The new science of religion
- there is no bigger subject In this book were going to address head-on some of lifes 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 & 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 peoples everyday thoughts behaviours & emotions betray an innate tendency to reason as though God were deeply invested in their public lives & secret affairs. In this entertaining & thought-provoking book Jesse Bering unravels the evolutionary mystery of why we grapple for meaning purpose & 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 b&-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 & knows about our otherwise private actions communicates messages to us in code through natural events & intends to meet us after we die would also have been felt by our ancestors & led to their behaving in ways that favoured their reputations (and thus saved their genes)."