Our Pantheist Future

David Brooks' column on neuroscience and religion has attracted a fair amount of comment from my favorite bloggers: Andrew is favorable, Rod is puzzled, Dougherty and Larison dismissive. Here's Brooks' conclusion:

If you survey the literature ... 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.

Now I take the Larison-Dougherty point that defending particular doctrines and particular Biblical teachings is what Christianity has more or less always been about, and that a faith based purely on "elevated experience" and "self-transcendence" isn't really any faith at all anyway, let alone a serious challenger to the Christian tradition. Another way of putting this would be to note that Christians can agree with the second and third of Brooks' four beliefs and vigorously dispute the last of them. Neither the commonality of moral intuitions across cultures nor the universal availability of some form of religious experience are notions that are particularly threatening to Christian orthodoxy (or to the other monotheistic faiths); what is threatening, out of Brooks' litany, is the notion that the sort of baseline spiritual experiences that neuroscientists can measure is the only sort of spiritual experience there is, and that we should define the concept of God as the sum of humanity's lowest-common-denominator encounters with the numinous.

This notion's major premise is summed up nicely by Brooks as follows: "Particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits." No, the Christian would say: Particular religious systems are cultural artifacts, in a sense, yes, but they're artifacts built around specific human experiences, not universal ones. Christian theology and Christian ritual are compatible with the universal human ability to experience the sacred through prayer and meditation, but they're "built on top" of particular encounters and revelations that tend to have little in common with the "transcending boundaries/overflowing with love" experiences that neuroscientists are equipped to measure. Indeed, in both the Old and New Testaments, the foundational encounters with God - the religious experiences that created Judaism and Christianity - are nothing like a meditative, free-floating sense of one-ness with the universe. Instead, whether it's Moses encountering the burning bush or Job being addressed out of the whirlwind or the disciples encountering the Risen Christ, the encounters with God that shape the Judeo-Christian tradition tend to be extremely personal on the one hand (God has a personality, a voice, even a body; He isn't just some cosmic soup we can all go swimming in) and extremely terrifying and difficult to comprehend on the other. Within the post-Resurrection Christian tradition, too, the defining encounters with the divine have followed a similar pattern - from Paul on the road to Damascus and John on Patmos down through monastics wrestling with demons, saints being addressed out of crucifixes, the various apparitions of the Virgin Mary and so forth. And the higher Christian mysticism, in particular, is defined by its emphasis on the need to move beyond the warm love bath that may - as Andrew suggests - represent our initial apprehension of the nature of the divine into the vastly more difficult terrain traversed by figures like Saint John of the Cross and Mother Teresa.

Having said all this, though, I think that Brooks is basically right: I don't think that the "neural Buddhism" (or "neural Pantheism," more aptly) that he's talking about is an intellectually serious challenger to the great monotheistic faiths, but then I'm in the tank for Christendom, and what I'm looking for in a religion doesn't seem to be what most Americans are looking for. In a society that's simultaneously shot through with spiritual yearnings and addicted to the idea that Science can solve all of life's problems, an approach to spirituality that dispenses with the weirdness and scariness and miraculousness of the Judeo-Christian encounter with God, throws a scientific patina on prayer and meditation and promises that Love is all you need seems like a pretty obvious winner. Especially since replacing a personal God with an impersonal Love Force seems to be a popular - if to my mind puzzling - way around the problem of theodicy for a great many people who take the Holocaust to have disproven the Christian conception of God. Also, what Tocqueville said.

And with that, I'll kick the subject over to Mr. Pantheism himself, James Poulos.

Comments

I have any number of contrary thoughts to Brook’s rather vapid post. Obviously consciousness, the soul, & transcendence have been hot topics among theists and anti-theists for quite some time.

My objection is to Brook’s characterization of a general transcendent spiritual dimension to Buddhism specifically. It is part & parcel of the sixties to relate spirituality & mysticism to eastern religions. This does a disservice to both western & eastern religious traditions.

Within the western religious experience there exists a mysticism & transcendent spiritual tradition well suited to Brook’s purposes of analogy. Yet he chooses to typify this as an eastern concept. This reveals the shallowness and vapidity of Brook’s “bourgeois bohemian” mindset.

Posted by Fitz | May 15, 2008 1:32 PM

Ross Says:

"Indeed, in both the Old and New Testaments, the foundational encounters with God - the religious experiences that created Judaism and Christianity - are nothing like a meditative, free-floating sense of one-ness with the universe. Instead, whether it's Moses encountering the burning bush or Job being addressed out of the whirlwind or the disciples encountering the Risen Christ, the encounters with God that shape the Judeo-Christian tradition tend to be extremely personal on the one hand (God has a personality, a voice, even a body; He isn't just some cosmic soup we can all go swimming in)"

Yes, the revealing of God in the Christian religion is extremely personal. But isn't that the problem? While meditation practiced NOW and the "cosmic soup" can be felt NOW, Biblical notions of God are simply second-hand testimonies - stories that have been changed, edited, and have their genesis years after the events they purport to describe.(1)

In other words, these stories do not sit well with anyone who wants to be both free from lack of belief and have a relief from agnosticism(2). (I remember wondering if people in my church actually believed that a bush talked or if an ark actually fit two of every animal when I was a boy in church.)

"Neural Buddhism" is a stupid name, yes. But to say, as Ross does, that it isn't a "serious intellectual challenge to the great monotheistic faiths" is strange. Will people ever hold to such a minimalistic spirituality? Highly unlikely. But it IS serious and it is intellectual. That is more than one can say about Ross' Catholicism which has built its prolific library on a foundation so weak, tenuous, and ancient as to be laughable.

(1) Here, I'm just trying to make the point that it is easy to believe in the power of meditation and the oneness of things (for people who believe in those things, that is) because they can FEEL IT NOW. To believe in the miracles of of the Bible, however, are much harder since they have such cloudy origins and are not corroborated. (After all, other religions claim miracles as well. Why is Christianity any different? Does Ross believe that Mohammed ascended into heaven on a horse?)

