Book Review: The Bonobo and the Atheist

“The Bonobo and the Atheist”
A book by Frans de Waal



Posted on Jun 20, 2014
By Alexis Camins

Ken Ham, head of the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Ky., went toe to toe with Bill Nye the Science Guy at a creation versus evolution debate in February. Yup, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence, this is still in debate.

Though he needed no help, the Science Guy might have had an even more convincing victory had he consulted Frans de Waal and his book “The Bonobo and the Atheist.” De Waal’s novel approach would have stunned Ham into silence (or so one would hope): The author posits that religion is actually an evolutionary trait human beings have acquired as necessary for survival. It’s the ultimate atheist backhanded compliment: Yes, religion is great, so great that we humans acquired it through the natural process of evolution.

Score one for the atheists.

In his engaging, often humorous “The Bonobo and the Atheist,” de Waal argues that religion spawned from a biologically innate need for fairness. Rather than the top-down morality of religion, which may have begun as human populations grew in size and required a more all-present authority to maintain order within society, de Waal proposes that religion stemmed from a bottom-up morality, innate in all social animals: an instinct for fairness, order and even for altruism and forgiveness. It is this morality that created religion, not the other way around.

http://www.truthdig.com/arts_culture/item/the_bonobo_and_the_atheist_20140620