false 29542949 1395073 2784179 0767926579 9780767926577 5 http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-111x148.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/images/nocover-60x80.jpg http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2784179.Spiritual_Evolution_A_Scientific_Defense_of_Faith 3.89 9 Dr. George E. Vaillant, a research psychiatrist and director of Harvard’s famous seventy-year-long study of human lifetimes, brings a powerful voice to the ongoing debate about the nature of faith and its impact on history and society. In a scientifically based response to Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, Vaillant shows that the defining components of spirituality—emotions such as love, compassion, hope, and forgiveness—are hardwired into a specific, identifiable part of the human brain. Drawing on cutting-edge neuroscience, anthropology, and studies of animal behavior, he argues that evolution favors our spiritual behaviors.
Spiritual Evolution draws an important distinction between spirituality and religion. A biological drive shared by all human beings, spirituality is a source of comfort to individuals and a positive force in general. Religion, in contrast, is instilled; reflecting cultural biases and history, it often feeds the passions that lead to violence and other destructive behavior.
Eye-opening and authoritative, Spiritual Evolution brings to light the intimate connection between the foundations of faith and the findings of science.

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The key point is the difference between the brain's mammalian limbic system and its reptilian amygdilla. Ap...more...]]>