The Believing Brain - Michael Shermer [194]
32. Marlene Dobkin de Rios, Hallucinogens: Cross-cultural Perspective (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1984).
33. Richard Strassman, DMT: The Spirit Molecule (Rochester, Vt.: Park Street Press, 2001).
34. Comings, Did Man Create God?, 384–85.
35. For a general discussion of brain-generated psychological states and experiences, see Antonio Damasio, The Feeling of What Happens: Body, Emotions, and the Making of Consciousness (London: Vintage, 2000).
36. If PBS’s Charlie Rose and his hour-long one-on-one interview style on a minimalist set is on one end of the interview spectrum, and Jerry Springer’s circus sideshow is on the other end, Larry King hovers somewhere in the middle ground between salacity and solemnity.
37. All quotes in this section are from the complete transcript of the show available at http://transcripts.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0912/22/lkl.01.html.
38. Chopra, Life After Life, 222–23.
39. Ibid., 223.
Chapter 8: Belief in God
1. D. B. Barrett, G. T. Kurian, and T. M. Johnson, eds., World Christian Encyclopedia: A Comparative Survey of Churches and Religions in the Modern World, 2 vols. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).
2. U.S. Religions Landscape Survey, “Summary of Key Findings.”
3. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (London: John Murray, 1871), 2:395.
4. Ibid., 1:163.
5. Ibid., 1:166.
6. Michael Shermer, How We Believe (New York: Times Books, 1999).
7. Donald E. Brown, Human Universals (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1991).
8. Chris Boehm, “Egalitarian Society and Reverse Dominance Hierarchy,” Current Anthropology 34 (1993): 227–54; Boehm, Hierarchy in the Forest: Egalitarianism and the Evolution of Human Altruism (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1999).
9. N. G. Waller, B. Kojetin, T. Bouchard, D. Lykken, and A. Tellegen, “Genetic and Environmental Influences on Religious Attitudes and Values: A Study of Twins Reared Apart and Together,” Psychological Science 1, no. 2 (1990): 138–42.
10. N. G. Martin, L. J. Eaves, A. C. Heath, R. Jardine, L. M. Feingold, and H. J. Eysenck, “Transmission of Social Attitudes,” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA 83 (1986): 4364–68.
11. L. J. Eaves, H. J. Eysenck, and N. G. Martin, Genes, Culture and Personality: An Empirical Approach (London: Academic Press, 1989), 385.
12. David E. Comings et al., “The DRD4 Gene and Spiritual Transcendence Scale of the Character Temperament Index,” Psychiatric Genetics 10 (2001): 185–89.
13. Dean Hamer, Living with Our Genes: Why They Matter More Than You Think (New York: Anchor, 1999).
14. Dean Hamer, The God Gene: How Faith Is Hardwired into Our Genes (New York: Anchor, 2005).
15. Scholarly research on religion began in earnest in the late nineteenth century when anthropologists such as Edward Tylor and James Frazer argued that religious belief is an extension of primitive animism and superstitious magic. The psychologist Sigmund Freud viewed it as an obsessional neurosis, or an illusion of the mind. Sociologist Émile Durkheim claimed that religion represents the sacred part of the social structure, in contrast with Karl Marx’s theory that it is largely a tool of alienation and an opiate of the masses. The historian of religion Mircea Eliade thought religion to be the most sacred part of the human psyche, while anthropologist E. E. Evans-Pritchard saw religion as society’s “construct of the heart,” which it needs as much as science’s “construct of the mind.” Anthropologist Clifford Geertz believed that religion is a cultural system of symbols that act to empower, give meaning, and provide motivation, whereas the renowned sociologists of religion Rodney Stark and William Bainbridge have suggested that religion is a form of economic exchange for goods and services unavailable through secular sources. See Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Language, Art, and Custom (London: John Murray, 1871); James G. Frazer, The