공감과 종교성: 신경과학과 종교 현상학의 접점

Abstract

The new-normal life in the time of Coronavirus is steadily settling down into a routine accompanied with long-term and fundamental changes to social patterns. Due to the fact that people have a tendency to minimize close contact with others in the aftermath of the quarantine system, the selfish attitude of man can be strongly reinforced in all walks of life. In this precarious situation empathy will be a key concept to strengthen prosocial behaviors. On one hand, from David Hume’s axiom of self-interest to the selfish gene theory of natural selection by Richard Dawkins, selfishness is regarded as a reasonable virtue in the contemporary era. Newly discovered results based on neuro-scientific research on altruistic motives reveal the innate nature of prosociality of man on the other hand. Three neuro-scientific results show us legitimate examples of that; the mind-reading ability of the brain, a function of the ventromedial profrontal cortex, and oxytocin hormone as neuropeptide. They offer scientific grounds totally different from our conventional ideas of human ethics. According to Matthew Lieberman and David Sloan Wilson, these new grounds could become an empirical foundation of prosocial behavior and group selection. In this regard, we have to pay sharp attention to the idea that natural selection acts at the level of the group instead of the level of the individual, since this idea unravels how altruistic behaviors could be empirically possible without any help from conventional methodology. In this regard, empathy, with a few empirical grounds, plays a significant role in understanding others and the world in which they belong. Dean Hamer, author of The God Gene, sheds new light on the interface of neuroscience and religious studies. Taking religious experience into a great consideration, he tries making the concept of empathy blur the line between neuroscience and spirituality in order to build a bridge between two discrete fields. Under the influence of newly adapted research, I will putatively construe that religiosity, or spirituality revitalized with the help of new approaches on empathetic nature, will stimulate prosocial behaviors at the level of individuals rather than the traditional communities for extant rituals where people usually congregate in an obsolete way. Ultimately development of spiritual instinct with empathy-induced altruism will contribute to a social equilibrium in the near future.