dean_issov's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.0
Loved the idea of this book, but the execution was terrible. Each chapter got harder and harder to understand, let alone read. It felt like reading a research paper, the process of reading through the whole book was slow and painful, it took me 7 chapters to give up and immediately skip to it's summary section. Again, I love the idea of this book, but it could've been presented in a more accessible manner.
ciannait76's review against another edition
3.0
For a full review see my website: In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion
socraticgadfly's review against another edition
4.0
A fair amount of what I'm noting here relates to PTSD studies and how its effects on the brain have either a direct or inverse relationship to spiritual experience or religious belief levels. So, this is a very specific review.
162-177. Atran draws a number of parallels between brain changes in PTSD sufferers and changes in brain function in religious and spiritual experiences. None of this is to imply that religion is a form of PTSD, any more than people like Dostoyevsky having spiritual experiences right before temporal lobe epilepsy seizures, and with similar areas of the brain affected, implies religion is a form of epilepsy.
But I do think this shows one promising pathway for further exploration of the evolutionary development of religious belief.
178-79. Exposure to a death-priming experience, like a story or video about death, results in readers/viewers having a higher belief in God and supernaturalism afterward. Atran then argues that religion does serve as a relief valve for emotional distress.
BUT... persons given an adrenaline blocker, such as propanolol, after the death/high emotional prime situation, have no better recall of the priming story than of a control uneventful story, whereas placebo-treated subjects have higher recall.
AND ... Similar results have been seen with people suffering from amygdala damage, and PTSD has been shown to chronically, perhaps permanently, affect the amygdala.
I think this, too, points the way for further research on diagnosed PTSD sufferers and their level of religiosity. Especially with adult, chronic PTSD sufferers such as war veterans, before-and-after the event(s) comparisons of religious belief, as well as the exact nature of change in belief, would surely be fertile neuroscience territory.
181.Whirling dance, deep-breathing meditation, and other things can cause "altered states of consciousness." So, too, apparently, can high altitudes. That would be from the thin air, Atran says, or more specifically and technically, hypoxia. Remember that experimentally controlled and induced hypoxia can also induce an NDE.
In meditative states, though only one is fully active at one time, BOTH the sympathetic AND the parasympathetic nervous systems are heightened.
182ff. Eugene D'Aquili and Andrew Newberg are all wet on their attempt to associate specific and relatively small cortex areas with specific functions that may tie in with, or be antagonists to, religiosity. Atran says that they throw a lot against the wall from sociology, Gestalt and more, just to see what might stick. I would further find fault, arguing that, to the degree the brain is modular, their research is arguing for a reverse-diachronic reverse selection, i.e., that alleged future psychogolical need for religion reached back in time to evolutionarily select for a "religion module."
Plus, the latest in cognitive science has largely rejected such fine-tuned, narrowly-directed modules in general.
212ff Contra group selection of David Sloan Wilson and Dan Sperber, Atran says "norms" are not units of cultural evolution.
228. Wilson also faulted for leaning heavily on work of Kevin MacDonald, a simpatico of Holocaust denier David Irving who actually testified in his defense in Irving's libel suit. Not sure how much this is a legit critique and how much an ad hominen; I've not read MacDonald.
232. Research on Judaism as allegedly showing tightly cohesive religion as reflecting group selection has many problems in methodology, not actually listed by Atran. They include confusing Judaism the religion with Judaism the culture, confusing both with Jewishness the ethnicity, not noting nonreligious counterexamples of similar "tightness," such as ironsmiths in many sub-Saharan African tribes, etc. Also faulted for relying in IQ as measuring "intelligence."
248ff. Mimetics also fails to explain religion due to the general shortcomings of meme theory... transmission, fidelity, etc. He does fault Dennett and Dawkins, above all, for the anti-religious and over-intellectual bias they bring to propositions about memes.
