What does the affective-cognitive dimension of being human entails?Many contemporary scholars from theological (especially religiousexperience) perspectives as well as from evolutionary biological (especiallyneuroscientific) perspectives have made exciting inroads in the on-goinganthropological discourses on this very dimension of being human. Myarticle partially makes work of their respective contributions. For theformer theological perspective I will utilize Pascal and Stoker. For the latterneuroscientific perspective I will concentrate on LeDoux and Damasio. Icall my contribution an evolutionary-theological re-conceptualisation ofreligious experience for which I make use of Pascal’s famous words fromhis Pensées (1670) “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know”and “(i)t is the heart which experiences God and not the reason”. Thereforethe title: With reasons of the heart before God. Such a formulation howeverimmediately raises the question: Does such an emphasis on the “heart” reintroduceirrationality into the scientific scholarly dialogue? The answer isclear: Yes, it does. It is argued that it should be re-introduced constructivelyinto contemporary science-theology discourses in order – on the one hand– to critically address the very accusation, and – on the other hand – topresent us with a far richer, deeper understanding of personhood. Fromthe constructive integration of the two perspectives, namely the theologicaland neuroscientific the words of Pascal is finally re-formulated from anevolutionary-theological perspective and qualified in which emotion ispresented as the embodiment of the logic of survival.
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