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J. Anderson Thomson, Jr. and Clare Aukofer have written a valuable presentation of neuroscience focusing on the development of brain processes, evolution and adaptation and their relevance to the development of religious thoughts and feelings. The authors examine the evolution of thought processes, neural circuits and transmitters from the Darwinian position of natural selection and adaptations that served the survival of the species. With elegance, humor and clarity, they demonstrate the manner in which various adaptations, each having a basic, functional survival value, over time, also produced by-products which facilitated the development of thought processes essential to the development of religious beliefs and feelings.
Before proceeding further I wish to note Dr. Thomson's dedication of the book “For Jack, my grandson, in the hopes that he will grow up in a world freer of religion's destructiveness.” I will return to this later.
The authors provide many examples of evolutionary adaptations that supported survival while also providing the by-products on which religion could grow. These are described in several chapters together with the necessary, foundational neurologic brain and nervous system mechanisms. Physical survival for early Homo sapiens required working together with others. Those who had the adaptational capacity for forming social relationships survived; loners died off. Religious organizations require our capacity for forming into groups for their survival just as early man did for his own survival. An Attachment System is a survival adaptation with neurologic, physiologic foundations. Our capacity for attachment keeps us alive as infants, provides the basis for romantic love, mating, procreation and the nurturance of elders. This capacity for attachment as a survival adaptation fosters, as a by-product, attachment to a religious structure and to an eternal god as well as reflecting the difficulty of rejecting faith once committed.
Our thinking proce