Best non-political column of the year so far. David Brooks on why neuroscience and genetics have sparked a new culture war and empowered the New Athesits (Dawkins, Hitchens, House… Ian O’Doherty):

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 now the transition:

The cognitive revolution is not going to end up undermining faith in God, it’s going to end up challenging faith in the Bible.

And now the epiphany:

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.

It’s a little death when someone gets there first. Agnosticism or even a non-systematic Buddhism are rational. Militant atheism is as cracked as Snake-Handling-West Virginia Creationists for Clinton. If I didn’t think the Hitchens and O’Dohertys were hewing to that line for attention I’d feel sorry for them.