Psychology of religious belief

[OnlyNatural]

New book coming out:

The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life (by Jesse Bering)

"God is not merely an idea to be entertained or discarded based on the evidence. Nor is God just a cultural invention, an existential Band-Aid, or an opiate of the masses. Instead, Jesse Bering argues, belief in God evolved in the human species as an "adaptive illusion." Drawing on groundbreaking research in cognitive science, The Belief Instinct unravels the evolutionary mystery of why we grapple for meaning, purpose, and destiny in our everyday lives. Bering argues that the strangely deep-rooted sense that some intentional agent created us as individuals, wants us to behave in particular ways, observes our otherwise private actions, and intends to meet us after we die would also have been felt by our ancestors, leading them to behave in ways that favored their reputations—and thus saved their genes. But in today's world, these psychological illusions have outlasted their evolutionary purpose, and Bering draws our attention to a whole new challenge: escaping them."

This looks like a fascinating read, for a psychology buff like me anyway

The National Post has been printing excerpts from this book, I'll post the links here if anyone is interested. There are more to come in the next few days.

God and Sartre

A child's mind: birthplace of gods

We see dead people

Programmed for afterlife