About this title: Dr. Vaillant brings a powerful voice to the ongoing debate about the nature of faith and its impact on history and society. 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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Description: Good. Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Broadway
Date Published: 2008-05-20
ISBN-13:9780767926577ISBN:0767926579
Description: New. New, unread, unused & in perfect condition with no damaged or missing pages. This is a paperback with same cover and pre-release stickers. This book is the same isbn, but is a paperback. Great Copy. Ships Lightning Fast. read more
Description: Good. 0767926579 Book could have a shelf wear, or a bump, or sunfade to edges. These are new unread books from the publisher with one of these conditions. See are feedback as customers are satisfied in how we grade our books. Has remainder mark. Fast shipping and customer service is our number 1 priority! read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Broadway
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780767926577ISBN:0767926579
Description: Fine. Unread publisher overstock copy! ! Pages are crisp and clean! Remainder mark on one end. Very light shelf wear to cover. Orders shipped next business day. Tracking number provided. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Broadway
Date Published: 2008
ISBN-13:9780767926577ISBN:0767926579
Description: Fine. Unread publisher overstock copy! ! Pages are crisp and clean! Remainder mark on one end. Very light shelf wear to cover. Orders shipped next business day. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Broadway
Date Published: 2009-06-09
ISBN-13:9780767926584ISBN:0767926587
Description: New. Pre-release ARC book with different cover and publisher stickers. New, unread, unused & in perfect condition with no damaged or missing pages. Great Copy. Ships Lightning Fast. read more
Binding: Hardcover
Publisher: Broadway
Date Published: 2008-05-20
ISBN-13:9780767926577ISBN:0767926579
Description: New. New hardcover book with publisher's inventory mark. We ship 6 days a week, generally within 24 hours; single CDs and DVDs upgraded to 1st class! read more
Binding: Softcover
Publisher: Broadway Books
Date Published: 2009-06-09
ISBN-13:9780767926584ISBN:0767926587
Description: NEW. Softcover. From an inventory that is 100% brand-new, 100% direct from the publishers' distribution channel. We carry NO pre-owned, NO remaindered. We pack in CARDBOARD to ensure the pristine quality is maintained. (Bubble-wrap alone is NOT sufficient to protect from USPS equipment. ) Guaranteed brand-NEW, protected with CARDBOARD, your satisfaction is guaranteed. BKLUVID: 9780767926584. read more
Binding: Paperback
Publisher: Broadway
Date Published: 2009
ISBN-13:9780767926584ISBN:0767926587
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"Very interesting book that debunks the ideas of modern athiests that spirituality is dangerous. Vaillant lays out a case that our brains have evolved over the last few thousand years to foster the capabilities of compassion, faith, hope and love as positive improvements to human kind. Not an evangelical title, but a very good read."
"In this book Vaillant chronicles the journey modern social sciences have taken from total denial of the instincts of compassion and love to a (grudging) acceptance. Along the way, Vaillant argues how fundamental these emotions are. He also emphasizes how the human instinct for love and compassion can be taken as a scientifically defensible basis for religion.
One of Vaillant's cases in point is the Alcoholics Anonymous organization. He notes how AA has somehow been able to avoid the fate of many religions, which sooner or later is distracted by prejudice, supernatural and claims of infallibility.
In spite of these positives, it seems to me that this book fails to be what many readers really want to see -- a scientifically written, scientifically appealing work that presents a scientifically tenable basis for religion. For too much of the book, Vaillant wander off into other largely philosophical concerns that deflect his focus on science. I wish he had better maintained that focus."
"This is a book by George Valliant, a Harvard scientist following in the footsteps of thinkers like E.O. Wilson who started the whole movement to "biologize" spirituality.
The key point is the difference between the brain's mammalian limbic system and its reptilian amygdilla. Apparently the brains of reptiles have no limbic region, and this explains why they don't cry out for their parents. They remain silent, frozen in the fear that if they make but a peep, their daddies might eat them.
It turns out that the reptiles are missing the limbic region that contains the brain's hard wiring for the most important things that make life worth living -- empathy and compassion and a willingness to care for people who are not our blood relatives. It's also the part of the brain that embraces the unselfish maternal care for the young (love, we could call it) and play (joy, we could call it) and the separation cry of babies for their parents
So the good news is that we mammals have moved up the evolutionary spiritual chain with the limbic region, but we still have the reptile's old amygdilla region to drive us nuts with fear.
What I like as well is that Valliant takes on the arrogance of fashionable post-modern intellectuals who, as the blind followers of Freud, have rejected positive psychology and, with it, any serious consideration of how we are hard wired for positive emotions like love and joy.
Until very recently, in fact, positive emotions have been entirely absent from psychiatric textbooks. In the bargain, love has been overlooked
How unexpected that the biologists -- along with the quantum physicists -- are leading the psychologists back to God these days.
God, of course, is just a word--and words are but symbols of symbols. People get hung up on it, but why bother? I'd rather conceptualize God as The Force of Ever Giving Love and keeping pumping that nonreligious love through my own brain's limbic region.
What I take away from this book is that at every moment in our lives there are only ever three basic options before us: We can feel fear through our amygdalla. We can feel love through our limbic. Or we can argue about it all day through our prefontal cortex . . Peace . . . PT"
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