Religion in Human Evolution

From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age

By: Robert N. Bellah

Narrated by: Tom Perkins

Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution.

©2011 The President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2022 Tantor

extremely biased

I had to stop listening when the author, a professor at UC Berkeley during his life, said the only source of information we have about ancient Isreal is the Old Testament BIBLE.

Awful...had to stop listening.

Absolutely can't listen to 25 hours of this. It is confusing, I don't understand the points he's trying to make, the narrator is monotone, but I absolutely had to stop when he quoted Wikipedia as one of his sources of information in chapter 2. Yes, I only made it to chapter 2. I thought this was going to be more about comparative religion or how many religions have common themes which have evolved over the centuries but it's not.
it talks religion and science but ultimately reads like a religious text with some science thrown in. But to quote a Wikipedia article instead of the source material Wikipedia used discredited the whole book for me, although I was trying to stick it out and give it the benefit of the doubt...plus I want my 24 hour badge and figure it has to do with listening to a book that's 24+ hours long. this is not the one.
Tl,Dr; proof anyone can publish garbage and call themselves and author...
Do not bother, even though it's free. We should be paid to listen to this, actually.

It's also clear that the ratings are inflated and don't represent the actual book or narration and those glowing reviews lacking descriptions need to be removed!

Skip It

Verbose, pretentious, and shallow, this book is a long-winded survey that indulges every tangent and seems obsessed with name-checking every second-rate scholar to ever write on related topics. Other than "religion comes out of human evolution," it's difficult to summarize any kind of point this book is trying to make, other than (unsuccessfully) trying to bludgeon us with the author's erudition.