About the Book
The new science of religion - there is no bigger subject In this book, we're going to address head-on some of life's biggest questions: Is there really a God who cares about you? Is there really a special reason that you are here? Will your soul live on after you die? Or, alternatively, are God, souls and destiny simply a set of seductive cognitive illusions, one that can be accounted for by the unusual evolution of the human brain?A" The God Instinct explores how people's everyday thoughts, behaviours and emotions betray an innate tendency to reason as though God were deeply invested in their public lives and secret affairs. In this entertaining and thought-provoking book, Jesse Bering unravels the evolutionary mystery of why we grapple for meaning, purpose and destiny in life. He argues that God is not merely an idea to be entertained or discarded based on the evidence. Nor is God a cultural invention, an existential band-aid, an opiate of the masses. Instead, Bering proposes, God is a way of thinking.
That strangely sticky sense that some intentional agent willfully created us as individuals, wants us to behave in particular ways, observes and knows about our otherwise private actions, communicates messages to us in code through natural events and intends to meet us after we die would also have been felt by our ancestors and led to their behaving in ways that favoured their reputations (and thus saved their genes).
About the Author :
Jesse Bering is Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at the Queen's University, Belfast. The Institute's research focuses primarily on human social behaviour and current topics range from people's belief in the afterlife to moral disgust over social offences. Funded by the EU, the John F Templeton Foundation and the US Air Force, it has projects running all over the world, including Samoa, Ecuador, Guatemala City, Mongolia, India, Mali and Cyprus. Jesse writes a weekly column for Scientific American, 'Bering in Mind'. Born in New Jersey and educated at Florida Atlantic University and University of Louisiana at Lafayette, he now lives in Northern Ireland.
Review :
One of The Top 25 Books of the Year, American Library Association: "A cogently constructed, witty set of arguments about why humans, as a species,almost cannot help but believe in the supernatural. The author approaches these dicey subjects with a dazzlingly insightful reading of the empirical literature on human cognition and development, a sly sense of humor, and an obvious compassion for those who do not share his beliefs. He also has a lot of fun. Summing Up: Essential. All readers." "Thanks to evolution we naturally expect there to be a god - or gods - watching over us. Our brains interpret the world around us in ways that created God; the notion of the divine is a scratch on our psychological lenses, says psychologist Jesse Bering. Bering admits that explaining away God in this way is radical and possibly dangerous, but he handles it deftly. His writing is witty, crammed with pop-culture references, and he employs examples and analogies that make his arguments seem like common sense rather than the hard-earned scientific insights they really are. This fascinating book presents gentle, nuanced but convincing arguments for atheism. Bering knows he can't change the world, though. Thoroughly and permanently removing God from our heads would require a neurosurgeon not a science teacher, he says." - New Scientist "A balanced and considered approach to this often inflammatory topic." - Nature "Jesse Bering is a brilliant young psychologist, a gifted storyteller and a very funny man. And his first book, The Belief Instinct, is a triumph - a moving, provocative, and entertaining exploration of the human search for meaning." - Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology, Yale University, author of How Pleasure Works "Since God didn't exist, our human ancestors found it necessary to invent him. In this scintillating book, Jesse Bering explains, with characteristic wit and wisdom, how, in the course of human evolution, God returned the compliment - by helping individuals, despite themselves, lead better lives." - Nicholas Humphrey, Emeritus Professor London School of Economics and author of Soul Dust: The Magic of Consciousness "I'm certainly no expert in evolutionary psychology, but [after reading The God Instinct] I feel like one... a book without God but brimful of humanity." - Simon Winchcombe, Producer, BBC Horizon "There's a place in our minds where God goes. This spellbinding book explains how: we humans find the idea of God inviting because we evolved to perceive minds all around us. Bering's own clever research on children s perceptions of the supernatural is the centerpiece in his rich portrayal of the newly unfolding science of belief in God." - Daniel M. Wegner, Harvard University, author of The Illusion of Conscious Will
