The Faith Instinct

I have not read this book yet, but saw the above comment and just had to say something. First of all, these reviews are meant to be book reviews, and not a place to spout your own beliefs while degrading someone else's, not to mention insulting the author. You did not even read the book, and yet, wrote a review based on just the sample! It sounds to me that the only person whose ego has been lifted has been yours!

I think the first review was intended as a joke to get a reaction. No one with the ingenuity to search ebooks is dumb enough to be a religious nut and think there's a magic god. Relax. There's more proof of the theory of natural selection (which works through the fundamental reality of evolution) than there is that Napoleon existed.

The content of this book is nothing new. It's not "bad", it's just narrow, sophomoric, and western biased. This is based almost entirely on "Memes"--a concept that has dozens of better books already. There's strong evidence that cultural traits go through a process of natural selection just like our best current evidence says all living organisms do. This just adds western biased philosophy to the mix (religions of all kinds sprung up independently...the abrahamic religions are nothing special or unique...the American military even created a religion during WWII by accident--see John Frum...Smithsonian magazine had an articled called "In John They Trust" in Feb '06).

Philosophers are now called "physicists", because more guesses are just as useless as old guesses (ie religions). If you have a philosophical guess and you want to be useful, you go become a physicist and subject it to scrutiny and prove it's a useful guess (and you let others compare the evidence for their guesses to it in an academic environment to see who's closer to "correct").

I'd say skip this book and read some books on the genome and books about memes. If you want to read books undermining religious belief, which isn't even a sport anymore with what we can show through evidence, pick a book on that. Sam Harris, Richard Dawkins, Thomas Gilovich (especially his "How We Know What Isn't So") are better places to start with more airtight cogency.

I'll give this book a "meh" with a "look elsewhere" recommendation.

I read a little bit from the sample. I don't see were people get off saying that you can believe in evolution and religion. That is bs. The bible teaches otherwise and says God created man from the dust of the Earth, not from Apes. And if God created man and had a personal relationship with him at first in the garden that means religion did not evolve. The only thing religion has done is degraded. If your an atheist and wanna read stuff to help you ego I would deffinately recommend it. If your a normal human being who's brain hasn't evolved from their god, the ape, you can probably make your own informed decision.