(2) I am simply saying that most people want a) Lack of false belief and b) have comprehensive beliefs (i.e. relief from agnosticism). I don't mean agnosticism in a sense specific to the Philosophy of Religion.

Posted by Devin Carpenter | May 15, 2008 2:04 PM

I meant to say "free from lack of FALSE belief."

sorry

Posted by Devin Carpenter | May 15, 2008 2:06 PM

This guy's take was worth reading, I thought:

Here I think Brooks has gleaned the wrong lesson from neuroscience, or perhaps he is just reading about neuroscience from a narrow perspective. Neuroscience, if anything, has become more hard-core materialist - except for those who superfluously lay their deist or Buddhist beliefs on top of the findings of neuroscience.

The statement: “meaning, belief and consciousness seem to emerge mysteriously from idiosyncratic networks of neural firings,” seems particularly odd. If you remove the word “mysteriously” this is actually a good summary of the materialist model of neuroscience. Yes - everything we experience as mind and self is an emergent property of the firing of networks of neurons in the brain. Brooks seems to be arguing that because this process is still “mysterious”, meaning that it is not well understood scientifically, that it is therefore justification for mysticism. This is nothing more than a god-of-the-gaps argument - inserting mysticism into the current gaps in our scientific knowledge.

Assessing scientific knowledge is always more informative if we take a dynamic rather than static view. In other words - how successful has the current paradigm been in framing meaningful questions and predicting outcomes of research, is a far better question than - are there gaps in our understanding at this moment in time. The purely materialist paradigm of neuroscience has been wildly successful - and increasingly so recently. But the brain is outrageously complex, so of course we still have a long way to go. This is no way points to the need to insert mysticism into the process.

Much more here:

http://www.theness.com/neurologicablog/index.php?p=293

Posted by Jeff | May 15, 2008 2:44 PM

my take. i think a lot of the stuff brooks says is right or in the right direction; that being said, i wouldn't be too worried about the future of personalized theism. even religions which are notionally non-theistic, such as therevada buddhism, are operationally theistic (see theological incorrectness). that being said, i do think ross is right to be worried about the particular power of institutional doctrinal theism; i think that depends on the allegiance of the intellectualized elites and they seem to be disinclined toward personalized theism....

Posted by razib | May 15, 2008 3:00 PM

Can we for once, just for once, make clear that "God" is not a univocal? When I, as a Protestant Christian, say "God" I mean nothing like what Brooks is describing. If we're talking about that God, color me an atheist.

So much of the substance of the atheism-theism debate functions this way, and it's ludicrous. I was reading essays that asked whether science had made God obsolete. The people who responded yes said that God was postulated as a way to explain the things we don't understand. So God has been conveniently replaced by particle physics. That's a handy straw-man, but it has no connection to orthodox Christian theology (or any other religion for that matter).

In short, when I say God, I don't mean the same thing as a Muslim, a Buddhist, Christopher Hitchens, or a Mormon. So there's no use talking about God as if he's a universally defined property.

Posted by Tim Dees | May 15, 2008 3:13 PM

If we're talking about that God, color me an atheist.

well, there's a reason that the romans accused christians and jews of atheism!

Posted by raz | May 15, 2008 3:16 PM

My objection is to Brook’s characterization of a general transcendent spiritual dimension to Buddhism specifically. It is part & parcel of the sixties to relate spirituality & mysticism to eastern religions. This does a disservice to both western & eastern religious traditions

Wow. I agree with Fitz. I tried to post this on the American Scene, but it seems not be taking my post. I don't have much to say on Western religious traditions and their interaction with science, but it's tiring to see smart people (Poulos, Brooks) completely miss the boat on Buddhism. Granted, it's Western Buddhists who often are guilty of confusing "New Age" with "Buddhism." But that has little to do with what Buddhism actually is or what the sutras actually say.

Thank you, too, Ross, for trying to more accurately label what Brooks is talking about. I understand that you and many others want to defend Western faith and I respect that. I just wish that people would write more intelligently on the subject of Buddhism if they are going to critique or even praise it.

Posted by e | May 15, 2008 4:53 PM

Atheist posting here, and I have to admit outright that I find Brooks' article logically unsound and very arrogant (I read it yesterday, before reading this post obviously), especially his amazing dismissal of Dawkins and the modern Atheist movement, which is very much growing.

Jeff basically gets it right when he states Brooks recycles a god-of-the-gaps argument: The process of the neural firings is "mysterious" (i.e. not 100% explainable in entirety by current neuro-science, neuro-biologists and neuro-psychologists), therefore materialist science does not explain it, therefore God...

If only that were the underpinning for all modern mysticism and religion! Those gaps in our understanding of neural firings and neuro-electro-chemical 'consciousness' will be closed.

Unfortunately, as Tim Dees points out, modern theism and mysticism is not based on logic, rationality and evidence.

THe fact that mysticism and religion are irrational is not the reality David Brooks is seeking, so he chooses not to find it. Instead, for Brooks, neuro-Science is ultimately going to prove God.

(Don't hold your breath)

Posted by Miguel Pakalns | May 15, 2008 6:49 PM

I think Brooks is describing gnosticism, not Buddhism.

Posted by J.W. Hamner | May 15, 2008 6:53 PM

Buddhism, it seems to me, is a woefully deficient religion in its ability to explain the origin of evil, the origin of the universe, the relationship of good and evil, the nature of God, the immortality of the human soul, or most other questions that religions seek to answer. The proof is that in those countries where Buddhism has flourished, it has generally done so only by co-opting the cosmology of existing, more 'supernatural' religions. E.g. Hinduism and Bon animism in Tibet, Taoism in China, Shinto in Japan. C.S. Lewis was right in saying that 'Buddhism is the greatest Hindu heresy, as Islam is the greatest Christian heresy, in both cases a simplification inferior to the thing simplified.'

