My mom has Parkinson's, and her neurologist is a 7th Day Adventist. He has pamphlets on creation, etc, in his office, and weird paintings of Jesus healing children. He has honestly been her best neurologist by far, though.

I can't say I understand how that kind of mind works, but at least the "doctor" part is reliable.

Neuroscience can not explain conscious awareness. There’s a lot more to reality than meets the eye. IMO you can not reduce a conscious Self to a bundle of nerves any more than you can reduce reality to a bunch of atoms.

Does reality consist of matter moving in space and time? Lots of people seem to think that but physicists say otherwise. Our perception of reality is nothing but illusion, but our real Self is not our body.

My ex is a neuroscientist. Met lots of her colleagues socially. There's believers, but they are few and far between, and their belief is nuanced to the point of agnosticism.

Fantastic studies and enlightening, especially the role of neuroplasticity. But there are parts of being human that elicit art, culture, anything that sets you beyond an automaton. What triggers the events that cause neuroplasticity? If it were a self-replicating system then nothing new could occur.

I am no neuroscientist, but asking the question from a philosophical standpoint.

I guess at the root of the question is what causes change that influences a closed system?

Science is great to study and read about, and evolution, religion is an illusion. Richard Dawkins, Richard Carrier, Dan Barker, Stephen Hawking, Carl Sagan, have good books to study and read, and listen too. and others too.

Yes, and no. We are more than just the wiring in our heads, or bodies; are not some form of automatons. I am currently reading "Musicophilia," by Oliver Sacks, who was a neurologist. Here and much elsewhere, I have read that what people refer to as religious experiences, out of body experiences, are not especially unusual alternate states of experience. But, we each bring our own personal history, and perspective to any experience, and interpret such in a way that fits our view of ourselves. We may experience AWE at something, and recognize it as AWE, be happy to have had that experience, while the person next to us might attribute that same experience as a touch from his/her god. The latter person is fooling her/himself, but cannot recognize it.

Yes, there are christian and muslim neuroscientists, and because neuroscience doesn't bar christians or muslims from entering...how did this ever become a valid question?

Also, stop with the stupid crash courses. Stop letting people tell you what the study materials are saying. Grow up, get some actual study material, and study neuroscience if that's what you want to do, for crying out loud.

As a general rule, I would say the more educated you are, the less religious you are. However, there are exceptions everywhere, in every profession. Not surprising, I guess. What I wonder is if they still hold their beliefs "deeply" or it's more of a security blanket for them

Agreed. I wrote in an earlier post that the thing we call our soul is simply a neural network that responds to stimulii by sending those pleasure signals to the appropriate place.

Take a read of Hegel, we like to create our own realities, which include giving ourselves a soul. I use the term soul to describe my inner self, but kinda disappears shortly after 'life extinct', as brain activity ceases.
Think of it, brain starts at the base of the spine, goes up the backbone and gets crammed into a pressure vessel at the top. Very basically a tube of organic wires optimised for survival...
We are just a big bony worm with arms and legs, we carry the story of our evolution within all of us.

My late wife's neurosurgeon was a Muslim and one of the Onco-Neurologists. Another Neurosurgeon was a Hindu.

Wonderful @josh_is_exciting. Thats in the same family as when we discovered that the sun was not in fact a god. And disease was not in fact demons. And that weather patterns were not in fact actions of a super natural being. Actually, I guess a few are still around that would characterize those events as influenced buy a god.

There are probably some who are part of more liberal or progressive congregations. Mainly for the fellowship. I have a hard time imagining any of them hanging around with the evangelicals.