Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods

Torrey takes readers on a grand tour of what science has learned about early hominins and the development of several early civilizations. One may not agree, but the book is richly rewarding...Highly recommended. * Choice * This is the book I have been waiting for, which brings together all of the various strands of data and ideas gathering in neuroscience, sociology, psychology, archaeology, anthropology, and brain development, and integrates them into a well-balanced and tightly presented theory of the origins of religion. -- Daniel Liechty * Religion * Presented in a manner that is accessible to nonscientists....[an] insightful, thought-provoking work. * Publishers Weekly * A masterful synthesis that merges the archaeological and anthropological evidence for the evolving elaboration of religious activity with the fossil evidence for the neurobiological evolution of the human brain and the psychological evidence for the evolution of the human mind housed within that evolving brain. -- Michael Rosenberg, professor of anthropology, University of Delaware An excellent text that throws new light on where religious ideas come from. -- Patrick McNamara, director of the Laboratory of Evolutionary Neurobehavior, Boston University In Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods, E. Fuller Torrey offers a scholarly and insightful treatise on the neuroscientific relationship between humanity and deities. In his twenty-first book, one senses a profound vision of the hereafter in the arc of this eminent mental health advocate and researcher's career, from whom we hope there will be more to come. -- Jeffrey Lieberman, Lawrence C. Kolb Professor and chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons and psychiatrist-in-chief at New York-Presbyterian Hospital A unique scholarly approach to the subject that is sure to be influential and highly regarded. -- Robert Sapolsky, John A. and Cynthia Fry Gunn Professor of Biology, Neurology, and Neurosurgery, Stanford University