The Buddha was a great man and a great moral teacher, but ultimately nothing more than that. He had little to say about the nature of the supernatural, which is what most people seek for in a religion.

As for Brooks' 'neural Buddhism', the people who would be suckered into such a thing seem to be the most unreflective sorts who could be suckered into anything. What a poor excuse for a religion. What sort of a religion is it without miracles or the divine, without heaven and hell, without God and the devil?

Posted by Hector | May 15, 2008 7:02 PM

What sort of a religion is it without miracles or the divine, without heaven and hell, without God and the devil?

Given that miracles, hell and "the devil" are nonsensical and immoral justifications for a belief system, I'd say it's the sort of religion that attempts to come to some kind of terms with common sense.

Posted by Bill | May 15, 2008 7:11 PM

"Nonsensical" I get (though obviously disagree with), but "immoral"? I guess you just mean the idea of hell is immoral, not miracles. Though many atheists seem morally offended at the concept, for reasons I don't quite get.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | May 15, 2008 7:24 PM

Well, Hector, if you're right, you're right. I guess I'm just an unreflective sort that could get suckered into anything. Better check to see how those Nigerians I sent money to are doing. They told me it was an amazing investment opportunity!

Posted by e | May 15, 2008 7:39 PM

The ultimate problem with any materialistic explanation of consciousness is that consciousness lacks identity under materialism and therefore true consciousness and personhood are impossible.

What do i mean? Simply this: if your consciousness is defined essentially as data (neurons being connected in a particular way) then in essence it is similar to a computer program. It is therefore fungible; there is no distinction between your person and between an exact copy that someone can make.

It's like the old Star Trek question about the transporter. Does it actually transport people, or does it kill them and replace them with exact copies? Or for Transhumanists who talk about "downloading" their consciousness into machines: if you can copy your consciousness to a machine without erasing it from your organic body, then isn't transferring consciousness simply copying your consciousness to a machine while erasing your consciousness from your body, i.e. killing you and making a copy?

But if that is the case, what unites you from one moment to the next? Seeing as you are constantly replacing the materials that make you up, what makes you "you" from one moment to the next, rather than your consciousness expiring every instant and being replaced by a copy of you?

Without some sort of a soul, you have to eventually argue that you don't really exist. Which, interestingly enough, is what a lot of people are beginning to believe, deciding that rather than believe in God, they will deny their own existence.

Posted by Glaivester | May 15, 2008 7:50 PM

Glaivester,

The deeper problem with materialism is that if our minds are merely epiphenomena of our brains, then the very act of thinking is simply the result of physical processes, and therefore rational thought becomes impossible. Materialism ultimately undermines the very idea of thought itself, and therefore raises the question of why we should believe in anything, including the truth of materialism. Materialism is, thus, self-refuting, and is unworthy of being considered by a sensible man.

Posted by Hector | May 15, 2008 7:56 PM

Buddhism, it seems to me, is a woefully deficient religion in its ability to explain the origin of evil, the origin of the universe, the relationship of good and evil, the nature of God, the immortality of the human soul, or most other questions that religions seek to answer.

Maybe it seems that way to you because you were not born a Buddhist. And which sky fairies answer these questions in a manner to your liking? The ones into which you were born? Perhaps?

Posted by ed | May 15, 2008 9:05 PM

Whatever our individual views, please let us not rely on newspaper columnists or neuroscientists to articulate even the basic ideas of several millennia of Buddhist thought and practice. It’s a profoundly different intellectual tradition with its own concepts and terminology and, I think, it addresses a substantially different set of problems from those addressed by Judaism and Christianity, despite some overlap.

Posted by jason | May 15, 2008 9:23 PM

A few points:
Carl Jung once said that religion is a defense against the experience of God. Religions, with their dogma and hierarchy, are there to mediate between you and the Divine - how else could they control you?
No matter how special the prophets, any revelation is bound to be mediated through the sickness of one's own ego.
The idea of God as love (or God as only the positive aspects to be found here in duality) is only half a God. If you leave out hatred, murder, even child molester, whatever, you're missing the point: God has to be the whole ball of wax, or It's nothing.
In Vedanta, God is described by it's attributes: satchidananda - being, consciousness and bliss (love), and this whole creation is to enable the Absolute to experience Itself - otherwise all It is is a blob of satchidananda wondering when something was going to happen.
The God of the Old Testament is clearly psychotic: a cranky old man with a very bad temperament. One would have hoped that Jesus, as the God of Love, would have supplanted him, but many Christians today seem to ignore Jesus' teachings and revert to the Old Testament anytime they wish to justify their prejudices.
The multitude of deities to be found in Hinduism are simply meant to be a way of focusing on the energies at play in the universe that one wishes to attract to oneself - sort of like praying to St. Anthony when you're trying to recover a lost article.
Personally, I would much prefer to have my own, direct experience of the Divine rather than have someone else tell me what it's like or supposed to be.

Posted by Sarasvati | May 15, 2008 9:46 PM

"Without some sort of a soul, you have to eventually argue that you don't really exist."

A Buddhist, however, would agree with that conclusion.

By the way, for an argument for a fully materialist but non-reductionist 'religion', see Stuart Kauffman's (Santa Fe Institute complexity theorist) new book, "Reinventing the Sacred".

Posted by Bill Gardner | May 15, 2008 10:11 PM

Though many atheists seem morally offended at the concept, for reasons I don't quite get.

I'm more of an agnostic, but I totally get what's offensive about miracles, and if I ever did become theist I would never, ever believe in divine interventions to ease the suffering of human beings. They would imply that God has been sitting there watching billions of people suffer through the ages, only on a whim decide that this particular cancer sufferer gets to be cured, that this particular football game gets to be won. A God that never intervenes in human affairs has a much easier theodicy problem then a God who sometimes intervenes for fun but usually just laughs at us.

