God's Brain

by Lionel Tiger, Michael McGuire

Overview

Taking a perspective rooted in evolutionary biology with a focus on brain science, two distinguished authors radically alter the fractious debate on the existence of God and the nature of religion.Two distinguished authors, renowned anthropologist Lionel Tiger and pioneering neuroscientist Michael McGuire, elucidate the perennial questions about religion: What is its purpose? How did it arise? What is its source? Why does every known culture have some form of it? Their answer is deceptively simple, yet at the same time highly complex: The brain creates religion and its varied concepts of God, and then in turn feeds on its creation to satisfy innate neurological and associated social needs.Brain science reveals that humans and other primates alike are afflicted by unavoidable sources of stress that the authors describe as "brainpain." To cope with this affliction people seek to "brainsoothe." We humans use religion and its social structures to induce brainsoothing as a relief for innate anxiety. How we do this is the subject of this groundbreaking book.In a concise, lively, accessible, and witty style, the authors combine zoom-lens vignettes of religious practices with discussions of the latest research on religion's neurological effects on the brain. Among other topics, they consider religion's role in providing positive socialization, its seeming obsession with regulating sex, the common biological scaffolding between nonhuman primates and humans and how this affects religion, and evidence that the palliative effects of religion on brain chemistry are not matched by nonreligious remedies.In a new preface to the paperback edition, Lionel Tiger discusses the paradoxical effects of religion-on the one hand, producing masterpieces of art and architecture and, on the other, fueling violence throughout history and into the present. This fascinating book provides key insights into the complexities of our brain and the role of religion, perhaps its most remarkable creation.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781633883376
Publisher:	Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc.
Publication date:	12/12/2017
Pages:	256
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 8.90(h) x 0.80(d)

About the Author

Lionel Tiger (New York, NY) is the bestselling author of ten books, including Men in Groups, The Imperial Animal (with Robin Fox), The Pursuit of Pleasure, Optimism: The Biology of Hope, and The Decline of Males. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Harvard Business Review, and Brain and Behavioral Science. He is the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology Emeritus at Rutgers University.

Michael McGuire, MD (1929-2016), was the author or editor of ten books, including Believing: The Neuroscience of Fantasies, Fears, and Convictions and Darwinian Psychiatry (with A. Troisi). He was the president of the Biomedical Research Foundation, director of the Bradshaw Foundation and the Gruter Institute of Law and Behavior, and a trustee of the International Society of Human Ethology. Formerly, he had been a professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences at the University of California at Los Angeles and editor of Ethology and Sociobiology.

Read an Excerpt

Preface to the Paperback Edition
(Continues…)

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Excerpted from "God's Brain"
by .
Copyright © 2017 Lionel Tiger.
Excerpted by permission of Prometheus Books.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Preface to the Paperback Edition Lionel Tiger i

Preface to the Hardcover Edition Michael McGuire Lionel Tiger 7

Acknowledgments 9

1 And What an Amazing, If Improbable, Story It Is 11

2 You Need Both a Zoom Lens and a Microscope to See Religion 21

3 Adventures of the Soul 45

4 Faith in Sex 69

5 Religion as Law and the Denial of Biology 83

6 Is Religion Monkey Business? 101

7 My Brain. Your Liturgy. Our State of Grace. 123

8 The Elephant in the Chapel Is in Your Skull 143

9 Puzzles, Answers, and More Puzzles 165

10 And What's Your Brainsoothe Score? 183

11 Rather a Beginning, Not a Conclusion 193

Notes 217

Index 239

What People are Saying About This

Jay R. Feierman

If God's Brain sounds whimsically paradoxical, it is only because the authors believe that most people of faith have been looking for God in all the wrong places. The authors suggest that religious believers should look inward, rather than outward, to find God. The book is a well-written, easy to read, unique perspective on religion. Yes, God has a brain. The book will captivate all but the piously religious faint-of-heart. (Jay R. Feierman. Editor, The Biology of Religious Behavior: The Evolutionary Origins of Faith and Religion)

Melvin Konner

Recent, often bitter, debates have lacked a scientific take on religion that is not at the same time trying to destroy it. This lively, creative account helps fill that gap. It may even help you with your own trials of faith. (Melvin Konner, author of The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit and the forthcoming The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind)

R. Curtis Ellison

Tiger and McGuire have concocted an amazing and insightful look - based on sound science - into how the human brain 'seeks' religion. The book beautifully describes how belief, ritual, and socialization within a closed group work together to help humans survive the stresses of everyday life. (R. Curtis Ellison, MD, professor of Medicine & Public Health, Boston University School of Medicine)

Robin Fox

With economy, evidence and no little wit and elegance, Lionel Tiger and Michael McGuire look for the answer to religion's ubiquity and persistence in the only place possible: the human brain. To say more would be to give away their answer, and that would spoil a great read and a serious and informative argument. This is easily the best book on the nature of religion to appear for a long time. (Robin Fox, University Professor of Social Theory, Rutgers University)

Editorial Reviews

"PRAISE FOR THE ORIGINAL EDITION OF GOD'S BRAIN:“The joint effort [of two distinguished authors and scholars] is impressive. It manages to bring the experience and energy of both men together in one pithy, provocative package." —Washington Times “[The authors] rightly observe a myriad of religious-based topics and bring up fascinating discoveries of the human brain."—Sacramento Book Review, San Francisco Book Review“The authors write here for a lay audience, offering interesting anecdotes, personal experiences, and witty turns of phrase." —Library Journal“The authors' entertainingly loopy writing belies a comprehensive approach to a major fact of the human experience, and their analysis will provoke the religious and the scientific equally: a sure sign that the authors are doing something right." —SEED magazine“God's Brain is meant for a lay audience. The authors frequently express their concepts in simple, everyday terms... McGuire and Tiger invoke a wide range of social and 'hard' sciences, whether brain chemistry or the study of nonhuman primates. Although the range can make the material somewhat kaleidoscopic at times, they do not let the book become too abstract or academic... God's Brain is a welcome respite from the frenzied cacophony that too often attends discussion of religion." —BlogCritics.org“The writing style is concise, interesting, and even quite entertaining at times. What could have been a technical tome in evolutionary theory and neurobiology has been transformed into an informative book that even nonscientists can comprehend." —Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith“There is much that is coherent... in the story as told by the authors, woven together from a broad spectrum of the social and life sciences, and the ultimate survival of the authors' brain soothing idea will depend on its testability.”—Human Ethology Bulletin

From the Publisher