July 8, 2019
Konner (Women After All), professor of anthropology at Emory University, examines the roles belief, faith, and religion have played throughout human civilization in this well-reasoned but repetitive investigation. Combining his research into philosophies of religion, sociology, neuroscience, and the varieties of religious experience, Konner defends the search for meaning beyond life as part of human nature and resists the religion-bashing of the New Atheists such as Richard Dawkins and Sam Harris. Konner cites Kalahari San trance rituals, Hasidic ecstatic dance, and Christian devotion to the Virgin of Guadalupe, among other religious practices, as evidence of how ceremonies of religious traditions have melded with different cultures over centuries. Despite his acknowledged state as a nonbeliever and research showing nonbelievers will become a global majority within a few generations, Konner argues that “there will be no end of faith.” While Konner retreads the same argument about the connection between religiosity and society across world cultures for most of the book, in his conclusion he broadens his scope beyond existing religious traditions, asking whether the search for meaning needs to be spiritual at all. Readers who enjoy the work of Mircea Eliade or Karen Armstrong will find food for thought here.