>  From the NY Times.
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/13/opinion/13brooks.html?ref=opinion
>
> Re “The Neural Buddhists” (column, May 13):
>
> In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called “Sorry, but Your Soul
> Just Died,” in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern
> scientists.
>
> To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might
> exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises
> from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior.
> Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion.
> Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.
>
> In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their
> brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. You put a magnetic
> helmet around their heads and they will begin to think they are having a
> spiritual epiphany. If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they
> will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain
> tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God.
>
> Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of
> thinking: Everything is material and “the soul is dead.” He anticipated
> the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public
> debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether
> God exists.
>
> Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists
> has done battle with defenders of faith. The two sides have argued about
> whether it is reasonable to conceive of a soul that survives the death
> of the body and about whether understanding the brain explains away or
> merely adds to our appreciation of the entity that created it.
>
> The atheism debate is a textbook example of how a scientific revolution
> can change public culture. Just as “The Origin of Species reshaped
> social thinking, just as Einstein’s theory of relativity affected art,
> so the revolution in neuroscience is having an effect on how people see
> the world.
>
> And yet my guess is that the atheism debate is going to be a sideshow.
> The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in
> God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.
>
> Over the past several years, the momentum has shifted away from
> hard-core materialism. The brain seems less like a cold machine. It does
> not operate like a computer. Instead, meaning, belief and consciousness
> seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural
> firings. Those squishy things called emotions play a gigantic role in
> all forms of thinking. Love is vital to brain development.
>
> Researchers now spend a lot of time trying to understand universal moral
> intuitions. Genes are not merely selfish, it appears. Instead, people
> seem to have deep instincts for fairness, empathy and attachment.
>
> Scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states. Andrew
> Newberg of the University of Pennsylvania has shown that transcendent
> experiences can actually be identified and measured in the brain (people
> experience a decrease in activity in the parietal lobe, which orients us
> in space). The mind seems to have the ability to transcend itself and
> merge with a larger presence that feels more real.
>
> This new wave of research will not seep into the public realm in the
> form of militant atheism. Instead it will lead to what you might call
> neural Buddhism.
>
> If you survey the literature (and I’d recommend books by Newberg, Daniel
> J. Siegel, Michael S. Gazzaniga, Jonathan Haidt, Antonio Damasio and
> Marc D. Hauser if you want to get up to speed), you can see that certain
> beliefs will spread into the wider discussion.
>
> First, the self is not a fixed entity but a dynamic process of
> relationships. Second, underneath the patina of different religions,
> people around the world have common moral intuitions. Third, people are
> equipped to experience the sacred, to have moments of elevated
> experience when they transcend boundaries and overflow with love.
> Fourth, God can best be conceived as the nature one experiences at those
> moments, the unknowable total of all there is.
>
> In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the
> faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy
> debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the
> existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are
> just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s
> going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism.
>
> In unexpected ways, science and mysticism are joining hands and
> reinforcing each other. That’s bound to lead to new movements that
> emphasize self-transcendence but put little stock in divine law or
> revelation. Orthodox believers are going to have to defend particular
> doctrines and particular biblical teachings. They’re going to have to
> defend the idea of a personal God, and explain why specific theologies
> are true guides for behavior day to day. I’m not qualified to take
> sides, believe me. I’m just trying to anticipate which way the debate is
> headed. We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to
> have big cultural effects.
>
> Thank you to David Brooks for addressing what is possibly the most
> important cultural issue of our time. The debate, God versus no God, may
> fade in the background as neuroscience and cognitive science help
> explain the human condition, providing understanding and motivation for
> people to manage their existence to live moral and meaningful lives.
>
> This emerging and modern way of understanding transcendence points to
> human flourishing, offering hope for humankind.
>
> How refreshing this idea, that transcendence has been in our hands all
> along.
>
> Susan Murphy
> New Hope, Pa., May 13, 2008
>
> •
>
> To the Editor:
>
> David Brooks is right that emotions and collective phenomena are
> essential for understanding how the brain works. But the entire
> discipline of neuroscience is still founded on the fundamental
> hypothesis that the brain, in all its mysterious complexity, is an
> entirely material entity. In no way is this hypothesis belied by current
> research.
>
> Indeed, our detailed molecular understanding of neural receptors and
> their ligands, as well as our ability to monitor neural activity in
> real-time through functional M.R.I., greatly bolsters this materialistic
> hypothesis.
>
> Emerging fields such as systems biology and network dynamics may seem
> less reductionistic than, say, molecular biology. But reductionism (in
> this sense) is very different from materialism — all modern science is
> fundamentally materialistic.
>
> Justin Kinney
> Princeton, N.J., May 13, 2008
>
> The writer is a graduate student studying physics and biology at
> Princeton University.
>
> •
>
> To the Editor:
>
> Any working scientist like me knows that measurements are objective,
> reproducible by anyone, independent of feelings and prayer. Mathematical
> laws accurately describe a large number of these measurements, in
> particular measurements of electrical phenomena, water flow, swaying of
> buildings, and so on.
>
> The essential problem for believers is to explain how God can change our
> lives without changing these measurements, or the physical laws that
> summarize them.
>
> Bob Eisenberg
> Chicago, May 13, 2008
>
> The writer is professor and chairman, department of molecular biophysics
> and physiology, Rush Medical Center.
>
> •
>
> To the Editor:
>
> As an engineer, lawyer, computer programmer and Roman Catholic, I have a
> problem with the concept that the evolution of the species just
> happened. From an evolutionary perspective, we are probably somewhere in
> the chicken and egg debate.
>
> As man supposedly evolved from a single-cell amoeba to the complex
> organism that he is today, we had to develop a complex brain to manage
> the process.
>
> The first problem facing a self-developing species in its early stages
> would be the need to know that there is something out there to see,
> feel, hear, touch or taste. The second problem is that a complex brain
> could not survive the incredibly complex development process without the
> five senses in operational mode. And you can’t get the senses in
> operational mode until you have developed a sophisticated brain with the
> ability to communicate and interact with the senses.
>
> Therein lies our chicken and egg dilemma.
>
> Ken LeBrun
> Stony Brook, N.Y., May 13, 2008
>
> •
>
> To the Editor:
>
> David Brooks is correct when he writes that the greatest challenge to
> orthodoxy will come not from hard-core atheists like Richard Dawkins,
> but from those who believe in God but not necessarily in religion.
>
> A recent Pew Forum study recognizes the “unaffiliated” as the fourth
> largest and fastest growing religious group in America. While the number
> of atheists has remained constant, those professing allegiance to no
> single religious creed or ideology are on the rise.
>
> Members of this group often described themselves as “spiritual, not
> religious,” and once they begin to recognize one another for who they
> are, they are sure to have their say.
>
> Clark Strand
> Woodstock, N.Y., May 13, 2008
>
> The writer, a former Zen Buddhist monk, is the author of the forthcoming
> book “How to Believe in God (Whether You Believe in Religion or Not).”
>
> •
>
> To the Editor:
>
> Religion has always provided an answer for many people who need the
> comfortable belief in a personal deity. They require much more than
> seeking connection with an incomprehensible reality, a quest that
> satisfies those trying for spiritual experience rather than observing
> standard religious practice.
>
> A debate about the existence of God seems awfully beside the point,
> since some are happiest to have this secure belief while others thrive
> by not being so bound. If we could just let this be as it is, just let
> those questing for answers to everything continue this necessary path to
> understanding all it is possible to know, and let others catch up.
>
> We were given the capacity and desire to push knowledge as far as we
> can. Let’s recognize ...
>
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