Rating: 
Summary: two books
Review: Sometimes atheists and agnostics revert to lame and specious arguments against belief of the kind that some believers use against atheists. My favorite is that believers believe because they (we: okay, disclaimer time: I'm a believer six days a week and on Sundays I rest) can't face their mortality. They feel this somehow deals with Jeremiah, Christ, Gandhi, Bonhoeffer and the Berrigans.Drs. Newberg and D'Aquili's book is therefore most welcome. Without claiming to "prove" or "disprove" the "truth" of belief or mystical experience, they show that mystical experiences are rooted in brain biology, that mystical experiences are "real" human experiences. "Why God Won't Go Away" is, at first glace, a simple, reader-friendly text in which the authors invent cute names for complicated concepts. At second glance, that is, once one discovers the footnotes, the reader realizes he has a thoughtful, well-documented and incitfull book. I recommend the second. This is, as the authors admit, an attempt to disclose what little scientists and the rest of us know about mystical experiences. The book left me wanting more, not only concerning the neurobiology of mysticism, but also of conventional prayer, ecstatic prayer and shamanic trances. Do believers in conventional religion based upon obedience to precepts and authority use the brain is similar ways? What about believers in the prophetic religions of justice? The larger question, that of whether the mystical experience is the experience of a transcendent or transcendent other, remains unanswered. Evolution, being based on chance, even if the die are somewhat loaded, can err and produce a brain fixated on worshiping its own illusions. On the other hand, mystics may be in a position similar to that of the first amoeba to sense light. "I 'see' things," she tells her psychiatrist, "before I bump into them." The good amoeba doctor wisely prescribes a medication to rid her of such experiences. Only people who are impressed by how much we know will have answers. Those who are impressed by our ignorance will reserve judgment and keep studying and meditating.
Rating: 
Summary: Mythology, mysticism and malarkey
Review: The Pope of Paleontology once bemoaned the woeful inadequacies of education in evolution in America. The authors of this book represent a prime example of the validity of Stephen Gould's lament. It may seem an oversimplification of the authors' theme to call it "neurotheology" or "hardwired for gods", but their case is so overstated that perhaps a balance is thereby achieved. Relying on Buddhist meditators and praying nuns, the authors recorded brain activity states to compare with "normal" conditions. They then go on to link various areas and functions of the brain to demonstrate that religion is an evolutionary product. For the prurient reader, they contend that the transcendental feelings we obtain from sex links through the limbic system to other parts of the brain becoming the foundation for "religious experience". Freud would have loved this book. The authors map the brain/mind to build a framework to explain the universality of religion. Their outlook is almost entirely from Western Civilization - even the Buddhist meditators are American. From this flimsy foundation and the contributions of some Western philosophers, the authors go on to construct their edifice. The brain, they argue, is designed as a "window to [g]od" which they rename the Absolute Unitary Being. They contend that gods are not the product of a cognitive, deductive process, but were instead "discovered" in a mystical or spiritual encounter. Shoring up their structure with numerous spurious assertions of the brains' processes, they see this capability having been designed through evolution. Not since the concept of "the Great Chain of Being" have humans been granted such a glorious role. GCoB exalted reasoning as giving humans "superiority" over the rest of the animal kingdom - telepathy to the divine was a step too far. Many fine books reflecting recent brain research have been published in recent years. While their descriptions of brain processes make vivid reading, there are far better sources available on the topic. The authors cite a few and ignore the rest. The ones they cite utilise information with adroit selectivity. In fact, most of their sources have been chosen with finesse. A glaring omission is Walter Burkert's Creation of the Sacred. Whatever Burkert's flaws he, at least, makes a serious attempt to extract valid evolutionary roots for religious ideas. Newberg and D'Aquili begin with the premise that there is a god [one, please note] and then manipulate neurological research to "discover" it. Like Burkert, this pair ignores the power of memes to propagate ideas and stimulate response behaviour, a major element in the dissemination of religious thought, but Richard Dawkins is ignored in this book at any level. It's interesting that after pages of "neurotheology" explaining how the brain is there to communicate with a god, at the end they waffle over its actual existence. Although the flaws in the authors' logic are immeasurable, their frequent references to human evolution display even more glaring faults. They assert that