Essentialism as Reductionism in A. Newberg’s Concept

Abstract

The article reconstructs Newberg’s concept of neuropsychological research. The common belief that Newberg is an essentialist is taken as a starting point, on this basis the system of studying religious practices and mysticism developed by Newberg is analyzed. In the course of the study, it was found that Newberg’s concept has distinct essentialist features and is rooted in the tradition of studying the mystical experience of Ing, James, Jung and Stace, but at the same time, the idea of secularization of religious practice, turning it into a mechanism for im­proving a person’s life, regardless of his religious beliefs, runs through all his work. Newberg is confident that neurological discoveries of the fundamental foundations of religious life and experience can transform modern disparate the­ological systems into a megatheology in which only the biologically and spiritu­ally significant basis of religion will remain, while the divisive particulars will have to be removed. In this context, Newberg’s concept can be regarded as a unique project to combine essentialism and reductionism in the study of reli­gious and mystical experience. At the same time, the article shows that the re­sults of Newberg’s discoveries should be considered in the light of the replication crisis, because his first study, which led to the development of the neurological study of religious practices and built around the idea of the identity of prayer and meditation, had a fundamental methodological flaw.