The New York Times published an article on May 13, 2008 on the topic of meta-neurotheology: the context and evolution of the social discussion about neurotheology. Author David Brooks points out the huge impact that the neuroscience revolution is having and will have on our culture’s views of God, religion, and science. His main point: the direction we will take as the discussion unfolds is not towards atheism and pure materialism, but rather something he calls neural Buddhism: “new movements that emphasize self-transcendence”, based on beliefs in a dynamic self , shared morals, elevated experience, and a new concept of God .
It’s great this issue is being raised, and not in the tired old “God vs. the atheists” cartoon fashion. This is one of the few times I’ve seen a mainstream media treatment of the issue actually distinguish between religion and spirituality. Unfortunately, Brooks confuses matters by trying to bring in God as an aspect of the spirituality side, which he redefines as “the unknowable total of all there is”. This means nothing. He goes on to say that the cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible. No doubt about the latter, but any useful concept of God is not about faith, it’s about experience; and the God that Brooks apparently is referring to is so different from the God of the Bible as to be unrecognizable.
Brooks states that
over the past several years, the momentum has shifted…
