Argument from authority and truth by revelation are anathema to scientists, who seek truth through reasoned arguments based on empirical evidence from nature. Not surprisingly, most scientists are repulsed by religion, especially the dogmatic and authoritarian aspects of its social dimension. The skepticism is greatest among elite scientists, like members of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States or Fellows of the Royal Society in the United Kingdom, of whom only 7 percent and 5 percent, respectively, believe in a personal God who answers prayer. As Neil deGrasse Tyson has pointed out, however, the important point here is not that these percentages are so low. The astonishing thing is that they are not zero. Why do roughly 6 percent of the most accomplished scientists in the world believe in a personal God who answers prayer? As Neil put it, “There’s something else going on that nobody seems to ...
Book Excerpt from The Phantom God
In Chapter 1, “Why Is God Two-Faced?,” author John Wathey argues that the answer to this question is the key to an ethological understanding of religion.
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John C. Wathey is a retired computational biologist whose interests include evolutionary algorithms, the biology of nervous systems, and the biological roots of religion. He got his PhD from the Department of Neurosciences at the University of California, San Diego, and spent most of his career working on computer simulations of protein folding. His first book, The Illusion of God’s Presence, explores the evolution of the emotions and intuitions behind religious belief, emphasizing behavioral and psychological research. His latest book is The Phantom God: What Neuroscience Reveals about the Compulsion to Believe. It relates the motivating forces behind religiousness to the neural circuitry of embodiment, mother-infant attachment, adult sexual pair-bonding, addiction, selective attention, hallucinations, and many other neurological surprises.
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