Un catedrático de Anatomía asegura que “la experiencia religiosa es capaz de poner en concierto redes neuronales corticales muy complejas”
A Full Professor of Anatomy asserts that "religious experience is capable of bringing very complex cortical neural networks into concert".
Professor José Manuel Giménez Amaya participates in the XXXI International Symposium of Theology of the University of Navarre
"From the neurobiological point of view, it is observed that the religious experience is capable of putting in concert very complex cortical neuronal networks", and that "they synthetically involve perceptive, cognitive and emotional brain regions". This was stated by José Manuel Giménez Amaya, Full Professor of Anatomy and Embryology, during the XXXI International Symposium of Theology of the University of Navarra, which addresses the topic "Christian Conversion and Evangelization".
The expert, who gave a talk at lecture under the title degree scroll "God in the brain? The religious experience from neuroscience", added that the richness of the religious experience needs these networks to be produced, but "to affirm that these networks are its direct cause is, to a large extent, to ignore the limitations of the techniques that have been used to unveil this experience".
José Manuel Giménez Amaya also pointed out how neuroimaging programs of study "only illustrates a partial aspect of the biological processes that happen to us, and does not explain in full detail the perceptual, cognitive and emotional richness of a person's religious experience".
Interdisciplinary relations and unity of knowledge
When referring to why Theology is also interested in knowing the results of experimental science, Giménez Amaya commented that "Theology has a function president as a demand of thought". In fact, when we observe this interest in today's world we see that "theological science is always facing a scientism that does not want to be interdisciplinary".
For this reason, he added that it is important to insist that "the knowledge provided by theological science is as true and as rational, or even more so, because it touches on something more profoundly human, than the experimental knowledge in the field of natural sciences and technology". And, he concluded, "these interdisciplinary relations speak to us of the great challenge that we have with the future: to return to the unity of knowledge, avoiding the fragmentation that exists today".
The 31st International Theology Symposium of the University of Navarra brought together more than 300 experts from Italy, Spain, France, Germany, Holland, Mexico, Brazil and the Philippines. Among them, Paola Binetti, member of the Italian Parliament and professor at the Università Campus Bio-Medico di Roma; Professor Massimo Introvigne, director of the Centro Studi sulle Nuove Religioni (Turin. Italy); and Bishop Adolfo González Montes, Bishop of Almería.