The bestselling author of The New Fascists speaks out against religious and secular fundamentalism as he explores the New Atheists: those who attack religion to advance their causes.

    Taking a perspective rooted in evolutionary biology with a focus on brain science, the authors elucidate the perennial questions about religion: What is its purpose? How did it arise? What is its source? Why does every known culture have some form of it? Their answer is deceptively simple, yet at the same time highly complex: The brain creates religion and its varied concepts of God, and then in turn feeds on its creation to satisfy innate neurological and associated social needs. Brain science reveals that humans and other primates alike are afflicted by unavoidable sources of stress that the authors describe as "brainpain." To cope with this affliction people seek to "brainsoothe." We humans use religion and its social structures to induce brainsoothing as a relief for innate anxiety. How we do this is the subject of this groundbreaking book. In a concise, lively, accessible, and witty style, the authors combine zoom-lens vignettes of religious practices with discussions of the latest research on religion’s neurological effects on the brain. Among other topics, they consider religion’s role in providing positive socialization, its seeming obsession with regulating sex, creating an afterlife, how religion’s rules of behavior influence the law, the common biological scaffolding between nonhuman primates and humans and how this affects religion, a detailed look at brain chemistry and how it changes as a result of stress, and evidence that the palliative effects of religion on brain chemistry is not matched by nonreligious remedies. Concluding with a checklist offering readers a means to compute their own "brainsoothe score," this fascinating book provides key insights into the complexities of our brain and the role of religion, perhaps its most remarkable creation.

    The historical breadth of Boswell's research (from the Greeks to Aquinas) and the variety of sources consulted (legal, literary, theological, artistic, and scientific) make this one of the most extensive treatments of any single aspect of Western social history. The product of ten years of research and analysis of records in a dozen languages, this book opens up a new area of historical inquiry and helps elucidate the origins and operations of intolerance as a social force.

    Here Ehrman reveals what scholars have unearthed:•The authors of the New Testament have diverging views about who Jesus was & how salvation works•The New Testament contains books that were forged in the names of the apostles by Christian writers who lived decades later•Jesus, Paul, Matthew & John all represented fundamentally different religions•Established Christian doctrines—such as the suffering messiah, the divinity of Jesus & the trinity—were the inventions of still later theologiansThese aren't idiosyncratic perspectives of just one scholar. They've been the standard widespread views of scholars across a full spectrum of denominations & traditions. Why is it most people have never heard such things? This is the book that pastors, educators & anyone interested in the Bible have been waiting for—a compelling account of the central challenges faced when attempting to reconstruct Jesus' life & message.