Matthew Alper

OMG! It made sense all the way up to the planaria heading for the light, about half way through. Then logic died and was replaced by the fallacy of correlation implying causation. That, and many, many reasonable sounding anecdotes. Not until the final chapter does Alper come right out and declare his true purpose for writing the book, his disapproval of religious violence.
OK. I accept his conclusions in this case, but not his supporting argument. Denying the existence of God, the soul, and show more spiritual reality is unnecessary. Besides, he never succeeded in more than implying that structures in the brain might be related to spiritual thoughts.
He claims that spiritual consciousness exists as the consequence of a neurophysiological reflex. “Just as planaria reflexively turn towards the light, humankind reflexively turn towards imaginary powers.” Now, logically if that statement is true, “just as” would imply that the “imaginary powers” were as real as “light.” Maybe those genetically evolved brain structures are organs that allow people to see beyond physical reality, “just as” eyes see light.
Alper’s book is pseudo-scientific and muddled. He quotes Kant’s description of reality as “things as we perceive them” but never deals with what “perceive” or “we” actually mean. Who is doing the perceiving? He denies the existence of “mind” and only accepts the existence of “brain.” It was an awful lot of words emerging from a bunch of neurochemicals and genes. show less

The best thing about this book is Alper's explanation of why the United States is an outlier among first world countries in terms of religious belief. His thesis is that religion has a genetic basis, the U.S. was founded by religious fanatics, and about 40% of the current population is descended from those fanatics.