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. <...> 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. <...> 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 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.
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. <...>
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 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.
But beware the Skolnick Effect! A language is a dialect with an army and navy.
And one note to comment about one funny thing about narratives.... their appearnace have ntohing to do with reality again. All these stuff explained here as revolutionary has been knwon for decades...the only difference is that soem good neuroscience is showing more proofs that we had before...
but we had pretty strong clues before.. thanks basically to basic phsychoogy and anthropology. So good proofs that well it was considered true.
Societies do not share narratives feeling but they do share two or three basic feeling structures (empathy and fear) The narratives of the different cultures regardign one person move form the individual to the existence of the pure collective.. from the a strong-self to a no-self... and previous phsychologicahl experiemtns already pointed out clearly toward a non-specific self.. soemthing like a "confederation of souls" as the poetry called it..
the same goes for religion ... especially religious experience.. related with structural religious myth (or trascendental myhts) in your relation with the other and the universal narrative of "the quest". These narratives made perfect sense together with the analysis of brain seizures producing trascendental states in awareness states (you do not fancy neuroscience to ask seizures patients)
So, despite being known for quite some time we have decided to create a narrative about it... it was about time!!!
A pleasure I therefore claim to show, not how men think in myths, but how myths operate in men's minds without their being aware of the fact. Levi-Strauss, Claude
