Continuing our Mind, Body and Soul month of programming on Premier, Justin is joined by a Christian and an atheist as they discuss whether people's religious experiences can be explained by brain activity alone.
Revd Dr Aladair Coles is an academice neurologist in Cambridge and part of the Faraday Institute's Test of Faith initiative. He says that even though neuroscience has helped us understand the brain activity of religious people, atheist scientists such as Sam Harris have not thereby disproved God.
Martyn Frame is a psychological therapist and atheist. He believes that people's brain states fully explain their religious experiences and, in any case, the Christian God would not have given us the brains we have if He existed.
For Premier's Mind, Body & Soul resources http://www.premier.org.uk/mind
For Alasdair Coles http://www.st-edmunds.cam.ac.uk/faraday/Biography.php?ID=60
For Test of Faith lectures by Alasdair http://www.testoffaith.com/resources/resources.aspx?resourceByTag=true&tagid=24
For Martyn Frame see http://www.freeoffaith.net
For more Christian/non-Christian debate visit http://www.premier.org.uk/unbelievable or get the MP3 podcast http://ondemand.premier.org.uk/unbelievable/AudioFeed.aspx or Via Itunes
If you enjoyed this programme you may also enjoy:
Unbelievable? 24 Jul 2010 - Psychology of Religion "Is religious belief a trick of the mind?" Atheist Martyn Frame & Christian Joanna Collicut McGrath
Unbelievable? 24 Jul 2010 - Wired for God? The Biology of Spiritual Experience
Join the conversation at http://www.premiercommunity.org.uk/group/unbelievable and via Facebook and Twitter

Released on 23 Jun 2014