from articles by
Michael Gerson

“Neuroscience cannot tell you if God does or doesn’t exist,” Newberg states with appropriate humility.

But Newberg’s research offers warnings for the religious as well.

Contemplating a loving God strengthens portions of our brain — particularly the frontal lobes and the anterior cingulate — where empathy and reason reside. Contemplating a wrathful God empowers the limbic system, which is “filled with aggression and fear.” It is a sobering concept: The God we choose to love changes us into his image, whether he exists or not.

For Newberg, this is not a simple critique of religious fundamentalism — a phenomenon varied in its beliefs and motivations. It is a criticism of any institution that allies ideology or faith with anger and selfishness.

It is typical that we praise independent judgment and political nerve in our elected officials — until they actually show those qualities.

[...] America was not founded as a Christian nation precisely because America’s founders were informed by a Jewish and Christian understanding of human nature. Since humans are autonomous moral beings created in God’s image, freedom of conscience is essential to their dignity. At least where the federal government was concerned, the founders asserted that citizens should be subject to God and their conscience, not to the state.

The Founders were not secularists. They assumed that people would bring their deepest moral motivations to political life – motivations often informed by religious belief. But they firmly rejected sectariansim.

So does the Constitution, in Jefferson’s gloss, require the “separation of church and state”? Institutionally, yes. Theologically, yes with one notable exception. Nearly all the most important teachings of faith – doctrines on individual salvation or the destination of history – have no public role or relevance. But one belief – a belief in the nature and rights of human beings – is the basis of any political philosophy, including our own. It matters greatly if “all men are created equal” or not.

Religious faith remains one of the main foundations for belief in human equality and dignity – as it was in the Declaration of Independence. But this conviction leads in a different direction than some religious people imagine. It is honored by respecting the priority of conscience.