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"In Gods We Trust: the evolutionary landscape of religion"
by Scott Atran
Oxford University Press | March 2005 | ISBN 0195178033
Recommended by Caspar Henderson: "In Gods We Trust is not easy to read. In fact, it's pretty hard going, but certainly worth the effort so far. The reward for me a kind of enjoyment is in moving a little way towards a better understanding a major phenomenon in all known societies the enduring belief in supernatural agents.
So what is this book about? Well, the short version is that it is an inquiry into the evolutionary and psychological origins of religion. But of course it's a lot more than that.
Scott Atran an anthropologist who has studied cultures as different as the Druze and the Maya came to wider attention with his penetrating and politically relevant insights into the nature of suicide bombing. For a short, easy to read piece that sets out some of his key points, see this article.
With the large number of attacks in Iraq for instance, and the 7th July bombings in London, the issue of the "suicide bomber" is often on many people's minds. It's important to understand that suicide itself is a part of something wider and more complex. This book helps.
But that's only a start: In Gods We Trust helps you to think about and understand religious behavior and its relationship to other activities, including politics, economics and human interactions with ecological processes. That may sound a bit dry, I know, but the book is packed with fascinating examples and opens vistas into world views you may not have thought about very much. It may help you to be a better, slightly wiser human being!
Definitely one to read in the shade or cool of the day, rather than on a hot sunny beach.
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Scott Atran
About the author: Scott Atran is a senior research scientist at the Institut Jean Nicod at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. He is also adjunct professor of Anthropology, Psychology, and Natrual Resources and the Environment at the University of Michigan. A respected cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, his publictions include Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: towards an anthropology of science, and Folkbiology. He has done long-term field work in the middle east and has also written and experimented extensively on the ways scientists and ordinary people categorize and reason about nature. He currently directs an international, multidisciplinary project on the natural history of the Lowland Maya.