 Hello, my name is Sarah Lane-Ritchie and I'm a research fellow in Theology and Science at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland. In this lecture, I'm going to talk about the relationship between the various brain sciences and religious belief. Neuroscience has been extraordinarily successful at identifying the specific relationships between mental experiences and neural patterns in the brain. And this is true even in the case of religious belief. The neural correlates of belief are observable using imaging technologies. Similarly, cognitive science suggests that religious belief is an evolutionary product or even byproduct of a long process of natural selection and adaptation. That is, belief might actually be explainable in evolutionary terms. All of this raises significant questions in the science and religion discussion, questions such as, have the various brain sciences undermined the validity of religious belief? If we can explain how the brain works and why we have evolved the cognitive capacity to form religious beliefs, then have we effectively explained a way God, or rendered belief in God redundant? These are the sorts of questions we'll begin to address in this lecture. I'll begin by highlighting the embodied nature of the mind and religious belief, then examine the nature of neural correlates of belief and religious experience. We'll then turn to the cognitive science of religion and the evolution of belief. Before finally returning to a discussion of whether, indeed, the brain sciences are even the type of thing that could debunk religious belief in the first place. Before going further, though, a few clarifications are helpful. The terminology of brain-related fields of study can be confusing. While brain-related research is often colloquially grouped together under the heading of neuroscience, this isn't technically accurate. Neuroscience has to do with the study of actual brain matter. Neurotransmitters, the prefrontal cortex and synapses, cognitive science, on the other hand involves neuroscience, but is interdisciplinary and much broader in scope, drawing upon psychology, anthropology, and evolutionary biology as well. Thus, when I refer to the brain-related sciences, I do so just to indicate that there are a variety of fields that study the mind-brain from different perspectives or through different lenses.