The Faith Instinct: How Religion Evolved and Why It Endures

I really like this book because it combines two of my favorite subjects: psychology and anthropology. I am an atheist so I may be biased; I think this book gives great explanations as to the origin of religion as well as how it continues to prosper in modern societies. I recommend this book to anybody interested in an opinion on religion :)

Nicholas Wade cleared up a mystery for me. The more I read about and thought about religion, the more trouble I had understanding how educated people could overlook the inconsistencies and contradictions in their religions and simply accept them uncritically as a given, Modern scholarship and science would seem to make traditional religion obsolete, yet it thrives. Wade's, The Faith Instinct: How religion evolved and why it endures offers a fascinating theory: The tendency toward religious belief has genetically evolved as an adaptive mechanism to help early human societies survive. Early belief in supernatural agencies, along with the associated rituals, made early hunter gather bands more cohesive, giving them the sense of community necessary to work together for their mutual benefit and to make them willing to risk their lives for the group during the many wars that have always been a fact of life. Wade supports his argument with references from biology, sociology, anthropology and historic scholarship, quoting sources like Edward O. Wilson, Richard Dawkins, Charles Darwin, Samuel Huntington, Emile Durkheim and the Bible. While neither supporting or denigrating religion, Wade systematically spells out how it has had survival benefits, which continue to operate into modern times. He traces the evolution of religion, using early studies of isolated, primitive tribes, historical accounts of how new religions developed from older ones and the evolution from preliterate rituals to modern text based faiths. The issue of group selection was a sticking point, with many biologists arguing against the idea that natural selection could operate at the group, rather than the individual level. However, it does seem that group selection need not be proposed for hunter gathers willing to risk their lives in warfare. A warrior does not fight assuming he will die, and in fact the majority survive. However, a brave warrior elevates his status, allowing him more opportunities to mate and pass on his genes to the next generation. War heroes make attractive mates. While scholarship is divided on many of the points Wade raises, he makes a coherent case for the evolutionary benefits of religion, while illuminating its history, without addressing the thorny issue of the existence or non-existence of supernatural beings. In the end I came away with a broader and deeper understanding of the issue, and that's the best thing one can say about a book. I consider this a must read for anyone interested in the subject of religion.

This may well be the finest book ever written on comparative religion. It is certainly the one that most thoroughly illuminates its subject with the most up-to-date facts and theories. When one thinks of all the Torahs, Gospels, and Korans being pored over so diligently for illumination, one is tempted to imagine a world where a copy of this book would be bound into each of them. Religion is too important to be left to the religious institutions. Nicholas Wade is one of the most distinguished science writers currently writing in English. We are very fortunate that he has turned his attention to such a difficult (and thankless) but important subject.

Wade has done a masterful job of illustrating the common elements in many religions and tracing them to their historic roots. To me, the book shows how much we have in common with people of other faiths around the world. We (Christians) don't have the market cornered on religious tradition as we are sometimes led to believe. Wade's book is a must read for anyone who has a narrow view of religion believing their interpretation of God is the one and only "true" faith. If everyone could have benefit of the "big picture" when it comes to religion, we as a civilization might do a better job of tolerating other religions that are different from our own. Thank you for your revealing, thought-provoking book.

Nicholas Wade established himself years ago as one of the country's best science journalists but The Faith Instinct is his finest book. Indeed, it is by far the best book on religion written from an evolutionary perspective, far surpassing the cranky and deeply flawed works of Harris, Hitchens, and Dawkins. I say this because these other books fail to acknowledge that religion is universal and must have been adaptive, while Wade starts with that fact and it informs the whole book. As he puts it early in the book, "Many of the social aspects of religious behavior offer advantages--such as a group's strong internal cohesion and high morale in war--that would lead to a society's members having more surviving children, and religion for such reasons would be favored by natural selection." (p.12). After the introductory chapter on the nature of religion, the book has an excellent chapter on the work of moral psychologists such as Jonathan Haidt and Mark Hauser. The work of moral psychologists at this point vindicates Hume over Kant because the evidence is overwhelming that sentiments are more important than reasoning in morality. This chapter is followed by three chapters that are at the crux of Wade's argument--"The Evolution of Religious Behavior", "Music, Dance and Trance", and "Ancestral Religion." All three chapters deal chiefly with ancestral religion drawing mainly from research on three contemporary hunting and gathering societies--the !Kung San, the Andaman Islanders, and Australian Aborigines. He says, "With all three peoples, religion was a major part of their daily lives. Religious practice involved all-night ceremonies with vigorous singing and dancing and intense emotional involvement. The emphasis was on ritual rather than belief...And the central purpose of the rites in all three groups was to bind the community together and fortify the social fabric"(p.118). Religion excites emotional attachment to one's group and manages to sometimes subsume self-interest to the good of the whole group, while at the same time, and for these reasons, fostering hatred of other groups. The remainder of the book treats religion after the domestication of plants and the eventual emergence of states. Of course such religion is important but it is ancestral religion that is alone significant to comprehending how and why religion evolved and is adaptive. Unlike highly unequal agricultural societies, foraging societies were and are egalitarian, and religion more than anything else provided/provides the social glue that made it possible for societies to out-compete and/or defeat their neighbors. Ancestral religion was about social cohesion and cohesive social groups defeated other social groups when at war. One of the most important sections in the book, titled "Religious Behavior and Group Selection" (pp.67-74), contained in the chapter "Evolution of Religious Behavior," describes the selective advantages of groups unified by religion. Wade discusses a r