Believers

July 1, 2019

Konner (anthropology, neuroscience, behavioral biology, Emory Univ.; Medicine at the Crossroads) responds to four scientists and philosophers who have recently written about the evil of religion. Raised an Orthodox Jew, but an atheist since the age of 17, Konner uses anthropology and scientific studies to argue that religion, which he admits has been used for evil purposes, has done at least as much good for individual believers and for the community at large. Examining the scientific and cultural origins of religion, including the makeup of the human brain, Konner looks at religion sympathetically and thinks the world would be poorer if religion were to disappear, as those he calls the "Quartet" (Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and the late Christopher Hitchens) have hoped for. While not religious himself, Konner has great respect for religion and what religious people have accomplished. VERDICT While at times tough going, Konner's argument in favor of religion is well stated, with numerous examples from many different fields to back up his argument.--Augustine J. Curley, Newark Abbey, NJ

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

July 1, 2019
An anthropologist mounts a defense of the religious impulse as biological and cultural imperative. Think of Konner (Anthropology and Neuroscience/Emory Univ.; Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy, 2015, etc.) as an anti-Richard Dawkins. Though, as he notes, "the most religious countries are the least developed ones" and the level of religious belief is declining rapidly among millennials in both Europe and the U.S., there's something to religion. But what is it? Ranging broadly among traditions and talking with believers, the author identifies a few of its characteristics. One rabbi tells him, for instance, that it packs a healthy sense of awe, an ego-tempering sense that we are not the be-all and end-all of the universe, while Konner himself holds that a central factor of religion is its power to forge community and companionship. As a scientist, the author fully acknowledges that religion eludes scientific study and addresses questions that science perhaps cannot. The fact that so many of our kind have a religious impulse to begin with suggests, as an Indian neurologist memorably writes, that "when God made us, he put an antenna into our brains so we could find him, and it just happens to be in the temporal lobe." But there's more to religion, as Konner gamely admits, as an instrument of social control, of instilling norms of social behavior that open with the tenet, "People behave when they think they are watched." Of course, people don't always behave--it sometimes seems that the more overtly religious a person is the more heinous their transgressions. Konner doesn't venture much in the way of the definitive, but he urges coexistence and even partnership, noting that the days of religion's attempting to stamp out science are coming to an end, the behavior of fundamentalist politicians notwithstanding. "Science and faith," he writes, "are candles in a darkness that is vast compared to the light that either sheds." A humane, appropriately qualified argument that provides aid and comfort for believers--and that should also interest fair-minded nonbelievers.

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July 8, 2019
Konner (Women After All), professor of anthropology at Emory University, examines the roles belief, faith, and religion have played throughout human civilization in this well-reasoned but repetitive investigation. Combining his research into philosophies of religion, sociology, neuroscience, and the varieties of religious experience, Konner defends the search for meaning beyond life as part of human nature and resists the religion-bashing of the New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Konner cites Kalahari San trance rituals, Hasidic ecstatic dance, and Christian devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe, among other religious practices, as evidence of how ceremonies of religious traditions have melded with different cultures over centuries. Despite his acknowledged state as a nonbeliever and research showing nonbelievers will become a global majority within a few generations, Konner argues that “there will be no end of faith.” While Konner retreads the same argument about the connection between religiosity and society across world cultures for most of the book, in his conclusion he broadens his scope beyond existing religious traditions, asking whether the search for meaning needs to be spiritual at all. Readers who enjoy the work of Mircea Eliade or Karen Armstrong will find food for thought here.

August 1, 2019
Raised an Orthodox Jew, Konner lost his faith when he was 17, but it is the nature of faith that he examines in this illuminating book. His is an eclectic approach that draws from William James' classic The Varieties of Religious Experience to the trance dances of the bushmen of the Kalahari. Though still not a believer, he takes exception to the arguments of those he calls the Quartet: Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, Daniel Dennett, and Christopher Hitchens, disliking, he writes, their attacks on other people's faith. I don't think faith will fade away, he continues, nor do I think it should. He does believe, though, that the number of nonbelievers will continue to grow as populations adhering to conventional religions and supporting their institutions will continue to shrink. Other of his conclusions include the idea that religious inclinations and capacities, which develop during childhood partly as a result of genes, are built into the human brain and for most people religion's functions cannot be replaced by science. Both scientific and aesthetic, his observations are always thought-provoking and stimulating.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)