In our current era of holy terror, passionate faith has come to seem like a present danger. Writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have been happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and declare that the danger is in religion itself. God, Hitchens writes, is not great.
But man, according to George E. Vaillant, M.D., is great. In Spiritual Evolution, Dr. Vaillant lays out a brilliant defense not of organized religion but of man's inherent spirituality. Our spirituality, he shows, resides in our uniquely human brain design and in our innate capacity for emotions like love, hope, joy, forgiveness, and compassion, which are selected for by evolution and located in a different part of the brain than dogmatic religious belief. Evolution has made us spiritual creatures over time, he argues, and we are destined to become even more so. Spiritual Evolution makes the scientific case for spirituality as a positive force in human evolution, and he predicts for our species an even more loving future.
Vaillant traces this positive force in three different kinds of "evolution": the natural selection of genes over millennia, of course, but also the cultural evolution within recorded history of ideas about the value of human life, and the development of spirituality within the lifetime of each individual. For thirty-five years, Dr. Vaillant directed Harvard's famous longitudinal study of adult development, which has followed hundreds of men over seven decades of life. The study has yielded important insights into human spirituality, and Dr. Vaillant has drawn on these and on a range of psychological research, behavioral studies, and neuroscience, and on history, anecdote, and quotation to produce a book that is at once a work of scientific argument and a lyrical meditation on what it means to be human.

Spiritual Evolution is a life's work, and it will restore our belief in faith as an essential human striving.

Customer Reviews:

Avg. Customer Rating: 4.0 / 5.0

The Beauty of Connection:

Spiritual Evolution is really a book about what binds us together. Religions have historically done some great things, but have also spread violence and segregation in the name of truth. Vaillant's heart-filled and wise book addresses what is universally good and true about all spiritual practice, and does so in a way that will inspire you to spread love, joy, and forgiveness.

Legitimate science and spirituality!:

If you are ready to explore new discoveries connecting spirituality and neuroscience, and have an expert collect them, summarize them and make them not only readable but meaningful, read this book.
As the jacket cover of this terrific book says, "Dr. Vaillant lays out a brilliant defense not of organized religion, but of man's inherent spirituality." He finds that the positive emotions of love, joy, hope and forgiveness are rooted in the evolution of the human brain. He predicts that our spiritual... more info

A whole new view of spirituality!:

This book is one of the most interesting explaination of what makes us grow spirituality. I have been a student of positive thinking and I know from 60 years of experience, that when our intention is focused on the positive, we can face the ups and downs of life much easier and this creates a strong faith to overcome the next issue that pops up!
Jesus Christ knew how to do this. He only saw the good but he did recognize the need for healing.
Haveing over come years of depression through the... more info

Science is finally catching up!:

Harvard Psychiatrist George Vaillant has made a major contribution to the research into mental and emotional health with his findings published in this new book. I am quoting him in several papers I have just written on this new genre of expanding spirituality. Finally, we are taking the experience of spirituality out of the neocortex of the brain where we "talk" about it and into the limbic brain where we "feel" it. And, as Vaillant explains -- we do it with positive emotion -- compassion, love,... more info

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