Ideology III: Lionel Tiger: How Religion Soothes the Brain

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Lionel Tiger on how religion helps the brain adjust to stress and anxiety.

Lionel Tiger is the Charles Darwin Professor of Anthropology at Rutgers University and the author of God's Brain (with Michael McGuire), Men in Groups, The Imperial Animal (with Robin Fox), The Pursuit of Pleasure, Optimism: The Biology of Hope, and The Decline of Males. His articles have appeared in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, Rolling Stone, Harvard Business Review, and Brain and Behavioral Science.

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[rhth79]

In turn, we tend to look to demagogues of religious leaders because there's little else to give us perspective on that aspect of human nature.

[rhth79]

I disagree that people simply turn to religion in times of despair or when they need find a source of comfort, and it's merely some sort of mechanism arising out of the brain. I think that side of us is always there as an integral part of what we are, and with the lack of spiritual acknowledgement in society, where it's generally ignored, we don't know what to do with it when our delusions are gone and it's all we have left.