Posted by Consumatopia | May 15, 2008 11:06 PM

Brooks and Ross seem to have no real idea of what they are talking about, either in terms of neuroscience, Buddhism, Vedanta, Christian mysticism, or modern western transcendentalism related to any of these. It's virtually a perfect score.

I understand that Ross is "in the tank with Christendom", and I don't want to burst his bubble, but there's been tons of Christians who have had all kinds of mystical experiences not approved of by the Church because they don't fall into the kinds of categories he mentions. I've known plenty of Christian monks who have had these experiences, and when they confess them to their superiors, are told to keep it quiet so as not to rock the boat. In previously centuries, they might have risked being burnt at the stake as heretics. So while Christian doctrine may be as he says, the actual experience of being Christian may not, perhaps because there is indeed something universal in our neurological capacity for mystical experience.

And likewise for other religions. What is "approved of" and allowed may not be the same as what is actually encountered in spiritual practice. If there is a difference in Hindu and Buddhist practice it is that they are not so doctrinaire about allowable mystical experiences, which is why many westerners seem drawn to them - they are allowed to let their spirituality unfold in a natural process, rather than restricted to certain approved pathways.

As for general cultural trends, no one much doubts that mainstream religions will continue to dominate for some time to come. But perhaps that time is shortening, and what is emerging through the general dismissive title of "new age" is in fact growing steadily and subtly not only outside the mainstream, but from within it.

Posted by conradg | May 16, 2008 12:43 AM

Hector:

I think your problem is assuming "religion" is a concept that applies equally to all cultures. I am studying a master in sociology, and my teachers have found that the concept of religion applied to, say hinduism, doesn´t make it any sense. Yet, we wouldn´t stop calling hinduism a "faith", isn´t it?

Galveister:

Actually, your whole tirade against materialistic explanations of consciousness is fruitless. You seem to be worried with the idea of losing identity...but why can´t identity be just an illusion? Just because you WISH it doesn´t, it does not imply it can´t. I personally think that consciousness DOES have a material basis. The problem is that consciousness is more than the sum of material interactions that create it, in the sense it doesn´t follow mechanisists process that make it predictive. But then, that is another discusion.

Posted by Sergio Méndez | May 16, 2008 6:02 AM

Hector says:

The deeper problem with materialism is that if our minds are merely epiphenomena of our brains, then the very act of thinking is simply the result of physical processes, and therefore rational thought becomes impossible.

Which, in fact, it ultimately is. The idea of an utterly rational thought, action, you name it, is a chimera; it will always in the final analysis be frustrated by conflicting realities.

Materialism ultimately undermines the very idea of thought itself, and therefore raises the question of why we should believe in anything, including the truth of materialism. Materialism is, thus, self-refuting, and is unworthy of being considered by a sensible man.

This is the perfect example of sophism. And question begging. "The very idea of thought itself" is conveniently what you prefer to define it as, before seeing it "undermined." Next.

Posted by Bill | May 16, 2008 7:09 AM

As for "believing" in the "truth" of materialism, there's no need to take a whole-sale attitude about it (unlike with your preferred set of religious dogma). Materialism, in the mind of those subscribing to it, is guilty of getting us nearer to an unobtainable ultimate truth. Materialists may be forgiven for suspecting whether any such ultimate truth exists, since it's impossible with our limited capacity to imagine an explanation that would somehow override the innumerable objections that could be opposed to it. But they don't, or shouldn't, claim to know that no such truth exists.

Posted by Bill | May 16, 2008 7:18 AM

Re: The ultimate problem with any materialistic explanation of consciousness is that consciousness lacks identity under materialism and therefore true consciousness and personhood are impossible.

While I think we will find fairly detailed explanations as to how the human rain modulates and regulates consciousness, I doubt we will ever be able to explain cosnciousness as some sort epiphenomenon of the human brain. Rather we should just take cosnciosuness as a basic fact about the physical world, as we do mass, charge etc.

Posted by JonF | May 16, 2008 8:12 AM

JonF:

Since when most of the physicall world has as its properties "conscience"? I have seen rocks or stars with mass, but not with conscience. Conscience seems to be an emerging property of matter in specific circustances, not a basic property of the physicall world.

Posted by Sergio Méndez | May 16, 2008 9:21 AM

Unfortunately, as Tim Dees points out, modern theism and mysticism is not based on logic, rationality and evidence.

Not really sure how I showed that, but I'd be delighted to hear the argument. I sometimes think that atheists go back to the old argument from personal incredulity a few times too many. Just because Miguel Pakalns thinks theism is irrational doesn't make it so. He has to show why it's irrational.

Posted by Tim Dees | May 16, 2008 9:30 AM

Consumatopia --

Well, I think the bit "a God who sometimes intervenes for fun but usually just laughs at us" isn't quite getting the point. Theodicy is a problem, but that's not the only (inadequate) solution. In some sense, though, for any idea of God that seems to me to really be an idea of _God_ there is indeed this point that, yes, everyone dead? God killed them. The Old and New Testaments are not unaware of this (that fellow Job & the tower of Siloam come to mind).

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | May 16, 2008 9:53 AM

Just because Miguel Pakalns thinks theism is irrational doesn't make it so. He has to show why it's irrational.

My name's not Miguel, but it depends on how you define rational, or rather where you decide to draw the line between rational and irrational. Rational is relative to the parameters one sets. There's no point in trying to decide whether theism is rational or not; anyone's decision about that will be based on a priori assumptions. Being an agnostic myself, I can see how a "rational" person could believe in a creator, but not how that creator could be benevolent and interested in the outcome of human affairs. But that's because I perceive the natural order to behave in fundamentally irrational ways. I don't tend to think true, first-order rationality is possible, because the more we learn about the physical universe the more random it appears. But as soon as you back away from the universal perspective you can see all sorts of things behaving "rationally," doing what they're "supposed to" be doing. So-called rational behavior becomes the illusory epiphenomenon of fundamentally irrational processes.

