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.WOW....
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.
...
.. 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. ...
[ cf The Neural Buddhists ]
But do Buddhists believe in God? Or is this just one more moment where David Brooks NEEDS to find a safe place to park a 'god term' so that he can save his sense of religiousity, inspite of where he has been, and what he has done over the last decade.
Does Brooks even Need a God in his thesis, if all he wants are 'emotions' and 'warm fuzzies' and a way to talk as IF 'spirituality' were something other than a 'common basis of shared experience and value' - where one keeps a communion with the fidelity to the shared values.
Yes, He admits that he is NOT competent to take sides, which, is sooo Ironic! So tastey and delicious in this new Post-Post-911 Kultur as we waffle away from the moral certainty that one is either for us or against us...
Ah yes....
Who knows, maybe the discussion was never as simple as the initial post-911 kulturKampfs pretended.
But it may be possible to look for a place to open a discussion.
Can one have moral values without the need for a Supernaturlism?Ah yes.... being able to live without a Galaxtic Nanny, and still not making it all the way to mass murderer.