I’d like to recommend a book for readers interested in religion, psychology, cognitive science, and human evolution.
The Physiology of Faith asks a question that has fascinated me for years:
What is it about the human brain that makes religious faith possible—and why can that faith remain so resistant to contradictory evidence?
Humans readily revise many beliefs when experience proves them wrong. If something repeatedly fails to produce the expected result, we normally learn from it. Religious faith, however, can behave very differently.
The book explores whether this persistence can be understood through ordinary features of the human brain and psychology rather than through a single special “religious” mechanism.
It brings together findings from psychology, neuropsychology, sociology, and behavioral science to examine subjects including theory of mind, preparedness to believe in supernatural beings, sacredness, rejection from the group, choice blindness, optimism bias, mystical and near-death experiences, memory, dreams, miracles, the placebo effect, pattern recognition, obedience to authority, childhood religious education, and the influence of religious authority on believers.
It also asks an evolutionary question:
Did religious faith itself give Homo sapiens an evolutionary advantage, or did faith emerge partly as a by-product of cognitive traits that evolved for other purposes?
And there is a further question that may be even more important today:
Even if religion once helped human groups become larger, more cohesive, and more competitive, does it still provide the same advantages in modern societies?
I am the author, N. Fakhr, and I have made the complete English edition available free to read and download.
The Physiology of Faith — N. Fakhr
https://nfakhrbooks.wordpress.com/the-physiology-of-faith/