Posted by Bill | May 16, 2008 10:19 AM

I think a fairly big problem in the theodicy debate is that "evil" is just as hard to define as "good." If evil is a problem, what exactly is the nature of evil? Is it just pain, or death? I don't think that's the heart of it. In the right context, both of those are necessary and good. If not for pain, we would injure ourselves without knowing it. If not for death, nothing could eat or grow.

Posted by Tel | May 16, 2008 10:22 AM

The deeper problem with materialism is that if our minds are merely epiphenomena of our brains, then the very act of thinking is simply the result of physical processes, and therefore rational thought becomes impossible.

That's maybe the silliest thing I've ever read on this blog.

Posted by Jeff | May 16, 2008 10:31 AM

Bill,

You make some particularly interesting points, but I think that we're using rationality in different ways. When I say rational, I'm talking about a person allowing their thoughts to be constrained by the practice of reason. Thinking rationally implies that you will reject something that reason compels you to reject. Believing in a man who visits your house every Christmas and gives you gift is a distinctly irrational belief, because it can be debunked by a child sneaking downstairs while mom and dad are wrapping the presents.

When you talk about rationality, however, I think you're talking about intent and agency:

But as soon as you back away from the universal perspective you can see all sorts of things behaving "rationally," doing what they're "supposed to" be doing.

Of course, if there is no God, then things aren't supposed to be any particular way at all. That's a central tenet of the existentialists (Sartre, for instance), but I'm not sure if it has much to do with rationality in thinking, which is the substance of what I'm talking about.

Posted by Tim Dees | May 16, 2008 10:35 AM

Regarding amoral rocks ... Is it possible for an object (or particle) to be at rest? If so, then why should motion be taken as a basic property of the physical world? Photons are also part of the physical world, but they don't have mass or charge. (As far as I know, anyway; I'm not a theoretical physicist). But we describe mass, charge, and so on as basic properties of matter. The fact that a quality only becomes non-zero in specific circumstances, doesn't invalidate the existence of the quality.

Posted by Tel | May 16, 2008 10:41 AM

For me at least, it's not so much a matter of how much suffering the God in question causes or allows, as how arbitrary he is in deciding which suffering to cause or allow.

Posted by Consumatopia | May 16, 2008 10:49 AM

Jeff,

Perhaps the argument that materialism calls our notions of rationality into question strikes you as a bit weird, but it's quite hotly debated in the philosophical community these days (see the work of Alvin Plantinga, for instance). It deserves a bit more thought than just a dismissal.

To quote Darwin,

With me, the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind?

Posted by Tim Dees | May 16, 2008 10:50 AM

Ed,

I'm a convert to Christianity- I was brought up an atheist and was exposed more to Hinduism than Christianity growing up, so it looks like youre out to lunch.

I am not a Hindu but I can say with confidence that Buddhism, as a religion, is gravely inferior not only to Christianity but to Hinduism.

While I don't fully agree with all the tenets of orthodox Christianity, the basic set of claims it makes about the salvific incarnation, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ, the only son of God, are such that I find both intellectually and mystically compelling.

Posted by Hector | May 16, 2008 1:16 PM

There's a substantial gap between the two contentions "convictions of the human mind (including rationality) are suspect, given that humans have evolved from lower forms of animals" and "rational thought is impossible if the human mind is merely ordinary matter." The former is a serious philosophical question; the latter is an absurdity.

Posted by Jeff | May 16, 2008 1:17 PM

Jeff,

The bit about materialism making rationality impossible was noted by, among others, J.B.S. Haldane. If you're well up in your biological sciences you will know that Haldane is a household name in animal physiology and evolutionary biology. He was also a Marxist and an agnostic (at least at one point in his life- later he appears to have drifted towards Hindu mysticism) but also one who was both intelligent and honest enough to recognize the difficulties that strict ontological materialism poses for the hard sciences.

(I'm a graduate student in the biological sciences, for what it's worth.)

Posted by Hector | May 16, 2008 1:20 PM

Consumatopia,

I think that things like the Holocaust are actually a good (indirect) proof of the existence of God. More specifically, the Holocaust proves the existence of the devil, and a devil could not exist without a God to war against. hence, God must exist.

There are many possible 'solutions' to the problem of evil. Some of them are compatible with orthodox Christianity, whether or not you fid them convincing. Others are incompatible with strictly orthodox Christianity or at least require you to believe in a bigger and stronger devil than orthodox Christianity allows. None of them however is a good argument for either materialism or Buddhism. In fact both "scientific" materialism and Buddhism simply dodge the problem of evil. That's not an approach that can be accepted by a reflective person.

Posted by Hector | May 16, 2008 1:29 PM

Jeff's first comment nailed the neuroscience, and Hector's ravings have already been torn apart by multiple parties. So I just want to tear into a couple of points that Glaivester made:

"...if your consciousness is defined essentially as data (neurons being connected in a particular way) then in essence it is similar to a computer program. It is therefore fungible; there is no distinction between your person and between an exact copy that someone can make."

Since it isn't possible to make an exact copy of a person, and quantum mechanics strongly suggests that it never will be, I don't think this thought experiment leads us anywhere except a stoned freshman dorm argument.

Consciousness is an epiphenomenon of the physical state of the brain, but it's a mistake to think of neurology in terms of data or programming. Your nervous system is a system of networked chemical and physical processes that evolves continuously through feedback mechanisms. In a very real sense, you are NOT the same person you were yesterday... each thing you see and learn causes a physical change in your brain. But the continuity of self comes from the continuity of the flesh. We are different from computers because our minds are embodied and our bodies are unique.

