Nick Wade’s new book The Faith Instinct comes out next week. I’ve been reading it for review, and it’s excellent. He seems (I’m only 60 pages in) to plant himself firmly in the religion-is-adaptive camp. This puts him in a minority among people who write about the natural history of religion. Most take religion to be an accidental by-product of cognitive processes — hair-trigger “agency detection” modules etc. Nice to see the other point of view (and group selection, too) get an airing.
My review of Nick’s previous book Before the Dawn is here.
i finished it. your assessment so far is right. he’s pushing the david sloan wilson line hard through the book. it serves as a great bibliography for those interested in the topic, though i thought it could have been more tightly argued. he covered too much ground in too little time.
i’ll have a review up at some point soon.
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John,
Thanks for visiting my blog.
I’ve been reading yours now and then for a couple of weeks—interesting and informative (if, for my scrambled brain it requires a bit more concentration that I can give it!).
Harold
I am definitely getting this book when it comes out. I read “Before the Dawn” and liked it a lot.