Evolving God: A Provocative View on the Origins of Religion

Read an Excerpt

Chapter 1: Apes to Angels
The study of evolution has uncovered invaluable information about many aspects of human behavior and culture, from the physiology of our bodies and brains to the development of hunting, technology, and social groups.

Chapter 1: Part 2
Like most anthropologists, however, I have been motivated ultimately by the wish to understand better the behavior of my own species. Coupling my own research with analysis of the behavior of our humanlike extinct ancestors in Africa, Asia, and Europe

Chapter 1: Part 3
Third, the hominid need for belongingness rippled out, eventually expanding into a wholly new realm. In tandem with, and in part driven by, changes in the natural environment, in the hominid brain, and most important, in caregiving practices

The study of evolution has uncovered invaluable information about many aspects of human behavior and culture, from the physiology of our bodies and brains to the development of hunting, technology, and social groups. But an understanding of the intangibles of human experience, especially religion, lags far behind. Attempts to discover the source of religiosity through genetic analysis and neuroscience have so far yielded intriguing but incomplete insights. Evolving God represents an exciting breakthrough. Drawing on her own extensive investigations into the behavior of our closest primate relatives and the most up-to-date research in archaeology, anthropology, and biology, Barbara King offers a comprehensive, holistic view of how and why religion came to be.

King focuses on how the Great Apes, our human ancestors, and modern humans relate to one another socially and emotionally, and she traces the growing complexities of communication throughout the course of evolution. She shows that, with increased brain capacity, the scope and nature of socio-emotional ties began with one-to-one relationships and expanded to group relationships (families and communities) and then to connections with long-dead ancestors, animal spirits, and "higher beings." Her incisive, highly readable narrative takes readers from the earliest common relative of humans and apes (more than 6 million years ago), through the Neandertal period and the Stone Age, to the dawn of religion in early human societies.

Evolving God explores one of the greatest mysteries in human history - the question of whether humankind is innately religious - and provides evidence that will have a tremendous impact on current debates about evolution, creationism, and intelligent design.

Barbara J. King is Professor of Anthropology at the College of William and Mary. A biological anthropologist, she has studied ape and monkey behavior in Gabon, in Kenya, and at the Smithsonian Institution's National Zoological Park. She lives in Gloucester County, Virginia..

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