"Without some sort of a soul, you have to eventually argue that you don't really exist."

This is just sententious nonsense. Your consciousness derives from a physical nervous system which is an inextricable part of a larger organism. You change constantly, but the changes are all connected to a single, unique physical existence. You can be poked, prodded, measured, and weighed. You were born and eventually you will die. And as Descartes pointed out, you can think about this subject and those thoughts will be your own and no one else's.

Therefore you exist.

Posted by LaFollette Progressive | May 16, 2008 2:28 PM

a faith based purely on "elevated experience" and "self-transcendence" isn't really any faith at all anyway, let alone a serious challenger to the Christian tradition

Lol wut? Huston Smith would beg to differ - he places mysticism as a step above monotheism, and a great deal of evangelical Christians tend to agree with his viewpoint. Anyway, that's where Joel Osteen and his ilk appear to be headed, so might as well enjoy the ride.

Posted by PowerGamer | May 16, 2008 2:58 PM

Materialism is, thus, self-refuting, and is unworthy of being considered by a sensible man.

Oh brother. Somehow I thought Christians were all caught up in divine contradictions - so, according to that logic, it is both unworthy and nonsensical. If as-to-unplumbed depths masquerading as paradoxes are to be so flippantly cast aside, its beggars understanding why you'd still be flipping through that tome of yours.

Posted by PowerGamer | May 16, 2008 3:43 PM

There's a substantial gap between the two contentions "convictions of the human mind (including rationality) are suspect, given that humans have evolved from lower forms of animals" and "rational thought is impossible if the human mind is merely ordinary matter." The former is a serious philosophical question; the latter is an absurdity.

I can't agree with those who think that materialism is quite self-refuting, though I think materialism is _wrong_. But if you change statement #2 to "rational thought is damned hard to explain and defend if the human mind is merely ordinary matter" then I think you are absolutely correct. Is is (for sure) impossible? No. But nobody has done a very good job of it yet, at least. Computer scientists are happy (at times) to assign semantic meaning to configurations of matter, and people leap from this to thinking it must be easy for brains -- but in the brain and computer case, the semantic assignment is by virtue of assuming minds around to place the semantics, not by virtue of the formal structural properties of the objects. There are lots of attempts to make the rationality inherent in the formal structure, but they are all (to varying degrees) unconvincing, just as the refutations (Searle, I'm lookin' at you) are also often highly unconvincing, except to the already convinced.

Posted by The Marquis of Carabas | May 16, 2008 4:45 PM

Marquis is quite right.

To put it more simply, why do you believe Proposition P, say, that Barack Obama would make a better president than John McCain. (Personally I think either of them would make a lousy president). Either you believe it because you have considered the arguments for and against the proposition and find one set more convincing. Or (if materialism is true) this belief corresponds to a particular state of your physical brain, and that state is in turn due to the interactions of molecules in your brain which are all governed by the laws of physics and chemistry, and this is all a closed system (material nature) in which non-physical forces like gods, demons, angels, or souls have no effect.

Now if your 'deciding' that Obama would make a better president was really the result of physical processes in your brain, then you cannot really be said to have decided at all- the result (your decision) came about because of molecular interactions and not because of your rational thought processes. This calls all thought processes into question, including the thought process that supposedly led to your conclusion that materialism is true. Hence, materialism is self refuting.

The way out of this conclusion is to accept the obvious conclusion- forced upon us by reason, common sense, and personal experience, in the same way that it forced itself on the Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist John Eccles- is to conclude that as Christianity teaches we consist in the union of a physical body and a non-physical, non-material, immortal soul.

Personally I've never understood how the apparantly absurd hypothesis of materialism ever managed to convince anyone, as it is repugnant both to reason and to experience.

Posted by Hector | May 16, 2008 6:07 PM

Leaving reason, common sense, and experience out of it, materialism seems to run contrary to the personal testimony of myriads of mystics, saints, prophets and visionaries for several thousands of years who personally experiences spiritual realities such as God, the devil, angels, heaven and hell.

Posted by Hector | May 16, 2008 6:10 PM

Some of them are compatible with orthodox Christianity, whether or not you fid them convincing.

Well, okay, but if only *some* of them are compatible, then I guess you would agree with me that a miracle-performing God is at least somewhat harder to justify morally than a non-interfering God, even if we disagree on exactly how much harder.

Posted by Consumatopia | May 16, 2008 7:12 PM

Looks like no one here has read "Conciousness as a Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" by Julian Jaynes.

Go read that. Then come back and talk about God, and religious experiences....if the question still makes any sense any more.

Posted by grumpy realist | May 16, 2008 10:27 PM

Re: I have seen rocks or stars with mass, but not with conscience.

I think we have to conclude that consciousness exists as a potential in all matter. After all, there is nothing special about the fundamental particles that make up your body; in fact they are continually being exchanged with your environment. Yet somehow they become collecively conscious when they are in you! If you want to avoid dualism then the inescapable conclusions is that the potential for consciosuness is basic to all matter. Compare this with gravitation: you can never measure the gravitational field of an electron (or even a proton): it is simply too small to be noticeable. But put enough of them together and that gravitational force becomes something very notiecable indeed. So too with consciosness, though rather than quantity it is complexity (or better: self-organzing complexity) that lifts trivial, invisible consciouness out of matter and renders it very, very noticeable.

Re: Conscience seems to be an emerging property of matter in specific circustances, not a basic property of the physicall world.

We are saying something very similar, except I am using the language of potential, which is a common and sound concept in physics: we can do mathematics about potentials (though not as of now about consciousness potential, though someday, maybe). The language of "emergent properties" I find to be weirdly mystical, positing something arising mysteriously out of nothing at all.

Posted by JonF | May 17, 2008 12:20 AM

It should be noted though that Julian Jaynes's thesis was and continues to be highly controversial, and not widely accepted within the academic community. With regards to the minority view of some sort of mind-body dualism, I suggest people read David Chalmers or Thomas Nagel. They're quite interesting and give a thoughtful anti-materialist counterpoint.

