The Psychology of Religion

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I'm writing this book because of my father he started off as a Methodist preacher but became absorbed no obsessed with a need to understand why people are religious. He ended one of his last books by admitting I still prayed devoutly and when I do I forget my qualifications and quibbles and call upon Jesus, says Sartrett. think about putting all pictures in the middle oh that and insert and I said yeah because it saves money "Because it saves money" is what publishers say they want you to hear from your own point of view. The Galapagos tortoise has got to be a wonderful photographer on the on the islands well so I have a lot of things I want to talk

For many of us, the great scientific discoveries of the modern age — the Big Bang, evolution, quantum physics, relativity — point to an existence that is bleak, devoid of meaning, pointless. But in The Sacred Depths of Nature, eminent biologist Ursula Goodenough shows us that the scientific world view need not be a source of despair. Indeed, it can be a wellspring of solace and hope.

Shermer and Goodenough discuss: origins of her personal beliefs • origins life, RNA, DNA, consciousness, language, morality • myths and religions • what it means to be “religious” • religious naturalism • where the laws of physics came from • why the universe seems so strange • chance and evolution • fine tuning of the cosmos • autocatalysis and emergence • purpose of religion • ethics and morality without religion.

Ursula Goodenough is Professor Emerita of Biology at Washington University. One of America's leading cell biologists, she is the author of a bestselling textbook on genetics, is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has served as President of the American Society of Cell Biology and of the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science. She lives in Chilmark, Massachusetts, on Martha's Vineyard. Her book, The Sacred Depths of Nature: How Life Has Emerged and Evolved, is now in a second edition. She currently serves as president of the Religious Naturalist Association.