E164: The Illusion of God’s Presence w/ Dr. John Wathey

This week on RfRx, Jack Wathey will discuss the Illusion of God’s Presence. Science has only begun to make sense of religion’s powerful grip on the human mind. Why do seven percent of members of the National Academy of Sciences believe in a personal god who answers prayer? The question is important because it probes the most irresistible essence of the appeal of religious and spiritual thinking. Using evidence from visual illusions, behavioral biology, and neuroscience, I offer an explanation for this and other puzzles of religion in terms of a cognitively impenetrable illusion, one that science has largely overlooked.

John C. Wathey is a retired computational biologist whose interests include evolutionary algorithms, the biology of nervous systems, and electoral reform. He got his PhD in Neurosciences at UC San Diego and has spent most of his career working on computer simulations of protein folding. His first book, The Illusion of God’s Presence, explores the evolution of the emotions and intuitions behind religious belief, emphasizing behavioral and psychological research. His latest book is The Phantom God: What Neuroscience Reveals about the Compulsion to Believe. It relates the motivating forces behind religiousness to the neural circuitry of embodiment, mother-infant attachment, adult sexual pair-bonding, addiction, selective attention, hallucinations, and many other neurological surprises.

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