Darwin's Apple

The Evolutionary Biology of Religion

Darwin’s Apple proposes a new explanation for the origin and purpose of religion within the incontrovertible theory of evolution. It describes how religion is biologically adaptive and genetically evolved through the co-evolution of religion, ritual, and advanced human cognition.

Reviewers’ comments about Darwin’s Apple:

• A good melange of scholarly thinking and yet readable to those who are not anthropologists, philosophers, or neuroscientists.

           Walter Greenleaf, Senior Research Scholar and Director for the Mind Division, Stanford Center on Longevity

• I like the idea of religious experience as a way of dampening out dissonance, the internal conflict between the emotions and the logical-symbolic executive with its nagging internal narrator. You may be on to something there.

           Bill Graf, Vice President of Engineering

• Darwin's Apple is, for me, one of a small number of books that illuminate the human experience in new and exciting ways. Diamond makes a convincing case that individual religious practice is grounded in evolutionary biology, and in so doing, provides a framework for thinking about culture that will make a real difference in my practice as a historian, and in my understanding of the world.

           Daniel Stewart, Ph.D., Cabrillo College

• You are doing better with understanding and explaining our conscious mind than anyone else I have read.

           J. Alan Le Fevre, Senior Systems Engineer

• Equating [religion] with the evolution of consciousness is a reasonable approach.

           Matt Rossano, Professor of Psychology, and author of Supernatural selection: How religion evolved.

• Brilliant!

           Anna Malyala, PhD, Neuroscience