David Brooks continues his quest to discuss everything in terms of neuroscience. This week in The Neural Buddhists he declares, "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.

He goes on, "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." The implications of which he suggest will be the following. "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."

And he so aptly ends with, "We’re in the middle of a scientific revolution. It’s going to have big cultural effects." I think Brooks will be a fan of The Brain Wave when it is released next May.