Australapithicines likely didn't have sufficient brain power to invoke deities, but grant this level of intellect to Homo erectus. They assert H. erectus was the first to have a mind capable of considering "existential dread", but unable to perceive their deity. Not until H. Neanderthalis did the concept of deities arise, which they claim is evidenced by ritual burials. Ritual burial and deities are linked in today's world, but there isn't a shred of evidence to suggest this is the way of Neanderthal thought. Nor is there any reason to believe that "dread" alone was the prime mover in considering the natural world. Benefits were clearly available - successful hunts, available fruits and vegetables, water - were these not also granted divine status? Their theme, rife with inconsistencies, keeps the deity at arm's length until a hominid evolved to talk to It. That presupposes 3.6 billion years of their god waiting in limbo. Divine patience, indeed! And if the Chixculub asteroid had missed the Earth, who would the AUB communicate with today? [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
Rating: 
Summary: Meditations effect on the Brain
Review: This book does not try to prove the existence of God, but what it does is emphasize that there is evidence that the existence of God is at least a possibility. The authors mainly takes a view that humankind can't help but ponder the plausibility of an afterlife. Their studies mainly focus on meditative states of various religions and shows why there is some truth or common theme underlying all religions which is hard to disagree with. Where the authors and I part company however is that he believes that "all roads can lead to Rome", per se, or at least that all roads lead you to the right road. However, the reader should focus on the neurological aspects which are interesting and where the author's strength lies. The rest is opinion, which they are certainly entitled to. The true beauty of the text is that they are able to at least able to add some physical, logical legitimacy to the notion of deep meditative states and the explanations given by those that have encountered them across various religions. To their credit, they do a decent job of adding some realism to a very controversial subject in the scientific community.
Rating:
Summary: Bland, boring, incomplete...
Review: This is a great book. I studied biology, and i think that this is an understandable presentation for readers at all levels. The coolest part to me was when he wrote about how people experience a sense of oneness during spiritual experiences and which part of the brain is most active at that time. Super rad.
Rating: 
Summary: An Important book for our time
Review: This is an outstanding book. Having been brought up in a scientific household, I have long suspected that the prevalence of religion in human history can only be explained by evolutionary theory, i.e., there must be an evolutionary advantage to the brain structures that cause humans to believe in god, in the face of so much contrary evidence. This book does an elegant job of positing just such an advantage, but it also does more. It offers evidence of the precise brain structures that give rise to religious feeling, and makes a good case for how they came into being in the first place. Clearly the book will have its detractors, principally other scientists envying the authors' job of putting their hypothesis together. And it is certainly plausible that some aspects of their supporting evidence may be in need of refinement. In the main, however, they have made a major contribution to resolving one of the central issues of our time, the seeming conflict between science and religion. Moreover, they suggest a moral implication, which is that when people understand the common biological basis of religion, perhaps they will begin to realize the stupidity of religious intolerance. Can anything be more important to the survival of our species?
Rating:
Summary: A Good Read
Review: Written in a friendly, conversational style, this book makes accessible some very difficult and interesting concepts. Certainly, it would be hard to argue that the biological/neurological basis for belief, ie, the reason so many of us believe in a supreme being/beings other than ourselves is not interesting... and that is, in a nutshell, what this book is about. It goes on to explore a couple of details of many interesting related topics, such as the role of ritual and how rituals (such as those in which chruch-goers participate) effect the brain, and hence our conciousness. This book does not, however, explore topics like NDEs (Near Death Experiences) much at all, so if that is a topic you want to read up on, this is not the book for you.
This book was an enjoyable and interesting read, but it was not without flaws. As mentioned above, I found the lack of material on near death experiences somewhat disappointing, as, from what I understand, those are interesting neurological phenomena. Also, the authors spend a bit too long dwelling on explaining the basics of the nervous system. A shorter portion of the text would have done just as well, and would have left more room to cover other topics.
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