Denyse O’Leary

O’Leary is a Toronto-based freelance journalist who specializes in faith and science issues and who frequently writes for The Toronto Star,The Globe and Mail,Christian Week and Christian Life. Her recent books include Faith@Science, her collected writings on faith and science issues which won the Canadian Christian Writing Award and By Design or By Chance?, a widely praised overview of the intelligent design controversy. She is also a regular guest on the Canadian television show, Behind the Story, and writes for Islam Online, a moderate Muslim Web site.

Spirituality

The Spiritual Brain

A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul

Talking Points

The authors can speak on this cutting edge science which is based on results from ground-breaking Templeton Foundation-funded research using powerful brain imaging technologies to show what is really happening in the brain during a mystical experience. The authors theories are based on legitimate scientific evidence, that supports the intuition of most Americans.

Description

The Spiritual Brain powerfully argues for what many in science are loathe to consider—that it is God that creates religious experiences, not the brain.

Most neuroscientists are committed to the view that mystical experiences are simply the result of random neurons firing, or as one scientist puts it, they are merely “delusions created by the brain.” But Mario Beauregard uses the most sophisticated technology to peer inside the brains of Carmelite nuns as they recall their most profound spiritual experience which they call unio mystico, the experience of oneness with God.

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