도스토예프스키와 신경신학

Abstract

This paper is intended to explore Dostoevsky's life and work from a viewpoint of Neurotheology. Neurotheology is a relatively new discipline that seeks to interpret human religiosity in terms of neuroscience. The neurotheologists argue that religious experience is a result of workings of the neurons. Some of them even insist that they found the so-called 'God-spot' in the brain. The area identified as the "God-spot" is temporal lobe. Since the patients suffering from temporal lobe epilepsy are reported going through various religious and mystical experiences, the area in temporal lobe is identified as "God-spot." Applied to Dostoevsky(whose epileptic seizures are well documented), this argument relates his deep spirituality to disorder in temporal lobe. Dostoevsky in his last novel Brothers of Karamazov, as if to anticipate today's neurotheological arguments, explores the possibility and danger of brain reductionism in future society. According to him, if everything including God is reduced to human brain, there will appear completely new human kind, for whom "everything is permitted." If neurotheology seeks to integrate neuroscience and theology into a new discipline and contribute to better understanding of human being, it seems that it has to take into consideration what Dostoevsky apprehends in his novel.