Publisher Description

This study provides a fresh look at the debate between science and religion that documents how the experiences produced by spiritual practice are surprisingly consistent with the findings of modern biology, despite the difficulty in reconciling scientific theories and religious dogma.
This book is unique in its focus on bodily experience as an independent source of knowledge and insight, an important aspect of recent discoveries in neurology and psychology. By rethinking what it is to be human and what role self-consciousness plays, it finds striking points of intersection between science and religion and challenges readers to rediscover their spiritual connections to the physical world.

Combining scientific rigor with the spiritual quest, A New Biology of Religion: Spiritual Practice and the Life of the Body reframes the science-religion debate. This profound work examines how all things are connected—both scientifically and spiritually—and shows how religious practices mirror the biological processes of life.

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments
1 Should We Abolish Religion?
2 Those Who Come to Mock
3 Getting Past Post-Christianity
4 Every Body Is a Mind of Its Own
5 I Don't Make the News, I Just Report It
6 Self-Awareness Is a Very Dangerous Gift
7 This Text Will Self-Destruct
8 The Body Speaks, the Mind Listens
9 Both Perfect and Broken
Index

Review

Steinberg, an independent scholar and attorney, presents a lively case for revisioning one's conception of both religion and biology along non-Western (mainly Eastern) lines. . . . Summing Up: Recommended. General readers. * Choice *

Promotional

This study provides a fresh look at the debate between science and religion that documents how the experiences produced by spiritual practice are surprisingly consistent with the findings of modern biology, despite the difficulty in reconciling scientific theories and religious dogma.

Long Description

This book is unique in its focus on bodily experience as an independent source of knowledge and insight, an important aspect of recent discoveries in neurology and psychology. By rethinking what it is to be human and what role self-consciousness plays, it finds striking points of intersection between science and religion and challenges readers to rediscover their spiritual connections to the physical world. Combining scientific rigor with the spiritual quest, A New Biology of Religion: Spiritual Practice and the Life of the Body reframes the science-religion debate. This profound work examines how all things are connected--both scientifically and spiritually--and shows how religious practices mirror the biological processes of life.

Review Quote

"Steinberg, an independent scholar and attorney, presents a lively case for revisioning one's conception of both religion and biology along non-Western (mainly Eastern) lines. . . . Summing Up: Recommended. General readers." - Choice

Promotional "Headline"

The conflict between science and religion seems to be no closer to resolution today than it was when Darwin published The Origin of Species in the late 19th century. This book finds a way out of that impasse, rejecting both religious doctrines and the model of the mind-as-a-computer that most contemporary critics of religion embrace. It finds common ground between religious practice and modern advances in science, and it presents a case for the centrality of religion as a human practice.

Description for Reader

* Reveals how religious practices illuminate the human condition * Clearly presents challenging philosophical ideas * Introduces radical new research in evolution, heredity, and neurobiology * Draws out political and ethical implications of religious practice * Compares developments in biology and neurology with religious practices through the ages * Examines indigenous spiritual traditions and the religions of India as well as the monotheistic traditions to provide a cross-cultural perspective * Considers developments in biology and neurology that shake our everyday sense of who we are but which resonate strongly with the goals of religious practice through the ages

Details