Faith and neuroscience in dialogue, by Thierry Magnin

Faith and Neuroscience. Dialogue on the Living Man

by Thierry Magnin

Salvator Editions, 228 pages, €20

What is the living man? Thierry Magnin, priest, president-rector delegate to the humanities of the Catholic University of Lille, doctor in physical sciences and in theology, deepens this question by bringing together neurosciences and theology. It shows how much the incarnation of our spirit is an important space of analogy between these two fields of knowledge.

The neuroscience, who strive to understand the functioning of the brain, have made immense advances in recent years, which Thierry Magnin presents with great pedagogy. Materialistic approaches are now largely outdated, he notes. Scientists have thus shown that our cultural and family environment, our traumas can modify the expression of genes, what is calledepigenetics. Our brain is not entirely determined by our genes. Science also shows “the human capacity for cognitive altruism”, which makes our biology and our consciousness part of a relational and social dimension. Moreover, neurosciences have shown to what extent the spiritual is not a secondary dimension. Certain areas of the brain associated with lowering stress and negative emotions are greatly enhanced by spiritual practices like meditation.

Limits of science

Neurosciences are also reassessing the importance of emotions, the academic further underlines. They are powerful indicators of our well-being or ill-being, essential to our survival. Emotions send us signals of danger, fear, joy and confidence; thus, they help us, consciously or unconsciously, to make decisions. Some scientists even postulate that emotions powerfully motivated our exceptional intellectual development. The author quotes Nietzsche in Thus spake Zarathustra : “There is more reason in your body than in your best wisdom. » It is this embodied spirit that fundamentally separates us from artificial intelligence machines.

The examination of these questions also highlights the limits of science. Questions such as consciousness continue to elude an unequivocal answer from scientists, as does essential freedom or the question of evil, notes Thierry Magnin. The neurosciences also show that any functionalist approach is insufficient to explain the complexity of the human being, which rises well above neuronal determinism. Science no longer necessarily goes against religion by pushing it into an ever narrower field of experience. On the contrary.

A tripartite vision of man

Many of these scientific advances resonate with Christian approaches to an embodied human being, to relationship. The author puts forward a tripartite vision of man, composed of a body and a soul, and animated by the spirit, which we find in particular in Saint Irenaeus. This conception goes against the dualism which opposes the body and the soul and which is often reproached to the Church. Jesus, in the Gospel, never ceases to call man to “living life”, Zoe in Greek, where he is united in body and soul, animated by the spirit. Thierry Magnin judiciously brings this “living life” of “living man” as science describes it: an interdependent mind and body, a being driven and guided by emotions, fundamentally relational, driven by an elusive consciousness.

While attempts to prove the truths revealed through science are back in fashion, Thierry Magnin does not invoke neuroscience with an apologetic aim. Rather, it shows how relevant the Gospel and traditions like Ignatian spirituality are to what neuroscience tells us about human life.

Faith and neuroscience in dialogue, by Thierry Magnin