Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief by Andrew Newberg

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really liked the brain science of this book, as well as the anthropology angle. There is a lot of speculation involved in their hypothesis, as there must be when anyone is trying to read what was going on in the mind of early man. But I believe it is a carefully balanced middle ground between the scientific question and the spiritual one. Anyone who is entirely in one camp or the other might not appreciate how this book marries the two.

I am both of the scientific and spiritual mind myself, and found the author's line of thinking in parallel to my own, and asking the same questions of the universe that I have been struggling to put into words for decades.

What it comes down to is that spirituality is valid path (and possibly the best path) for human happiness and well being. According to neuroscience, we perceive spiritual experiences to be as real as any other objective experience. So it begs the question...Is there a higher reality, a greater power, that shaped us to think this way, to see what exists outside both the objective and subjective reality? Or is it a random mutation in the evolutionary process that humanity gravitated towards because it makes us stronger and healthier...that those without the tendency to believe in God wallowed in the inevitability of their own death and meaningless of their own life so intensely that they eventually cut themselves out of the evolutionary process?

For me personally, that question is not one that can be empirically proven, and so it is left to a simple choice of what each individual chooses to believe. It was a eureka moment for me to see that, all things being equal, belief comes down to matter of choice.

It is interesting how everything boils down to choice in the end.

And in case you were wondering, I exercise my power of choice and hold to the first perspective. The second one is too depressing to me to be considered for very long. Funny, but having had that choice laid bare like that, and having made it, I am so much more active a participant in the path I have chosen. Knowing the alternative, I cling that much tighter to my chosen version of reality. Strange how seeing your options in black and white can strengthen your resolve in ways you never knew possible.


View all my reviews.