Posted by Anonymous | May 17, 2008 12:23 AM

"I am not a Hindu but I can say with confidence that Buddhism, as a religion, is gravely inferior not only to Christianity but to Hinduism." Hector

TR: I'm skeptical you can really say that. I'd agree with you on Buddhism in its pure form, but that's not what most Buddhists believe. The pure Himayana/Theravadin form is limited to Southeast Asia and some Western converts.

The forms of Buddhism snootily denigrated as "superstitious" by many Western intellectuals are really more common and in my mind much more interesting. China, and to a lesser extent Japan, had forms of Buddhism that were much more life-affirming and devoted to compassion. And coming from a more Hindu background you might have an unduly negative view, moreso than a Christian would.

Don't misunderstand Buddhism is deficient. However "Buddhism" is a blanket term for many schools of thought some of which are less deficient than others. From my reading some forms of Buddhism came a heck of a lot closer to correct than Hinduism ever managed.

Posted by Thomas R | May 17, 2008 4:42 AM

Thomas R.,

You're right, I was too critical of Buddhism. My debating style tends to be overly polemical and I do overreact to things such as fashionable Westerners being into their (mis) understanding of Buddhism.

Don't misunderstand me I think there are many terrible things about Hinduism as well, the caste system first and foremost, also some of its views of women (although one can question how much of that is inherent to the religion). I also think that Hinduism, like Buddhism, is closer to the truth in its 'popular' rather than philosophical forms- I'm thinking specifically of the bhakti cults of devotion to Krishna, and so forth.

I do think that Buddhism _in its origins_ was a simplification of Hinduism. The ethical teaching was certainly an improvement, but only at the cost of leaving out everything about God, the supernatural, the soul, devotion to a personal God, and so forth. Of course "popular" Buddhism in places like Tibet appear to have reclaimed a lot of that. You appear to know more about it than me so I'll defer to your better knowledge.

I do believe that both Indian and Chinese (and probably also Persian) religious tradtions contain cryptic prophecies of Christ. Interestingly enough 'Tao' is the translation of 'Logos' in the Chinese Bible.

Posted by Hector | May 17, 2008 11:49 AM

Going back to Brooks: Brooks’ claim that this scientific knowledge will cause a crisis in belief in the Bible seems rooted in two assumptions. First, Brooks assumes that people will be satisfied with experiences of spiritual ‘transcendence’ all the while ‘knowing’ that these experiences are purely chemical processes in their heads. This hasn’t really been my experience. While I was sitting with three atheist and/or agnostic guys a few weeks ago, I raised exactly that question. I applied it not only to spiritual experiences but also to human love and all its ideals. One, the most adamant atheist, said that love is not real - it is just sexual desire which is really just chemicals in the head. The other two became greatly bothered with the implications of a strictly materialistic belief system and became interested in talking about the possibility of a real spiritual world. Second, Brooks assumes that the brain is always the ‘generator’ of spiritual experiences as opposed to perhaps being the ‘receiver.’ Science has not gone so far as to conclude that a spiritual reality independent of the brains of people does not exist (can it?). It seems equally valid to speculate that the brain can often be the ‘receiver.’

Furthermore, like many of you, I question whether Brooks should really call this trend ‘neural Buddhism.’ Hindu and Buddhist views of the person are rooted in the belief that the body is not really who you are: you are really a soul trapped in a body, and your goal is to escape it, to a higher life form. Ultimately you want to escape being physical altogether. The ancient Greek expectation after death was similar: you wanted disembodiment, not resurrection.

This is really trending back to a Jewish and Jewish Christian view of the human being. Until about the early Middle Ages, Jews and Christians believed that the body and soul were deeply and inseparably intertwined. Hence the Jewish and Christian hope for the world was resurrection. They wanted to be even more physical, not less. This was affirmed, in the Jewish story, by the messianic hopes for swords to be beaten into plowshares on this earth, and in the Christian story, by Jesus' bodily resurrection and what that implied about renewal. Idioms in the English language seem to follow in this vein: ‘She's a person of substance’ or ‘He's heavy’ emphasize the body and personal solidity as correlated with moral fibre, bearing a similarity to the Hebrew word for ‘glory’ also meaning ‘heavy.’ It wasn’t until the medieval period when western Christians swallowed the Greek idea that the soul flies off to heaven when we die.

To say with Brooks that we should call this ‘neural Buddhism’ just because Buddhism can be atheistic seems to me to be a strange appropriation of Buddhism. Hinduism and Buddhism require infinite past cycles of reincarnation to solve their version of the problem of evil. Science presses against that view of history with its view of the finite universe and a starting point for life, yet Brooks wants to honor and dignify Buddhism by taking its name and applying it here. Hinduism and Buddhism also have an asymmetrically low view of the body. Science now presses against that, too. So what if we were more true to history and call this scientific development by the nickname that would be just as appropriate, if not more so: ‘neural Judaism’?

Finally, I observe that Brooks is applying this scientific trend rather selectively. What if the abortion issue were informed by neuroscience? For example, if I lose my hand, there is no question from a legal or social standpoint whether I'm a person. But if I lose my nervous system functioning, there is a real question about what I would be. For all practical purposes, a nervous system constitutes a person. We know that a nervous system and brain are formed in the fetus at 23 days. But no one that I know of says that we should place some kind of limit on abortions to the first 22 days after conception, even though the trimester system of Roe v. Wade is not based on any science, and even though the fetus is known to scream in pain while being aborted. This is where neuroscience could become practical. But why doesn’t Brooks apply it in that direction? Is this a case of selective and aggressive ‘application’ of science towards religion, but not towards abortion? It does appear that way to me.

