The Phantom God: What Neuroscience Reveals about the Compulsion to Believe

by John C. Wathey

Overview

Does neuroscience have anything to say about religious belief or the existence of God? Some have tried to answer this question, but, in doing so, most have strayed from the scientific method.

In The Phantom God, computational biologist and neuroscientist John C. Wathey, Ph.D., tackles this problem head-on, exploring religious feelings not as the direct perception by the brain of some supernatural realm, nor as the pathological misfiring of neurons, but as a natural consequence of how our brains are wired.

Unlike other neurobiological studies of religion and spirituality, The Phantom God treats mysticism not as something uniquely human and possibly supernatural in origin, but as a completely natural phenomenon that has behavioral and evolutionary roots that can be traced far back into our vertebrate ancestry. Grounded in evolutionary and behavioral biology, this highly original and compelling book takes the reader on a journey through the neural circuitry of crying, innate knowledge, reinforcement learning, emotional bonding, embodiment, interpersonal perception, and the ineffable feeling of certainty that characterizes faith.

Wathey argues that the feeling of God’s presence is spawned by innate neural circuitry, similar to the mechanism that compels an infant to cry out for its mother. In an adult, this circuitry can be activated under conditions that mimic the extreme desperation and helplessness of infancy, generating the compelling illusion of the presence of a loving, powerful, and all-knowing savior. When seen from this perspective, the illusion also appears remarkably like one that has long been familiar to neurologists: the phantom limb of the amputee, spawned by the expectation of the patient’s brain that the missing limb should still be there.

Including a primer on the basic concepts and terminology of neuroscience, The Phantom God details the neural mechanisms behind the illusions and emotions of spiritual experience.

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Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633888067
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	10/15/2022
Pages:	304
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.10(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

John C. Wathey, Ph.D., is a computational biologist whose research interests

include evolutionary algorithms, protein folding, and the biology of nervous systems. Previously, he was a senior applications scientist at Biosym Technologies (now named Biovia), a company that develops molecular modeling software for the pharmaceutical industry. He then founded his own business, Wathey Research, and since that time most of his scientific research was funded by grants from the National

Institutes of Health. Wathey has published his peer-reviewed research results in distinguished scientific journals, including Biophysical Journal,Journal of

Neuroscience; Brain, Behavior and Evolution, and Neuroscience Letters, among others.

He is the author of The Illusion of God’s Presence: The Biological

Origins of Spiritual Longing and has published popular articles in the

Huffington Post,Skeptic Magazine, and The Jonestown Report. For more information, visit https://www.watheyresearch.com/.

Table of Contents

Prologue vii

Part I Behavioral Foundations

1 Why Is God Two-Faced? 3

2 Evidence for the Innate Neural Model of Mother 25

Part II Circuitry of the Sensed Presence

3 Crying and the Neural Alarm System 45

4 Innate Knowledge and the Circuitry of Gut Feelings 53

5 Imprinting, Maternal Presence, and Addictive Love 65

6 Self, Other, and the Illusory Sensed Presence 77

7 Certainty, Neonatal Cortex, and the Phantom God 89

Part III Neurotheolooy Meets Neuroetholooy

8 The Image of God 109

9 The Helmet of God 117

10 The Flesh of God 135

11 The Madness of God 147

12 The Handedness of God 163

13 Predictions 179

Epilogue: So What? 193

Acknowledgments 197

Appendix A Getting Oriented in the Brain 199

Appendix B Measuring Religiousness 209

Notes 215

Index 283

Editorial Reviews

08/01/2022

These dense musings by computational biologist Wathey (The Illusion of God’s Presence) ponder how mechanisms in the brain might give rise to mystical experiences. Humans, Wathey suggests, evolved to have an innate expectation of a caring mother, and a side effect of this mental predisposition is that adults in distress sometimes feel a similar sense of a powerful, loving presence that they call God. The author describes his “neuroethological” approach as focusing on how brain chemistry produces “highly specialized natural behaviors” that boost an animal’s chances of reproducing. Exploring the connection between neural networks and sensations of intangible presences, Wathey details the neuroscience behind such potentially analogous conditions as taking hallucinogenic drugs and speculates that they affect a part of the brain implicated in the “mother-infant bond” that might elicit perceptions of the divine. However, the author’s reliance on conjecture means most of his hypotheses remain theoretical (a full chapter is devoted to “predictions”) and will primarily be of interest to scholars, who will respect the provocative thesis and the author’s command of the neuroscientific literature. Lay readers will likely find the academic tone and scientific jargon a slog. Technical to a fault, this one’s for specialists only. (Oct.)

Publishers Weekly

The Phantom God integrates novel ideas in evolution, cognitive science, neuroscience, plus psychedelics and drug addiction. Wathey's bold hypothesis — that the illusion of God’s presence comes from an innate neural model — lays down a scientific challenge, but won't convince believers. No one who seeks the foundations of religion can ignore The Phantom God.” — Robert Lawrence Kuhn, creator and host of Closer To Truth

"Now I understand what was happening in my brain when I experienced the vivid parental 'presence of God' that gave me goosebumps and brought me to tears. In The Phantom God, John Wathey supports his brilliant hypothesis with facts and enjoyably clear explanation. This is science writing at its best."

– Dan Barker, co-president of Freedom from Religion Foundation, and author of Godless and Free Will Explained, among others

“This deeply engaging and challenging book relates some of the most puzzling aspects of religion to a broad range of empirical research on the brain — including case studies of brain pathology, hallucinations, and lateralization — and reveals surprising evidence of shared underlying neural mechanisms. Concluding that an innate neural model can explain many religious phenomena, Wathey offers thoughtful research suggestions for further testing his ideas. In sum, a masterful work that deserves close attention.”

—David M. Wulff, Professor of Psychology Emeritus, Wheaton College (MA), and author of Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary

“John Wathey has made landmark contributions to the anatomy of religious belief. The Phantom God gives us the fundamental hows of religion’s tenacious hold on human minds, the neuroscience buried deep in our neonatal and early infant attachment system. Read this landmark book, and treasure it.”— J. Anderson Thomson, Jr., M.D., Psychiatrist, University of Virginia, author of Why We Believe In God(s): A Concise Guide to the Science of Faith.

“The Phantom God offers an amazing hypothesis and exploration of the roots of religion. Why does religion so often infantilize its followers? Why do wounded soldiers cry out for their mothers? This book connects religious behavior directly to the innate models in our brain that help us negotiate infancy and childhood but also profoundly affect us as adults.”

– Dr. Darrel Ray, president and founder of RecoveringfromReligion.org, author of The God Virus and Sex and God

From the Publisher