Something There
The Biology of the Human Spirit
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Publisher: Darton, Longman & Todd Ltd
ISBN: 9780232526370
Number of Pages: 336
Published: 28/08/2006
Width: 13.5 cm
Height: 21.6 cm
Despite the decline of institutional religion, a remarkable new phenomenon is emerging. Survey figures show that interest in spirituality, often expressed as the awareness of 'something there', is rising right across the developed world. An astonishing upsurge of interest in spirituality is taking place across the Western world. David Hay, a zoologist who has directed much of the investigation on this subject in Britain, explains the biological roots of spiritual awareness and the importance this has for the future of both religion and society in the West. Research in the biological, psychological and social sciences strongly suggests that spiritual awareness is a genuine and deep-seated aspect of what it is to be human. David Hay's interviews with hundreds of 'ordinary' people, who claim no formal religious affiliation, backs up the view that spirituality is hard-wired into our biological make-up and evolves through natural selection because it has survival value. It is what enables people to relate ethically to other human beings and to their environment.
By applying scientific method to religious enquiry, David Hay offers a new account of the importance of spirituality for human well-being.
"David Hay, zoologist by training, argues with powerful and persuasive data, that even in supposedly secularist and irreligious Britain, the human species possesses an openness to and even a need for spirituality and this because of a development in the evolutionary process. The book is a challenge to both the religious and to those who are not religious." -- Andrew Greeley