Neuroscience is equally tricky. Neuroscientists will no doubt continue to develop and discover more and more about the body-brain and the workings of the human psyche, and one could even suggest that much of the future of religion will depend on what they find and, perhaps more importantly, what they do not find.
I am fairly certain that they will find what anthropologists and historians of religion already know, namely, that the social self or religious identity is a "construction," built up over time through language, custom, family, culture, and community . . . and now connecting neurons. We are all indeed "written." On one level, we really are puppets of sorts. Puppets of our cultures, of our customs, and of our beliefs.
But I doubt that is the end of the story. Drawing on recent challenges to the standard paradigm in authors like Edward Kelly and his colleagues in Irreducible Mind, I am also willing to bet that the neuroscientists will finally fail to solve the "hard problem" of consciousness, that is, they will fail to find any material base for consciousness. And this for one simple, all-important reason: there isn't one.
There's a prediction for you.
If I am even close here, it seems safe to suggest that the future of religion will remain deeply religious (since, in this model at least, the human being cannot be reduced to biology, brain, culture, politics, ethnicity, or anything else), but not necessarily in any traditional, recognizable form (since neither can the human being be reduced to nor contained by any local "religion").
And indeed, once we know that religious identity is a social construction, why give it so much power over us? Why not write ourselves anew, so that we can begin to resolve -- and I mean really resolve -- our pressing global problems and crises, so many of which are aided and abetted by our present religious beliefs and practices? And -- I suppose this is my real point -- why not do this with a vision of human nature that is deep, generous, and open-ended?
Why limit ourselves?
Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University, where he is also the Chair of the Department of Religious Studies. He is the author of numerous books, including Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Chicago, 2010); Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, 2007); The Serpent's Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (Chicago, 2007); Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago, 2001); and Kali's Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago, 1995). His present areas of interest include the comparative erotics of mystical literature, American countercultural translations of Asian religious traditions, and the history of Western esotericism from ancient Gnosticism to the New Age. He is currently working on a book on the paranormal and American popular culture.
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