Neural Buddhism

[Xunzian]

Perhaps the only thing David Brooks has written that is worth reading:

Op-Ed Columnist
The Neural Buddhists
By DAVID BROOKS
Published: May 13, 2008

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.
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David Brooks
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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 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.

I can agree with much of what was written, especially with the distinction being made between “warm” and “cold” materialisms. I think this helps show how the pre-rational concept of religious engagement is inseparably a part of our humanity and our biology. I think it can be argued pretty effectively both ways (God is just a by-product of our brain or our brain is able to perceive god), but I disagree that his appeal to neural Buddhism or a sort of watered-down Deism is a good move. I think that by abstracting religiosity from ritual, which is what he is suggesting will happen when he talks about overcoming doctrines, the emotional power of the act is diminished and we’re left with the problem that he described militant atheism has having.

At the same time, it is important to recognize the ritual arena in which religion operates. When it transcends that narrowly boundary, it can cause a great deal of trouble. So it is about striking a balance between transformative nature of tradition as well as the engaged modern world. Finding that balance is where I think the real excitement lies.

[tentative]

Xunz,

You’re chasing the unicorn. Balance? What balance? While I agree that it would be useful to begin the dialogue, this forum proves that such discussion isn’t any where close. It’s either/or. Maybe in another 50 years…

[anon]

@tentative

Xunz,

You’re chasing the unicorn. Balance? What balance? While I agree that it would be useful to begin the dialogue, this forum proves that such discussion isn’t any where close. It’s either/or. Maybe in another 50 years…

Why do you say that?

[Uccisore]

Jeez, I dunno about the central premise. The only reason why the specific tenets of Christianity are hard to argue for is because they’re supernatural, and the skeptic denies them by default. If Brooks is right, and that sort of thing becomes more accepted (i.e., if the debate shifts from theism), then Christianity, for example, is just going to have to defend itself with pure history, which is really in the bag. The only criticism of the Resurrection left that holds any water is that it belongs to a class of things that a materialist can’t accept.

[hermes_the_thrice_gr (hermes the thrice great)]

@tentative

Xunz,

You’re chasing the unicorn. Balance? What balance? While I agree that it would be useful to begin the dialogue, this forum proves that such discussion isn’t any where close. It’s either/or. Maybe in another 50 years…

this forum is mostly populated by posters who think that Platonic forms are cutting edge. Perhaps it is not the most pertinent place for this fight…

[Xunzian]

Tent,

With respect to that, you are more the problem and less the solution.

Ucci,

I wouldn’t go that far. Given the nature of historical pursuits at the time, they are all incredibly suspect with varying weight given to various sources. Part of allotting that weight is seeing how many absurd claims the sources in question make. While it makes sense within a tradition to accept sources making outlandish claims, when viewed afresh with the modern vision of history I would re-examine them.

[Uccisore]

Xunzian, I don’t disagree with what you said so much, it’s just that the claims of Christianity are only absurd to the extent that all the right people are the sort of materialists that the article says are going out of style. If what he says is correct, and the burden of proof on Christianity shifts from proving things like theism to simple matters of history, Christianity will do way better than it already is. That said, do I really think the world will be flooded with converts? No, because the disbelief usually comes before the examination- the reasons why will just change.

[tentative]

Hermes,

Yes. Caught up in logos like flies stuck in honey. But you have to admit, the honey is sweet even if it is a make believe world. It is almost as if curiosity stopped a hundred years ago. A line from one of my favorite poets: “The squirming facts exceed the squamous mind.”

Xunz,

Tent,

With respect to that, you are more the problem and less the solution.

I’m the problem? Not hardly. The demand and assumed position that theism is the ONLY possible conclusion is the problem. We don’t know everything - yet. The mystery still remains, but wall papering all possible explanations of the universe with “God did it.” isn’t much of an answer. Of course, I may be in error thinking this is an open forum where one doesn’t have to be a theist to participate.

[anon]

@Uccisore

No, because the disbelief usually comes before the examination- the reasons why will just change.

