The first thing we learn from studying our own circuitry is a simple lesson: most of what we do and think and feel is not under our conscious control.

We are nothing but the product of billions of years of molecules coming together and ratcheting up through natural selection, we are composed only of highways of fluids and chemicals sliding along roadways within billions of dancing cells, trillions of synaptic conversations hum in parallel, this vast egglike fabric of micron-thin circuitry runs algorithms undreamt of in modern science, and these neural programs give rise to our decision making, loves, desires, fears, and aspirations. That understanding would be a numinous experience, better than anything ever proposed in anyone's holy text.

Imbalance of reason and emotion may explain the tenacity of religion in societies: world religions are optimized to tap into the emotional networks, and great arguments of reason amount to little against such magnetic pull.

A mere 400 years after our fall from the center of the universe, we have experienced the fall from the center of ourselves.

Some men may be genetically inclined to have and hold a single partner, while some may not. In the near future, young women who stay current with the scientific literature may demand genetic tests of their boyfriends to assess how likely they are to make faithful husbands.

In the traditionally taught view of perception, data from the sensorium pours into the brain, works its way up the sensory hierarchy, and makes itself seen, heard, smelled, tasted, felt - "perceived." But a closer examination of the data suggests this is incorrect. The brain is properly thought of as a mostly closed system that runs on its own internally generated activity.

If choices and decisions derive from hidden mental processes, then free choice is either an illusion or, at minimum, more tightly constrained than previously considered.