15_5_21_Fecle_cryf

The group of research "Science, Reason and Faith" (CRYF), of the University of Navarra, invited last Tuesday, May 19, Professor José Víctor Orón, a Piarist priest and civil engineer, who joined in 2012 the group of research "Mind-brain"of Institute for Culture and Society (ICS). Orón is also director of the pilot program UpToYou, focused on the teaching of the management emotional as emotional integration.

The seminar offered some contributions from neuroscience to the experience of faith and vice versa. A point of meeting for interdisciplinary dialogue is the belief system staff. In neuroscience it is assumed that emotions, as well as bodily reality and perceptions, are decisive elements in decision making, but it is not so widely assumed that the world of beliefs plays a relevant role.

On the question of whether meeting is possible between neuroscience and faith, speaker pointed out that "faith has two dimensions: on the one hand it is a gift and on the other it is a human experience. Faith as an experience must have some correlate: the conceptualization of the world from my relationships and possibilities, from what I am myself and how I understand things," said José Víctor Orón.

When faith is embraced, it is manifested in the belief system: the "substratum from which people make our conceptualization of what the world is. The family and the early years are very important for this. A child before the age of 6 already knows what honesty is," said Orón. The brain is a complex system, an organ with a high level of connectivity. "Everything is related to everything. Genes have lost their reign", since beliefs are reached through a process of sedimentation and reflection based on personal, emotional and relational experiences. These beliefs, by the process of abstraction, are no longer linked to concrete experiences but to a conceptualization of the world and of oneself. They also become present as another element in decision making, for which emotion and reason enter skill . "My belief system affects my way of being in the world," said researcher.