On Tuesday, May 19, the Science, Reason, and Faith (CRYF-Ciencia Razón y Fe) Research Group of the University of Navarra hosted a seminar and invited Professor Joseph Victor Oron, a Piarist priest and a senior engineer of canal roads and ports, who joined the ICS Mind-Brain research group in 2012. Oron is also director of the pilot program UpToYou focused on teaching emotional management and emotional integration.

The seminar offered contributions from neuroscience to the experience of faith and vice versa. A meeting point for interdisciplinary dialogue is found in the personal belief system. Neuroscience assumes that emotions, like physical reality and perceptions, are decisive elements for decision-making, but there is no such assumption that the world of beliefs play an important role.

To the question of whether a meeting between neuroscience and faith is possible, Jose Victor Oron noted that, "faith has two dimensions. On the one hand, it is a gift and, on the other, it is a human experience. Faith as an experience must have some correlation: a conceptualization of the world starting with my relationships and possibilities, from what I am myself and how I understand things."

When faith is accepted, a manifestation of it is found in the belief system: The "substrate from which people form their conception of what the world is. For this, the family and the early years are very important. Before the age of six, a child knows what honesty is," as Oron remarked. The brain is a complex system, an organ with high levels of connectivity. "Everything is connected. Genes have lost their reign" since belief is reached through a sedimentation and reflection process starting with personal experiences, as well as emotional and relational experiences. These beliefs, through the process of abstraction, are no longer linked to specific experiences, but rather to a conceptualization of the world and oneself. Furthermore, they are present as one more element in decision-making, in which emotion and reason also compete. "My belief system affects my way of being in the world," as the researcher concluded.