I’ve seen you say this kind of thing more than once. “The reasons why”, meaning the rational particulars of the discourse, will surely change based on a given intellectual context, but you seem to go further and suggest that the reasons for rejecting a tradition are somehow completely baseless or that they lack a reasoned origin at all. I get hints of predestination…

@tentative

Of course, I may be in error thinking this is an open forum where one doesn’t have to be a theist to participate.

Why do you say that?

[felix_dakat]

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.

This is pretty much what I have been trying to say all along.

[Xunzian]

Ucci,

I can agree with that to a certain extent, though I would point out that the sort of god he mentions in the article is very different from the Christian God. It’s closer to a wishy-washy Deist god. So I agree that part of it is a matter of history, of linking the wishy-washy Deist god with the historical support for the Christian God. But I think there is also the matter of making the Deist god take on the characteristics of the Christian God, which is a wider bridge than it may appear. I think it is more likely to segue into a sort of neo-Gnosticism, if anything.

Tent,

I’m the problem? Not hardly. The demand and assumed position that theism is the ONLY possible conclusion is the problem. We don’t know everything - yet. The mystery still remains, but wall papering all possible explanations of the universe with “God did it.” isn’t much of an answer. Of course, I may be in error thinking this is an open forum where one doesn’t have to be a theist to participate.

Demonstrate using quotations where that has been said. From reasonable posters with a post count of 1,000 or more, just to weed out the occasional fanatic that pops up and then fades away. As for the last sentence, you do realize that, in terms of regular posters, atheists outweigh theists. Agnostics also make up a large number of regular posters on the site (possibly the majority), though by the nature of their belief they are less likely to post in the religion section. While theists do represent the minority in the real world, the situation on ILP is a touch different.

Felix,

Figured you’d dig it Here is some food-for-thought from Sam Crane over at Useless Tree:

The Tao of Neuroscience

I'm not a big fan of David Brooks, but a friend brought today's column, "Neural Buddhists," to my attention, and it seems right for a post here.

Brooks is thinking about the intersection of recent popular publications on neuroscience and enduring questions of spirituality.  He anticipates a new debate on science versus faith, one that puts the defenders of faith on the defensive; or, at least, challenges defenders of particular faiths.   The new science creates more subtle understanding about the human brain/mind and the creation and perpetuation of belief.  Here's a key graf:

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.

My peculiar critique - peculiar, that is, to my interest in ancient Chinese thought - would be: why label these ideas as "Buddhist?"  They may be Buddhist, to some degree, but they are also to be found in other systems of thought, particularly Confucianism and Taoism.

 Take those first two points, for example: self is relational and morality is inborn.  This is right out of Mencius.  For example:

[i]We are, by constitution, capable of being good....That's what I mean by good.  If someone's evil, it can't be blamed on inborn capacities.  We all have a heart of compassion and a heart of conscience, a heart of reverence and a heart of right and wrong.  In a heart of compassion is Humanity, and in a heart of conscience is Duty.  In a heart of reverence is Ritual, and in a heart of right and wrong is wisdom.  Humanity, Duty, Ritual, wisdom - these are not external things we meld into us.  They're part of us from the beginning, though we may not realize it.  Hence the saying: "What you seek you will find, and what you ignore you will lose."  Some make more of themselves than others, maybe two or five or countless times more.  But that's only because some people fail to realize their inborn capacities.[/i]   (11.6)

 The "we" here is not confined to any particular cultural or national group.  Mencius means all of us, anywhere in any historical time period.  It is an argument about universal human qualities.  Barbarians, uncivilized people who do not realize their inborn capacities, can learn to be good.  They can learn to express their innate moral sensibilities.   And those notions of Humanity and Duty are all about social selves: individuals  embedded in social relationships.  Indeed, the self, from a Confucian perspective, is literally meaningless outside of its social context.  As the context develops and changes over time, as we move from one set of relationships and duties to another, the self, too, changes.  The self is social and dynamic.