In conclusion, Atran asks whether religion and science can coexist in the modern Western world, or whether they are part of a zero-sum game. However, he doesn't really answer this. I think it is answerable and that they are, contra Steve Gould, a zero-sum game.
Nor, beyond what I mentioned above, does Atran offer a paradigm for future research. These would be the only drawbacks in a book that corrects a fair amount of wrong speculation on this subject.
162-177. Atran draws a number of parallels between brain changes in PTSD sufferers and changes in brain function in religious and spiritual experiences. None of this is to imply that religion is a form of PTSD, any more than people like Dostoyevsky having spiritual experiences right before temporal lobe epilepsy seizures, and with similar areas of the brain affected, implies religion is a form of epilepsy.
But I do think this shows one promising pathway for further exploration of the evolutionary development of religious belief.
178-79. Exposure to a death-priming experience, like a story or video about death, results in readers/viewers having a higher belief in God and supernaturalism afterward. Atran then argues that religion does serve as a relief valve for emotional distress.
BUT... persons given an adrenaline blocker, such as propanolol, after the death/high emotional prime situation, have no better recall of the priming story than of a control uneventful story, whereas placebo-treated subjects have higher recall.
AND ... Similar results have been seen with people suffering from amygdala damage, and PTSD has been shown to chronically, perhaps permanently, affect the amygdala.
I think this, too, points the way for further research on diagnosed PTSD sufferers and their level of religiosity. Especially with adult, chronic PTSD sufferers such as war veterans, before-and-after the event(s) comparisons of religious belief, as well as the exact nature of change in belief, would surely be fertile neuroscience territory.
181.Whirling dance, deep-breathing meditation, and other things can cause "altered states of consciousness." So, too, apparently, can high altitudes. That would be from the thin air, Atran says, or more specifically and technically, hypoxia. Remember that experimentally controlled and induced hypoxia can also induce an NDE.
In meditative states, though only one is fully active at one time, BOTH the sympathetic AND the parasympathetic nervous systems are heightened.
182ff. Eugene D'Aquili and Andrew Newberg are all wet on their attempt to associate specific and relatively small cortex areas with specific functions that may tie in with, or be antagonists to, religiosity. Atran says that they throw a lot against the wall from sociology, Gestalt and more, just to see what might stick. I would further find fault, arguing that, to the degree the brain is modular, their research is arguing for a reverse-diachronic reverse selection, i.e., that alleged future psychogolical need for religion reached back in time to evolutionarily select for a "religion module."
Plus, the latest in cognitive science has largely rejected such fine-tuned, narrowly-directed modules in general.
212ff Contra group selection of David Sloan Wilson and Dan Sperber, Atran says "norms" are not units of cultural evolution.
228. Wilson also faulted for leaning heavily on work of Kevin MacDonald, a simpatico of Holocaust denier David Irving who actually testified in his defense in Irving's libel suit. Not sure how much this is a legit critique and how much an ad hominen; I've not read MacDonald.
232. Research on Judaism as allegedly showing tightly cohesive religion as reflecting group selection has many problems in methodology, not actually listed by Atran. They include confusing Judaism the religion with Judaism the culture, confusing both with Jewishness the ethnicity, not noting nonreligious counterexamples of similar "tightness," such as ironsmiths in many sub-Saharan African tribes, etc. Also faulted for relying in IQ as measuring "intelligence."
248ff. Mimetics also fails to explain religion due to the general shortcomings of meme theory... transmission, fidelity, etc. He does fault Dennett and Dawkins, above all, for the anti-religious and over-intellectual bias they bring to propositions about memes.
In conclusion, Atran asks whether religion and science can coexist in the modern Western world, or whether they are part of a zero-sum game. However, he doesn't really answer this. I think it is answerable and that they are, contra Steve Gould, a zero-sum game.
Nor, beyond what I mentioned above, does Atran offer a paradigm for future research. These would be the only drawbacks in a book that corrects a fair amount of wrong speculation on this subject.
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