived from the neural structure and activity. However, this paper argues that these kinds of interpretation of the experiments are exaggerated and distorted. Of course, the brain and the mind are interdependent and interactive. Nonetheless, it does not mean that the mind is just a by-product of the neural activity. Rather, the mind seems to differ and defer from the wired structure of the neuronal activities. Further, some test results in the placebo effect disclose that the mind can change the wired structure of the brain, although in rare cases. The research in the plasticity of the brain even shows that the mind can change the body map of the brain. Thus, there are reasonable and persuasive grounds for arguing that the brain and the mind are not the one in the master-slave relationship but rather just ‘two dancing partner’ interacting each other. That is, the brain and the mind are not one but the Two.