 And take that last line of the Brooks excerpt above: God is "...the unknowable total of all there is."  If a Taoist read that phrase, she might say, "that's not God, it's Tao."  And so it is.  Transcending boundaries is what Taoism is all about, as is accepting the infinitude of Way.  The love part is a bit more difficult, since Chuang Tzu might ask us to reduce our emotional attachments to life generally, but there is certainly the possibility of joy and happiness there.

 In any event, my point is simple: it's not just about Buddhism.  I suspect Brooks' invocation of Buddhism simply reflects a certain ignorance of ancient Chinese thought.  Americans just don't know enough of it to bring it into these kinds of conversations, even when the reference is obvious.

 Oh well, I guess I have a lot of work to do in my calling to bring ancient Chinese thought into modern American life.

 And one more thing.  I think, for the purpose that Brooks has created here, Confucianism and Taoism might be better references than Buddhism.  They provide most of what the was searching for in the Buddhism reference but without the additional matter of reincarnation, which I suspect, the neuroscientists might question...

[felix_dakat]

Thanks Xunxian. Brooks is a highly visible conservative intellectual. I expect he will catch a lot of flack for this editorial from the fundamentalist right.

[Ierrellus]

I’m on the side of scientists who can see our religious instinct as biological. (See “Varieties of Religious Experience”–James.) The quibble over which religion is the right one is a strawman, a moot consideration. What is real is the need for ritual, as X notes. Wiccans, Druids, Christians, Muslims, etc., congregate for the social reinforcement of their personal sense of meaning and value. Their performance of rituals solidifies group belief.
Much to the consternation of many mid-century intellectuals, their “Waste Land” poet, T.S. Eliot converted to catholicism. Eliot’s response was that he found the rituals comforting. I’ve attended fundie “holy roller” meetings, Native Am. sweats and stodgy, mainline church services. What I discovered was that each group was doing the same thing, only in different ways. The same thing was group ritual substantianting personal value.

[Ingenium]

WTF, Xunzian, how many times do I have to write this?

@A friend of Xunzian

And one more thing. I think, for the purpose that Brooks has created here, Confucianism and Taoism might be better references than Buddhism. They provide most of what the was searching for in the Buddhism reference but without the additional matter of reincarnation, which I suspect, the neuroscientists might question…

Yeah, except that, for about the twentieth frigging time: Buddhism doesn’t teach reincarnation. That’s a Hindu concept that relies conceptually on atman (self). Rebirth is about causality, not identity, and is based on anatman (non-self). In Buddhism, death is an ending, not a continuation.

@Uccisore

…it’s just that the claims of Christianity are only absurd to the extent that all the right people are the sort of materialists that the article says are going out of style. If what he says is correct, and the burden of proof on Christianity shifts from proving things like theism to simple matters of history, Christianity will do way better than it already is.

That’s an unsubstantiated opinion, since the claims of Christianity related to resurrection can be viewed as absurd on just about every level. But then, anyone can express such opinions, just as anyone can frame their arguments as narrowly as necessary in order to rationally justify why they believe whatever irrational thing they believe. In the end, that has nothing to do with the cited article, because in it Brooks is describing how the need for Christianity to prove anything about miracles such as resurrection is diminishing. His point is that the particular market for the god of miracles is gradually dissolving, except maybe in desperately poor and backward third world countries where the missionaries can still compete with the witch doctors and zombies. So there’s still a level playing field somewhere on the planet, I guess.

And Brooks’ point about atheism isn’t novel. If there becomes nothing to argue against, then the need for atheism diminishes, as well. Who cares anymore that it’s easy to debunk biblical claims? In the view of modern science, that’s like debating horse-and-carriage travel versus the Space Shuttle. And very little to do with studying the mind and brain and the experience of transcendence.

In the developed world, people have been designing their god ideas to be in line with science and reason for quite some time now (look at felix dakat’s claim for an example of this), and less in line with mythology and superstition and scientifically ridiculous claims. That doesn’t mean that the latter will disappear…there are still people utterly convinced that aliens were captured in Roswell, New Mexico 50-odd years ago. But Brooks is identifying the phenomenon that the religiously superstitious are also becoming increasingly marginalized in society, a sub-culture in a larger culture that has virtually unlimited tolerance for benign sub-cultures. The first to have gone are the biblical literalists who now isolate themselves to a certain degree, even going so far as homeschooling their children to prevent them from learning enough science to debunk myths desperatly clung to as truth. What I find sad about this is that they could still teach morality from those stories, along with setting the example for their children by living fearlessly examined lives.

