Brian C. Alston

What is Neurotheology? Brian C. Alston

The new discipline Neurotheology is the scientific study of how human physiology (the brain in particular) and mind experience, interpret, generate and mediate beliefs. The discipline engages meaningfully diverse understandings of reality including the physical, mental, and spiritual. Its primary objectives are the following. 1. Establish comprehensive, interdisciplinary approaches to understand beliefs. 2. Explain, interpret and predict the influences of beliefs to thought, feeling, behavior and experience. As a discipline, Neurotheology affords different branches of science like biology, cognitive science, genetics, neuroscience, and psychology opportunity to develop distinct approaches to understand and explain the relationship between brain/mind and beliefs. This essay offers a framework to establish Neurotheology as a valuable discipline while sharing over 250 sources in this new genre. Viewpoints from neuroscience will serve as application for examination.