Functional Neuroimaging and Neurononsense

http://www.weeklystandard.com/articles/end-neurononsense_810892.html?page=1

I don't often like the politics of the Weekly Standard, but I usually agree with their commentary on the arts and science.  This article pretty much sums up my view of the implications, if any, of functional brain imaging. 

During my first year of medical school at USUHS we were required to take a class called "Human Context" where we had seminars every few weeks and then had to write corresponding essays reflecting our views on various topics such as alcoholism, child sexual abuse, sexism, racism, etc.  The class was taught by a very old intellectual psychiatrist that I'd characterize as moderately reformed Freudian.  If a student wrote something he didn't care for, he called the student in to "see him" where he would discuss with the student what he thought were the student's blind spots that might prevent him for fully understanding the humanity of his patients (that's a charitable interpretation.  More cynically, I might say that his involuntary summons reflected his desire to provide corrective therapy/instruction for students with worldviews he disagreed with).

I received a summons for a paper I wrote on alcoholism where I wrote that many had found strength in religion to overcome their addictions and that clinicians owed it to their patients to be aware of this, instead of solely prescribing naltrexone or acamprosate.  When I entered the professor's office, he told me that free will and thus any meaningful religion did not exist, and that fMRI "proved' him to be correct.

Why did this otherwise highly intelligent professor with 40 years experience so foolishly argue that fMRI scans of the brain prove that there is no free will?  A Freshman philosophy student could easily demonstrate that an fMRI actually has very little to say about whether or not free will exists.
When most doctors or scientists are trying to argue a worldview or religious view point, scientific tools such as fMRI are little more than Rorschach tests that reveal that scientist's prior religious commitments.  Anyone who claims that science proves any religious point of view is on shaky ground.

It seems to be a common aspect of personality that some will always attempt to ground their religious belief in "objective" science, such as modern know nothings like Dawkins or Young Earth Creationists.  Perhaps the innate uncertainty of so much that we believe produces the anxiety that leads all of us, no matter how intelligent or educated, to be susceptible to Confirmation Bias.