David Brooks drew some attention with an op-ed arguing that science’s biggest challenge to religion will not be atheism but instead what he calls 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.
Andrew Sullivan is up for the challenge and focuses on the bit about love, sounds like he’ll find ways to incorporate this into his faith. Over at the American Scene Michael Brendan Dougherty is not sure about the science but isn’t particularly worried:
On the cultural side, I don’t agree that “neural Buddhism” represents some new great challenge to religious belief. It will undermine the faith of people whose spirituality relies exclusively on their ecstatic feelings – and that is a good thing for religion. If science can describe those feelings, it is likely that it can soon induce them in people...
If neural Buddhism comes, it will be an invitation for American religion to move away from its emotionalism (and obscurantism) and back to serious theological reflection. I can’t wait.
I disagree. I’m skeptical that any mass-movement is based primarily on intellectual pursuits such as "serious theological reflection." Elite movements are happy to do that sort of thing to be sure, but emotionalism is a sounder base for a mass movement. As an example, I’d cite the Christian holiday of Pentecost where the disciples were accused of being drunk rather than of stretching their attempts to connect Jesus with past prophecies for example.
Instead I’m betting that religions not compatible with these ideas will focus on social/cultural aspects. There’s some mystical tie in there too, rituals aren’t just included to fill time. However, on the whole I think the social dynamics will be harder to study and thus won’t be included in the earlier versions of reproducible neural Buddhism.
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