by Matthew Alper
Allow me to save you the trouble of reading this book by describing it to you.
Matthew Alper notes that the spiritual/religious (his formulation) impulse is universal among humanity, extending to all cultures and periods. From this he deduces, probably correctly, that spirituality/religion is an evolved function of our species. Evolutionary biology tends to agree with this premise, but has been unable, so far, to explain why the function, or rather functions, evolved. What use are they to us in the lifelong struggle to survive and reproduce successfully?
Mr Alper has an explanation. He wrote it down. This book is it.
The first half consists of a brief rundown of the history of the universe, ending with the evolution of consciousness in Homo Sapiens. The content of this section spans physics, cosmology, astronomy, chemistry, biochemistry and evolutionary biology. It is replete with scientific howlers (matter turns into energy if you accelerate it fast enough) but the overall picture it paints is reasonably correct. From it, the author derives a materialistic and naturalistic worldview – also fair enough, though highly debatable. Based on this worldview, he deduces that we must have a religious/spiritual (yes, I’m getting tired of these slashes, too) instinct that is hardwired into our brains. This does not necessarily follow, although I agree with Mr Alper that it seems likely.
But then he goes further, stating his conviction that there must be a particular site in the human brain (the eponymous “God” part) devoted to religion/spirituality (would that be one part, then, or two?) And he says there must be genes for it too, since everything physical in our bodies is manufactured according to the instructions encoded in our genes. That’s right, gentle reader: Mr Alper would like you to believe you have a gene for religion and one (maybe the same one) for spirituality too. Just like, you know, there’s a gay gene and a music-loving gene and a boogie-chillun gene and suchlike.
Mr Alper then devotes a very short middle section to explaining why he thinks our brains evolved a “God” part. His explanation: we are the only animals that are conscious of our own mortality, and the fear and anxiety arising from the knowledge that we must die are so crippling that, just to allay our mortal timorousness and get on with the necessary tasks of making a living and making babies, we evolved the ability to tell ourselves a pack of lies about sky fairies and life after death, and believe them. This is actually quite a good idea, though there are, to my mind, more persuasive explanations for the existence of religion. I have my own – doesn’t every atheist and agnostic have one?
The second half of Mr Alper’s book (as an editor, I appreciate the symmetry of structure) expands, extends and attempts to reinforce his thesis. After reading a chapter or two farther and finding that the error count and the nonsense level were rising exponentially, I quit. Mr Alper’s pedantic, pedestrian, repetitive style had long since soured on me by then; if my only concerns with this book were literary, I would have quit before the end of Chapter Two.
Don’t waste your time with this ‘cult classic’. It’s rubbish.
Photo credit: Godong/Getty Images. Borrowed from here.
