Summary
Title: The "God" Part of the Brain: A Scientific Interpretation of Human Spirituality and God
Author: Matthew Alper
Publisher: Rogue Press
ISBN: 0966036700
Pro:
• Difficult concepts made easier to understand
• Good place to start looking at biological basis for religion
Con:
• Does not address alternative theories
Description:
• Exploration of if and how religion might be caused by biology and the brain
• Discussion of how religious belief may have been evolutionarily beneficial
• Attempt to provide logical foundation for atheism
Book Review
These are the sorts of questions posed and explored by Matthew Alper in his recent book. One might have the impression that this is simply a scientific study of the phenomenon of theism, but that is not the only or even, I think, the primary theme. Whether consciously or unconsciously, Alper follows in the footsteps of Rene Descartes in a quest for reliable, certain knowledge.
Descartes’ project was general: he concluded that the could begin from the certain position that he could know he existed, and everything else was derived from this starting point. Alper’s project is more narrow, involving a search for an understanding of the nature of God and people’s belief in spiritual realms and beings. He concludes that he can start from the certain position that he can know that “God” is a word, a concept in the human mind, and that this is all he can be really certain of. Everything else has to be deduced from this starting position and other empirical data, not from traditional assumptions normally associated with theism.
This book, then, is very much a quest for just what reliable information and knowledge can be achieved, as well as Alper’s autobiographical account of how he has searched for that knowledge in the hopes of better understanding human religion and spirituality.
For such a project, Alper must define what he means by “God,” and here some initial difficulties occur. He defines God as essentially a “universal spirit,” a perfect embodiment of all the characteristics normally attributed to spirits and spiritual beings. This is not an unreasonable premise, but it certainly isn’t an accurate description of all beings which have been labeled “gods.”
This problem is partially resolved when it becomes apparent in the book that Alper seems to use the term “God” interchangeably with belief in a spiritual, supernatural realm of disembodied existence. If he didn’t mean the same with the two concepts, he would be guilty of equivocation, but I think he does mean basically the same.
The ambiguity between the two is made more clear when he asserts that:
- “If there is any behavior that has been universally exhibited among every human culture, that behavior must represent an inherent characteristic of our species, a genetically inherited instinct.”
Alper wants to argue that theism is just such a behavior — but it is not clearly true that every culture has believed in gods. For example, Will Durant has written that certain Pygmy tribes found in Africa were observed to have no identifiable cults or rites. There were no totems, no gods, no spirits. Their dead were buried without special ceremonies or accompanying items and received no further attention. They even appeared to lack simple superstitions, according to travelers’ reports.
A lack of belief in gods is not, however, the same lacking belief in an afterlife or in some sort of spiritual existence. Alper recognizes this when he writes that “The universality with which we perceive a spiritual reality is made evident by a number of cross-cultural beliefs and practices.” This more general position is more defensible — so why does he keep using the term “god”? Well, a book about the “Spirit Part of the Brain” might be more accurate, but it probably wouldn’t be as enticing.
