Here’s a really good one from The Herald Tribune.

Neural Buddhists

by David Brooks

In 1996, Tom Wolfe wrote a brilliant essay called “Sorry, but Your Soul Just Died,” in which he captured the militant materialism of some modern scientists.

To these self-confident researchers, the idea that the spirit might exist apart from the body is just ridiculous. Instead, everything arises from atoms. Genes shape temperament. Brain chemicals shape behavior. Assemblies of neurons create consciousness. Free will is an illusion. Human beings are “hard-wired” to do this or that. Religion is an accident.

In this materialist view, people perceive God’s existence because their brains have evolved to confabulate belief systems. You put a magnetic helmet around their heads and they will begin to think they are having a spiritual epiphany. If they suffer from temporal lobe epilepsy, they will show signs of hyperreligiosity, an overexcitement of the brain tissue that leads sufferers to believe they are conversing with God.

Wolfe understood the central assertion contained in this kind of thinking: Everything is material and “the soul is dead.” He anticipated the way the genetic and neuroscience revolutions would affect public debate. They would kick off another fundamental argument over whether God exists.

Lo and behold, over the past decade, a new group of assertive atheists has done battle with defenders of faith. 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…

For the rest of the article, click here.

Hey, ever wondered how physicists have achieved a kind of teleportation thanks to a bizarre quantum phenomenon called entanglement? New Scientist Tech present ten things that were once considered utterly impossible that are now, well, completely scientifically possible! As much as I appreciate when formerly mysterious things are decoded by science, I do think that if ever scientists were to figure out the workings of the human soul, that I’d be a bit let down. There is something really compelling about a good conundrum. If we all knew exactly how and when we were going to reincarnate, for example, wouldn’t the fun of imagining the phenomenon fade a bit if the obscurity were eradicated?

Check out the complete list, here.

Recently, Dr. Oz appeared on Oprah with Dr. Brian Weiss and they astounded everyone with a discussion on past life regression therapy.

The two docs tried to hypnotize the entire audience to see if they remember past lives. Some say it’s the key to healing all of your fears. What do you believe?

Check out some videos from the show “Were You Here Before? Dr. Oz Explores Past-Life Regressions”, here:

For more about Dr. Oz click here. For more on Dr. Weiss who has written many books on the subject of reincarnation, click here.