The "God" part of the brain is a book written by
Matthew Alper which in short, explains his theory of how we are "wired" to believe in a
god, and have evolved this trait over time to balance our unique knowledge of our own deaths, to put ourselves at peace if you will. It goes on to explain how like many other
genetically inherited traits such as the abilitly to form, learn and understand language we can form, learn and understand
religion, and also like language there are many different kinds of religions based upon where you are in the world and your surroundings. He also did some reasearch into that if you are in a serious accident where a certain part of your brain is damaged, you can mysteriously completely change your beliefs, for example, someone who is an
athiest who suffers this sort of injury will instantly become
fanatically religious, and visa-versa, which lead him to believe that if our beliefs can be so easily changed without any other reason then brain damage, how can we still accept the notion that the
soul is "infinite" and does not have anything to do with our
physical being.
This is a very very well written complete book which leaves little to no holes in it, I would suggest this book to anyone who is at all interested in explaining our seemingly universal believe in some sort of god, throughout all history, and all cultures, though all of them completely different. Did this happen just by chance or did we evolve this trait to keep us from going insane? This book has completely changed my outlook on religion and answers questions i've been asking all my life, be carefull with this one though, sometimes it makes a little too much sense and makes a lot of people very angry
Mathew Alper was also a guest on the
Art Bell show on 2001-05-14 discussing his book and theories, a very good listen if you can get ahold of a recording of the show.