Is praying the Rosary nothing more than just neuroscience?

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Ben_Sinner

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I came across a study that tries to explain praying the rosary is similar to praying mantras, and both effect the same area of the brain that invokes ‘religious experiences’.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC61046/

Thoughts on this? Possible flaws of the study?
 
I am not a doctor and I could not say if there are flaws in the study or not.

aren’t you studying medicine? what are your thoughts?

when I pray the Rosary it brings me peace and that is all that matters to me.
 
7_Sorrows said:
I am not a doctor and I could not say if there are flaws in the study or not.

aren’t you studying medicine? what are your thoughts?

when I pray the Rosary it brings me peace and that is all that matters to me.
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👍
 
7_Sorrows said:
I am not a doctor and I could not say if there are flaws in the study or not.

aren’t you studying medicine? what are your thoughts?

when I pray the Rosary it brings me peace and that is all that matters to me.
Click to expand...
Yes, that is important, but what if that peace is not coming from where you think it is?

I have seen similar pieces about the link between faith/ religion and certain sections of our brain, they could p(name removed by moderator)oint the area in the brain responsible for these beliefs and feelings using an MRi.

It would be shocking if they found all this was truly just in our minds!
 
Of course praying the rosary affects our brain. It’s a meditative prayer. We meditate on the mysteries of the Gospels. It brings us to deeper a understanding of Jesus.
 
mikekle said:
Yes, that is important, but what if that peace is not coming from where you think it is?

I have seen similar pieces about the link between faith/ religion and certain sections of our brain, they could p(name removed by moderator)oint the area in the brain responsible for these beliefs and feelings using an MRi.

It would be shocking if they found all this was truly just in our minds!
Click to expand...
One does not contradict the other. Existence of inborn mechanisms responsible for religious devotions proves that religion is natural and that God imprinted it into our minds.
 
Ben_Sinner said:
I came across a study that tries to explain praying the rosary is similar to praying mantras, and both effect the same area of the brain that invokes ‘religious experiences’.

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC61046/

Thoughts on this? Possible flaws of the study?
Click to expand...
Definitely true. I began using the rosary as a personal mantra to calm myself (just hail mary’s) eventually I memorized the mysteries and do it in a more faith based manner, but it still helps calm my stresses!

I see nothing wrong with that!
 
I don’t think the truth of our faith can be either proven or disproven by neuroscience. God is the author of what we call neuroscience and all of our fledgling attempts to understand how the mind works. God is the creator of all things, including the marvelous human brain. Our observations and theories of how our brains function will not change that reality. Just because we observe the same part of the brain becoming active when a Hindu meditates or a Catholic prays the Rosary, this does not change the validity of the faith that God has revealed to us. God is bigger than neuroscience!

But what if what we observe through neuroscience is indeed an indication of God becoming more manifest to us in some way? Does it bother you that the same part of the brain becomes active when an atheist practices mindfulness meditation, or a Hindu chants his mantra, or a Catholic prays the Rosary? Maybe God somehow makes Himself known to all who seek in earnest, in whatever limited way they are able to receive it, through the wonderful human brain which He created.
 
christofirst said:
I don’t think the truth of our faith can be either proven or disproven by neuroscience. God is the author of what we call neuroscience and all of our fledgling attempts to understand how the mind works. God is the creator of all things, including the marvelous human brain. Our observations and theories of how our brains function will not change that reality. Just because we observe the same part of the brain becoming active when a Hindu meditates or a Catholic prays the Rosary, this does not change the validity of the faith that God has revealed to us. God is bigger than neuroscience!

But what if what we observe through neuroscience is indeed an indication of God becoming more manifest to us in some way? Does it bother you that the same part of the brain becomes active when an atheist practices mindfulness meditation, or a Hindu chants his mantra, or a Catholic prays the Rosary? Maybe God somehow makes Himself known to all who seek in earnest, in whatever limited way they are able to receive it, through the wonderful human brain which He created.
Click to expand...
👍
 
christofirst said:
I don’t think the truth of our faith can be either proven or disproven by neuroscience. God is the author of what we call neuroscience and all of our fledgling attempts to understand how the mind works. God is the creator of all things, including the marvelous human brain. Our observations and theories of how our brains function will not change that reality. Just because we observe the same part of the brain becoming active when a Hindu meditates or a Catholic prays the Rosary, this does not change the validity of the faith that God has revealed to us. God is bigger than neuroscience!

But what if what we observe through neuroscience is indeed an indication of God becoming more manifest to us in some way? Does it bother you that the same part of the brain becomes active when an atheist practices mindfulness meditation, or a Hindu chants his mantra, or a Catholic prays the Rosary? Maybe God somehow makes Himself known to all who seek in earnest, in whatever limited way they are able to receive it, through the wonderful human brain which He created.
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Exactly. If we look to science to explain our relationship with Christ, then I guess that relationship is pretty thin.
:eek:
 
My brain must be broken then. When I pray the rosary, I tend to think about everything but the rosary. It’s not calming or peaceful. 🤷
 
Bill_Martin said:
My brain must be broken then. When I pray the rosary, I tend to think about everything but the rosary. It’s not calming or peaceful. 🤷
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When that happens, try to pray with someone else, taking turns leading the prayers. That has always helped me.
God bless you.
 
Look at it and his way, if praying didn’t create positive feelings, no one would do it. All the science does is explain how the feelings occur biologically, not why the source (thinking about/reflecting on religious topics) triggers them.

I know grading physics papers requires the same amount of reflection, but produces nowhere near the stress relief!
 
mikekle said:
I have seen similar pieces about the link between faith/ religion and certain sections of our brain, they could p(name removed by moderator)oint the area in the brain responsible for these beliefs and feelings using an MRi.
Click to expand...
Such as?
 
JurisPrudens said:
One does not contradict the other. Existence of inborn mechanisms responsible for religious devotions proves that religion is natural and that God imprinted it into our minds.
Click to expand...
This. I don’t see why it would be an issue, as the OP seems to imply, if part of the calming and peace we find in the Rosary is a result of a natural process. We are our body and our soul. It makes sense that the spiritual aspect of prayer springs from our souls and that there is a corresponding biological process involved in the physical world.

To specifically address the title, praying the Rosary is more than just neuroscience. With that said, it isn’t unreasonable, illogical, or even somehow bad to be able to say that praying the rosary can engage a neurochemical or neurophysical reaction in our brains as well as benefit our souls. That makes more sense to me than if the rosary engaged a purely spiritual reaction. All this says to me is that the power of prayer has aspects that can, in fact, be observed by science.
 
mikekle said:
Yes, that is important, but what if that peace is not coming from where you think it is?

I have seen similar pieces about the link between faith/ religion and certain sections of our brain, they could p(name removed by moderator)oint the area in the brain responsible for these beliefs and feelings using an MRi.

It would be shocking if they found all this was truly just in our minds!
Click to expand...
It would indeed, seeing as such “science” would be stepping far outside the realm of empirical observation and experimentation.

Question, if a sense of peace does not come in at least some measure from our brains, where exactly does it come from? God doesn’t inject us with a sense of peace with no relation to the biological processes He endowed us and creation with. Our body is neither inferior nor superior to our souls. Well, this one might be since it decays and has faults, but our resurrected bodies will not, and what would those be except the one we have now, just perfected by God?
 
mikekle said:
It would be shocking if they found all this was truly just in our minds!
Click to expand...
I’m starting to smell roses emanating from my rosary beads now… if this stuff is really just supposed to be in our minds, and somehow this stuff can just be reductively explained away by “science!”, then I’m doing something wrong.

:):):):)🙂
 
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