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 Bodyreframes the science-religion debate. This profound work examines how all things are connectedboth scientifically and spirituallyand shows how religious practices mirror the biological processes of life.
Michael Steinbergis the author of
The Fiction of a Thinkable World: Body, Meaning, and the Culture of Capitalism. 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.
ChoicePreface and Acknowledgments
1Should We Abolish Religion?
2Those Who Come to Mock
3Getting Past Post-Christianity
4Every Body Is a Mind of Its Own
5I Don't Make the News, I Just Report It
6Self-Awareness Is a Very Dangerous Gift
7This Text Will Self-Destruct
8The Body Speaks, the Mind Listens
9Both Perfect and Broken
Index
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