Weblogsky: David Brooks on "Neural Buddhists"

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David Brooks on "Neural Buddhists"

I've seen many links to David Brooks' New York Times op-ed piece, "The Neural Buddhists," since it appeared a couple weeks ago. I've circled back to it 3-4 times, given it some thought, resisted writing about it because I had to think about it some more. I'm still thinking about it... but writing about it might help.

Brooks starts by considering science-driven materialism and rational atheism vs "defenders of the faith," and the argument "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." A revolution in neuroscience, he says, will sideline that debate. Scientific thinking is changing, shifting 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." He goes on to say that "scientists have more respect for elevated spiritual states," finding that they can be "identified and measured in the brain."

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.

He mentions four points that are relevant to the cognitive revolution and related new thinking about religion:

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.

He concludes by saying that atheism vs belief in God is the easy debate, but the real challenge is from people who acknowledge the sacred, and "who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits." He sees an overlap of science and Buddhism, and a debate that's really between the Buddhist non-theistic experience of the sacred and various biblical teachings and orthodoxies.

I've always understood Buddhism as a practice, not a religion, so I'm not sure what I think of this argument. Consider that some Christians adopt Buddhist practice without dropping or rejecting their religious faith – Thomas Merton was a great example. Though I suppose if you practice Buddhism for a while, religious belief and atheism are the same thing, as are "spiritual" and "material." They're just concepts.

jon posted this at 7:50 AM
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