[Xunzian]

Ing,

Hey, I’m with ya from a philosophical vantage point. You know that. I just post Sam Crane because he usually has some pertinent things to say. Also, reincarnation does play an important role in Buddhism the folk religion even if it doesn’t exist in Buddhism the philosophy. Cutting a line between them can be tricky, and should be done, but I think acknowledging Buddhism the folk religion isn’t all bad either. I mean, the Dalai Lama’s position is based on his reincarnation and he talks about it all the time. Hard to find a better authority than that . . .

[Uccisore]

Xunzian

I can agree with that to a certain extent, though I would point out that the sort of god he mentions in the article is very different from the Christian God. It’s closer to a wishy-washy Deist god.

Yeah, but you know how that goes. The inherent wishy-washiness of deism begs to be replaced by an actual coherent tradition, and it’s pretty easy to see what it would most likely be.

that part of it is a matter of history, of linking the wishy-washy Deist god with the historical support for the Christian God. But I think there is also the matter of making the Deist god take on the characteristics of the Christian God, which is a wider bridge than it may appear.

Yeah, I agree with you there, and that’s where it’s going to break down, that and Pilate’s “What is truth?” which is always what you can say when a life-changing decision is placed before you. It would be nice if the ‘challenge’ to Christians was simply to demonstrate the truth of their claims in terms of history, but that’s not how it is, and I don’t foresee it changing anytime soon.

anon

I’ve seen you say this kind of thing more than once. “The reasons why”, meaning the rational particulars of the discourse, will surely change based on a given intellectual context, but you seem to go further and suggest that the reasons for rejecting a tradition are somehow completely baseless or that they lack a reasoned origin at all.

Yeah, 99% of the time they do lack a reasoned origin, or if they have one, it’s a mere token. Skeptics like the pretend that the world is full of two kinds of people - unthinking traditionalists who do what they’re told, and intellectuals who have rejected that. That is, if you’ve turned your back on something, you’ve automatically proven your rational chops. Well, no.

[anon]

@Uccisore

@anon

I’ve seen you say this kind of thing more than once. “The reasons why”, meaning the rational particulars of the discourse, will surely change based on a given intellectual context, but you seem to go further and suggest that the reasons for rejecting a tradition are somehow completely baseless or that they lack a reasoned origin at all.

Yeah, 99% of the time they do lack a reasoned origin, or if they have one, it’s a mere token. Skeptics like the pretend that the world is full of two kinds of people - unthinking traditionalists who do what they’re told, and intellectuals who have rejected that. That is, if you’ve turned your back on something, you’ve automatically proven your rational chops. Well, no.

I can understand why you’re saying that, but I think it’s unfair. What exactly do you consider a reasoned origin? Can you describe that 1%?

[Uccisore]

I’m not limiting it to just rejecting a tradition- that’s just the situation where it needs to be most stringently pointed out, because we live in a culture where rebellious is considered an intellectual virtue, more or less. There’s a lot more rebels than philosophers, is what I’m saying.

[anon]

@Uccisore

I’m not limiting it to just rejecting a tradition- that’s just the situation where it needs to be most stringently pointed out, because we live in a culture where rebellious is considered an intellectual virtue, more or less. There’s a lot more rebels than philosophers, is what I’m saying.

Ah, well I agree with that.

[tentative]

Ucc,

I’m not limiting it to just rejecting a tradition- that’s just the situation where it needs to be most stringently pointed out, because we live in a culture where rebellious is considered an intellectual virtue, more or less.

And of course, any intellectual argument that rejects theism as a likely explanation of the universe couldn’t possibly have merit. It is just some sort of fashionable rebellioness.

Back to dismissal again? My, what a persuasive argument. =D>