Posted by Mako Nagasawa | May 17, 2008 12:59 PM

Hector,

"The way out of this conclusion is to accept the obvious conclusion- forced upon us by reason, common sense, and personal experience, in the same way that it forced itself on the Nobel Prize winning neuroscientist John Eccles- is to conclude that as Christianity teaches we consist in the union of a physical body and a non-physical, non-material, immortal soul."

Here's one area I'd agree with you, though it should be added that Hindus and Buddhists come to the same conclusion, and by means of a more rational explanation that Christians do - reincarnation. The Christian notion that the soul incarnates through a body once and once only simply doesn't make rational sense. However, all of these ideas do help explain that strange combination of rational spiritual consciousness wedded to material brain and body that characterizes our everyday experience.

Posted by conradg | May 18, 2008 1:59 PM

"the religious experiences that created Judaism and Christianity - are nothing like a meditative, free-floating sense of one-ness with the universe"

That's because the "one with the universe" experience and the "interacting with a deity" experience are different types of mysticism.

All the mystical traditions - Buddhist, Vedanta, Christian, Sufi - more or less agree on the overall contours of mystical experience, that there are broadly speaking four basic types: nature, deity, formless and nondual. There are substages, and some traditions organize them differently so there are 3 or 5 or 9, but this is what you tend to find. Most traditions take you through those states, although obviously they differ widely on what they mean as well as the explicit content of those experiences.

In the nature state, Christians feel at one with God through his creation, and Buddhists may experience a dropping away of the distinction between self and other on the physical level, and others might feel at one with the cosmos.

In the deity stage, Buddhists might commune with deities and buddhas, while Christians might experience visions of Jesus, Mary, various saints, etc. Arguably, a burning bush or a whirlwind that speaks is a substage between nature and deity experience, as it has physical as well as emotional characteristics. There's no reason why neuroscientists couldn't empirically verify these experiences, just as they can tell if you are dreaming or not.

Religious partisans have always been fearful of mystical experiences and elevated "faith" above it, because it undermines the need for religious authority. But what are we to have faith in? What the religious authorities tell us is true.

Posted by alsomike | May 18, 2008 5:39 PM

"The Christian notion that the soul incarnates through a body once and once only simply doesn't make rational sense." conradg

TR: Why? True in nature most things recycle, but they don't recycle exactly. The liver of say a duck doesn't become the liver of a cow then the liver of some third being. The organic compounds recycle into the environment and end up many places. (The idea of our souls being made up of a a million little pieces recycled into and out of us might sound poetic, but it's also a bit dispiriting)

When it comes to the Universe most available evidence is that it does not go into cycles. It'll simply expand and expand until it tears itself a part. So the idea of "once and only once" is not irrational. It's perhaps even fitting of the notion that "to kill someone is to destroy a Universe." (I forget where that quote comes from, maybe the Zohar)

Posted by Thomas R | May 19, 2008 2:23 AM

Thomas R,

But living beings do indeed follow repetitive, cyclic patterns. Birth, reproduction, and death, over and over again, generation after generation, with only marginal changes that only very slowly evolve. Ducks don't give birth to cows, they give birth to other ducks. So it would seem logical that, if there is an afterlife, it is a repetitive, cyclic pattern, of human being reborn as humans, over and over again, and only very slowly evolving. I'm not suggesting we reincarnate exactly as we are now. Quite the contrary, we reincarnate differently, to some degree, each time, yet not all that differently.

As for repetitive, cyclic patterns in nature, I suggest you look around. What about weather, the seasons, the cycles of the moon and stars, the tides, the rise and fall of mountains and continents, the birth and destruction and recreation of everything we see. Even stars die and give birth to other stars. Our own bodies are made from such events. Almost every element on earth was forged in this way.

Anyway, I was simply comparing reincarnation theologies to Christian one-time only theologies, and suggesting reincarnation makes more sense. What exactly happens to zygotes that miscarry in the first days of pregnancy? Do they go to heaven for all eternity as zygotes? I think a recycling system makes more sense.

Posted by conradg | May 19, 2008 4:11 AM

David Brooks is just going through motions and taking an incremental view of progress in the subject as per dominant view in the west. What is lacking, is a full spectrum view considering all angles.

Neuroscience is aiming at a fully scientific edifice, for which it must be credited (it hardly gets any respect, but only contempt). After building the entire subject, Neuroscience says it just needs a bit of understanding of life.

The exact mirror reflection opposing Neuroscience is not Christianity but classical Hinduism which believes everything is divine power, and just a little material is required to creat the universe.

Between the two are other possibilities.

After ancient Vedic Hinduism declined more than 3000 years ago, Buddhism was the first to start an original revolution in religious research methodology. Thereafter Hinduism adopted Buddhist techniques to re-explore its ancient Vedic religion.

According to Buddhism and Vedic Hinduism, there is no way to prove that life is different from matter. Self is not separable from the matter. Also religion and science are inseparable, and they never separated in the first place. Any separation is an abberation which merges back into the self. That should make body vs soul argument meaningless. The problem with science vs religion or matter vs soul dialogs (which never end) is that the two should never have been separated to begin with.

David's statement that the Neural Buddhism will challenge faith in Bible is nonsense. Serious researchers had ignored one-time event based religions back in 1950s. So the question of a new challenge to belief systems doesn't exist, inspite of the fact that religions have been copying features from sciences with the help of believer-scientists and claiming a 'me too' status.

Buddhism has a promise in understanding life, because the neurofuzzy sciences are closer to Buddhism because Buddhism doesn't take a "Word" as granted, but explores until it dissolves. The algorithmic processes of Vedic religion are the next gold mine for neuro scientists, because in that religion 'Words' are much more deeply and professionally handled in close connection with body and its metabolism and psychosomatic relationships.

Relgions that accept 'Word' as it is are no threat and are never threatened by any of these developments.

Posted by vaidix | June 6, 2008 12:27 AM