How Story, God, and Your Lying Brain Turn Chaos into Order

Do you want to know what makes us tick? It turns out that it all starts in the body--including our belief in God, our moral convictions, even our very thinking. This short interdisciplinary guide ties together recent developments in cognitive science and neuroscience, evolutionary and developmental psychology, political science, linguistics, and the anthropology of religion. But this genre-bending work goes further, making exciting connections to philosophy and offering clues to a life with less fear. Interspersed with memoir accounts written in a lyrical and engaging voice--and drawing on timeless myth and great works of fiction--this humorous and easy-to-understand presentation explains what it means to be human, and how we evolved to deal with complexity, chaos, and ambiguity. Along the way, it deciphers such enigmas as these: -How much does the truth really matter? -Should you consult a shaman or a psychiatrist? -The fight over abortion--could ritual help? -It's not just the Paleo diet--we're hunter-gatherers all the way. -What are conservatives so afraid of? -Why do we call Christ the Word? -How is "Once upon a time" as seductive as lingerie? -Can physics assuage our fear of death? If you want to learn even more about human nature, check out the numerous notes at the end of the book.