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In partnership with the Faculty of Religious Studies sponsored by the Centre for Research on Religion (CREOR), the SCS unit Personal and Cultural Enrichment will offer a series of seven lectures on Religion and the Brain. Lectures will be delivered on the 91Ë¿¹ÏÊÓƵ Campus, in the Birks Building at 3520 University Street on Tuesday and Wednesday evenings at 5:30pm.

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Lecture 1
October 5, 2011
Meditation and Spiritual Transformation

Whether referred to as yoga, bhavana (mental cultivation), or samadhi (meditation), the use of some form of inner spiritual exercise or contemplative practice as a means for spiritual transformation has been an important shared feature across many of India's great classical spiritual traditions. In Buddhism, not only do we observe numerous such practices we also find extensive theoretical and phenomenological enquiry into understanding the process of transformations these practices are supposed to lead to. The last two decades saw a rapid growth in the interest on the part of scientists in studying some of these contemplative practices, especially Buddhist derived meditations such as mindfulness, focused attention, loving-kindness and compassion. Several social and historical factors underlie this phenomenon - the invention of sophisticated imaging tools like fMRI, discovery of neuroplasticity, and the emergence of secularized forms of Buddhist meditation practices, as well as the active promotion of dialogues between science and contemplative insights by the Dalai Lama.
Following a brief explanation of a traditional Buddhist understanding of the process of spiritual transformation through meditation, I shall present an overview of the current state of the field vis-à-vis scientific study of Buddhist derived meditations, with an emphasis on the need to appreciate the diverse constituencies that exists even within the scientists doing meditation research. I shall also speak of the problems and challenges that are inherent in the current scientific research on meditation, both on the conceptual as well as practical level.

Lecture 2
October 11, 2011
Religion, Evolution and Cognition

Lecture 3
October 18, 2011
The Cognitive Foundations of Religious Universals
Much research in the cognitive science of religion emphasizes the universality and naturalness of certain features of religious thinking and behaviour. Examples include certain qualities attributed to supernatural agents (e.g. gods and ghosts), which humans everywhere appear to recognize with minimal need for instruction. But there is also growing evidence that many religious concepts require considerable cognitive, social, and technological resources to create, remember, and pass on. This talk summarizes the latest findings of the 'Explaining Religion' project, a large collaborative research programme that aims to identify and explain patterns of recurrence and variation, past and present, in the world's many religious traditions.

Lecture 4
October 26, 2011
Reasoning About Ritual
Although often conceptualized in contradictory terms, I argue that the common assumption that natural and supernatural explanations are incompatible is psychologically inaccurate. I propose instead that the same individuals use both natural and supernatural explanations to interpret the very same events and that there are multiple ways in which both kinds of explanations coexist in individual minds. To support this claim, I will review converging developmental data from diverse cultural contexts in three areas of biological thought: the origin of species, illness, and death. Contrary to traditional accounts of cognitive development, I argue that supernatural explanations often increase, rather than decrease with age and propose that reasoning about supernatural phenomena as an integral and enduring aspect of human cognition.

Lecture 5
November 2, 2011
Childrens’ Acquisition of Religion

Lecture 6
November 9, 2011
Neuroscience, Religion and Morality

Lecture 7
November 16, 2011
Religious Experience, Music and the Brain