Book Review

“God’s Brain” by Lionel Tiger and Michael McGuire

Amherst, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 2010

It is always interesting to see how those within a scientific sub-discipline speak about religion and religious beliefs.  In God’s Brain you have a professor of anthropology (Lionel Tiger) who focuses on the ways biological evolution relates to social interactions, and a former professor of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences (Michael McGuire) who investigates ethology, law, and how Darwinian evolution can be used in psychiatry.  Each of them could be said to follow in the footsteps of “the father of sociobiology,” E.O. Wilson.  In this work they discuss how the brain relates to religious beliefs, promises, and narratives; and conversely, how these beliefs reciprocate by affecting the brain in certain ways.  It is written more like a literary discourse then an apologetic diatribe.  Although critical of religious beliefs and their social manifestations, these two do not present themselves in the manner of Dawkins, Hitchens, or Harris.  They are more astonished at how religion works and where religious ideas originate then providing hard-line critiques of everything religious. They wonder how the human brain can create such a plethora of religious ideas, “One brain, four thousand religions” (12), they exclaim.

One of the central points in this book is the notion that “the change the brain seeks is to brainsoothe itself, to reduce its preoccupations and acquire the most interesting menu of stimuli it can safely find” (20).  And this is what religion provides: a kind of brainsoothing.  “Religion,” for Tiger and McGuire, “is a form of socioemotional and institutional exercise for the organ in our head” (20); its power lies in its promise of the afterlife (20) and its ability to address central issues of belief and social hierarchy (28).  But primarily religion is a form of brain exercise.  This brain exercise is a product of the fact that “the brain has evolved to identify and solve tasks essential for survival.  The brain evolved to act” (28).  In this evolution the brain has formed ways to comfort itself: the very quest for knowledge and certainty is a quest for comfort and survival.  The problem is that “the brain also imagines and believes things for which there is no hard evidence” (31).  There is no hard evidence because there is no method for testing: “there is simply no scientific method to test for heaven; hell; thoughtful or considerate gods; and leering, masked, tail –flailing devils” (32).  If there is no way of testing religious beliefs then how can we make a judgment on what the brain constructs to comfort itself?  There seems no escape since “the human records shows that a bewildering portion of what humans imagine is given the same weight, value, and authority as what they tangibly experience” (33).

In conclusion, Tiger and McGuire offer insights into the way that the brain relates to religious beliefs, and vice versa.  They take into account the reality and ubiquity of religious beliefs and religious groups.  They offer reasons why believers form, as well as hold onto, their beliefs.  It is the brains way of soothing itself from the tumultuous world we experience around us.  If one were to take their theories further, they could arrive at the conclusion that religion and religious belief are solely a projection of the human mind (Feuerbach and Frued) and that one should try to remedy this with a taste of cold, hard reality.  Others may take them as simply speaking about what goes on in the brains of believers, saying nothing about its truth or falsity.