Zygon
December 3, 2025
Antonino Raffone, Angela Tagini, Narayanan Srinivasan
36 citations
Mindfulness is the mental ability to focus on the present moment with nonjudgmental awareness, cultivated through meditation practices originating in eastern spiritual traditions. This article examines the relationships among mindfulness, meditation, and the cognitive neuroscience of attention and awareness. Mindful awareness is linked to distributed attention, phenomenal consciousness, and momentary self-awareness, supported by cognitive psychology and neuroscience findings. An integrated neurocognitive model is proposed, highlighting the key role of the prefrontal cortex in these processes.
Zygon
December 3, 2025
Niels Henrik Gregersen
5 citations
Deep incarnation, the idea that the divine became fully embodied in Jesus, can be enriched by modern information science. Early cosmic Christologies, such as those of the Cappadocian fathers and Bonaventure, already blended form and matter in ways that anticipate an informational worldview. Three hypotheses link deep incarnation with information: mass, energy, and information are equally fundamental causes; transformation requires communication, which requires information; and informational structures enable information capture, communication, and transformation, which illuminate the organismic depth of incarnation. At the level of life, embodied cognition and emotion become relevant for understanding the concrete incarnation in Jesus of Nazareth.
Zygon
December 3, 2025
Ann Taves
2 citations
Owen Flanagan's *The Really Hard Problem* continues a tradition, exemplified by William James, of addressing spiritual meaning outside organized religion. Both philosophers argue that the sciences of the mind do not threaten meaning or human growth. James used the subconscious to bridge science and religion, persuading readers of a transcendent 'More'; Flanagan uses a scientific understanding of transcendence to advocate for a naturalistic spirituality, or 'Less'. The author finds Flanagan's attempt to link psychological and sociocultural levels via transcendence scientifically premature but argues that his naturalistic spirituality raises definitional questions scholars of religion must take seriously.
Zygon
December 3, 2025
John A. Teske
1 citation
The cognitive sciences contribute to the religion-and-science dialogue through three narrative perspectives—first, second, and third person—which correspond to consciousness, relationality, and healing. First-person accounts are crucial for understanding subjective experience and neurophenomenology, despite their epistemic limits and indirect causal role in behavior. Second-person perspectives highlight empathic, embodied relationality that supports an externalist account of mind, as increasingly evidenced by social neuroscience. Third-person accounts reveal us/them distinctions that can fuel dangerous tribalisms, threatening an interdependent world. The paper argues for awareness of these perspectives to foster healing.
Zygon
December 3, 2025
Michael James Winkelman
A novel approach to spiritual experiences uses self-worth as a conceptual bridge, but faces validity challenges. Resolving the ontological status of spirituality and the soul requires first addressing epistemological questions about the nature of knowledge. Cross-cultural validity for these constructs depends on grounding them in neurophenomenology, neurognostic perspectives, and neurological processes that engage naturalist foundations of religion.
Zygon
December 3, 2025
A thought experiment explores whether moral principles can be understood as analogous to cosmic order, drawing on quantum physics, neuroscience, and philosophy. The authors propose three speculative ideas: an ontological realm of nonmaterial forms (the One) that underlies all empirical reality, a neurological hypothesis that the human brain can detect potentiality waves in this cosmic field, and a moral proposal that such communication can guide ethical action. From this cosmic order, simple rules of well-being emerge that align with traditional moral teachings but resemble Aristotle's eudaimonia and Kant's highest good. Morality is presented as a tacit, nonempirical form that actualizes through consciousness, offering guidance without coercion.
Zygon
December 3, 2025
Kenōsis, the self-emptying described in Philippians 2:5–8, is not a unique event but belongs to a class of experiences accessible to all people. Using phenomenology and cognitive neuroscience of altered states, the authors argue that kenotic experiences are ecstatic, involving a stepping out of one's self and history both phenomenologically and neurologically. This stepping out has often been seen as impossible, leading to kenōsis being treated as unique. The authors conclude that kenotic experiences are continuous with everyday experiences of the self's intimate communion with everything, suggesting kenotic Christology can be grounded in worldly experiences of living persons, not solely scripture.
Zygon
December 3, 2025
Recent efforts by theologians to align their discipline with empirical science have become outdated. Just as theologians reached a tentative agreement with secular thinking, the concepts of mystery once guarded by religious thinkers have been taken up by cosmological models in the new physics. This paper examines revolutionary developments in quantum physics over the last decade, pointing to an imminent convergence between scientific and religious concepts within a larger framework called synholism, derived from Friedrich von Weizsäcker. It also explores theoretical implications of hypotheses in high-energy physics such as cosmic consciousness and multiple universes.