After my presentation at LSU on Atheist Proselytizing, (or Godless Evangelism), I was asked to provide a list of reading recommendations to supplement my fascination with the Cognitive Science of Religion. Here they are: -
Religion Explained - Pascal Boyer
Why Would Anyone Believe in God - Justin Barrett
In Gods We Trust – Scott Atran
The Selfish Gene –Richard Dawkins
The Meme Machine –Susan Blackmore
Breaking the Spell – Daniel Dennett
Supersense: Why We Believe in the Unbelievable - Bruce M. Hood
The God Virus – Darryl Ray
The Evolution of Religion - Richard Sosis, Erica Harris, Russell Genet, Cheryl Genet, Karen Wyman, and Joseph Bulbulia
Introducing Anthropology of Religion - Jack David Eller
E.O. Wilson – Sociobiology
The Faith Instinct – Nicolas Wade
Also good reading but not directly relevant to religious beliefs are:
The Human Story - Robin Dunbar
The Accidental Mind – David Linden
How the Mind Works – Stephen Pinker
Also, there’s an excellent article by Paul Bloom called ‘Is God an Accident’. You can access it on http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2005/12/is-god-an-accident/4425/
One book I would NOT recommend is The God Gene by Dean Hamer. I think reducing religious beliefs to the gene level is a crass over simplification and detracts from the group evolutionary psychological study.
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