Ever since I read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion, and then Sam Harris’ The End of Faith, and further, Christopher Hitchens’ God Is Not Great, I had considered myself a card-carrying atheist, more than a bit annoyed by what I saw as the cultural hegemony of the religious majority.
And then Stephen Asma came along. Asma is a distinguished scholar of philosophy as well as a Senior Fellow of the Research Group in Mind, Science, and Culture at Columbia College–Chicago. He’s also an accomplished painter and blues/jazz musician. I loved his book, The Evolution of Imagination, and was profoundly inspired by this renaissance man. But when I learned he had written a book with the title, Why We Need Religion, I was apprehensive to say the least.
Nevertheless, I read his new book with an open mind and was surprised to see how dramatically it changed my view of religion and its role for our species. In a nutshell, Asma is an atheist, as am I, yet he makes a Darwinian defense of religion, arguing that religious forms offer our species the best form of emotional regulation that we have. There’s many more details in the book, and for that, I highly recommend Why We Need Religion to the hard-nosed secularists as well as to the devout.
Here’s my interview with Asma for www.meaningoflife.tv where we discuss:
- Stephen’s new book, Why We Need Religion
- How religion shaped our emotional lives for millennia
- Can you benefit from religion without sincere belief?
- Examining the concept of “false consolation”
- How will religion evolve in America?
Josh…lovely to see you and hear you.
Thanks for this….fascinating topic ….i could listen to you guys talk all day.
Enjoy the winter break.. hope to see you soon..
Ciara xx
So glad you enjoyed, Ciara. Stephen has a very special mind.
Happy Holidays!
Josh