Cover Image: Science of Sin, The

Science of Sin, The

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Member Reviews

This book has some interesting facts, science, and history related to what are commonly known as the seven deadly sins.  Some of the author's presuppositions about organized religion made parts of the book difficult to read, but the bulk of the book was interesting regarding some specific things about the seven deadly sins.  

I especially found interesting the author's attempts to come up with solutions for "sin management."  Ironically, these solutions mirror organized religions attempts to get people to be better and stop doing harmful behaviors.  There was even an interesting part of the book that suggested that some kinds of brain surgery might be able to help people overcome narcissism.  The human is so focused on self (in religious or "non-religious" circles) that they both end up looking the same.  The bigger, foundational "sin" behind everything is this focus on self that results in things like the seven deadly sins.  We are so focused on self and self-improvement and self-denial, that we will even go to the extreme of brain surgery to try and fix ourselves.

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Review of the brain structures involved in bad behavior, organized by the seven deadly sins. Argues for the benefits of religion from an atheist/agnostic standpoint: religion helps us make sense of life and provides the ability to create connections among people that are our greatest protection against vulnerability to the sins. Also argues that social media are reinforcing our narcissism (interestingly, musicians seem to have lower narcissism scores than other public figures, with reality stars being the worst). And that obesity (though not as deadly as sloth) prevents fully voluntary decisionmaking by contributing to low-grade systemic inflammation and blockages of minor blood vessels in the brain that are the enough to cause mild cognitive impairments, which can often be alleviated by gastric band surgery. To improve teen eating habits, he suggests “[b]ringing their attention to the injustice associated with huge, well-funded multinational companies generating profits from the obesity epidemic and even doing everything in their power to encourage it,” to trigger their powerful impulses towards justice and against being fooled.

Porn, he argues, is changing [male] sexual arousal in unnerving ways. “Binge-watching pornography induces … behaviour changes by altering the responsiveness of the ventral striatum, not just to sexually explicit materials, but to any rewarding stimulus…. [The] phenomenon has been likened to the work of Nikolaas Tinbergen, who won a Nobel Prize for his work with herring gulls. His birds also learned to prefer supernormal artificial stimuli over and above the real thing. His research involved creating artificial eggs that were larger or much more colourful than the birds ’ own eggs. The gulls often chose to sit on the supersized or vividly coloured eggs.”

There are other bad dynamics in modern society: being out of work itself seems to cause conscientiousness to decrease, perhaps as a consequence of demoralization or even the lack of a consistent schedule. And then other people make it worse, both by direct discrimination against the unemployed and by the withdrawal of empathy: part of the medial prefrontal cortex that is normally activated when we look at a human but not when we look at other animals or inanimate objects, “does not kick in when we see the dishevelled appearance of a homeless person.” However, if respondents “spent a weekend volunteering to help homeless people in a soup kitchen, their brains changed almost overnight” and they started to recognize others’ humanity again.

On the upside (perhaps), apparently our quick decisions are less likely to be selfish and greedy; only thought convinces us to cheat others. Repetition, and wealth, also increase our tolerance for greed and inequality. And such bad behavior is corrosive, because cooperating with a cheat is for suckers; it takes groups of cooperative people to maintain such overall beneficial behavior in the face of persistent cheaters, which is where supportive communities come back in. Lewis also supports benign envy, the kind that makes us work harder and become more deserving of good things that others like us have, as opposed to destructive envy that looks to tear down.

What about psychopaths? Lewis argues that lacking emotional empathy means that they don’t mind causing others harm, and most psychopaths aren’t very good at what they do and get caught, but they don’t seem to care about future consequences. His pet theory is appealing: these two things are related, because psychopaths have zero empathy for their future selves.

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A little esoteric, but not awfully so. I've always wondered about those seven deadly sins and how much they really mattered in real life. Lewis makes good cases for why each of the sevens should be observed. Resisting temptation can help you live healthier, I suppose. Gluttony isn't exactly good for one's health, I don't think. Then again, I can't imagine worse case scenario for it either. Sin isn't really a concept I was brought up with though! Things are just as they are and humans, humans. Still it's always interesting to explore other peoples thought on the subject and gain a new perspective. It's an interesting read for anyone wanting to learn more about how our brains work and maybe gain some insight into how to fight harder to resist temptation. Be prepared for quite a bit of neurological speak about the brain (I didn't understand a lot of that myself, but no matter, book is still readable.).

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I'm not sure how this book was such a bad fit for me , but it was. I expected to be fascinated. Neuroscience and temptation and human decision-making are subjects I find fascinating, but somehow this one just felt flat, dry, and long-winded in a way that just did not resonate with me.

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I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this look at the Seven Deadly Sins and a historic look at the things that influence us to make the decisions that we do.

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The Science of Sin surprised me. I expected a largely analytic framework of religious constructs but what it delivered was an engaging, extensive and impactful study of human behavior from historical perspective to modern times. The foci of the book are Christianity’s Seven Deadly Sins and contributing factors, such as the normalization of narcissism due to parenting styles, the brain’s feedback system and social media echo chambers to name but a few. I especially enjoyed the discussions of brain function in each chapter, tying together the philosophical, social and neurobiological aspects of human behavior. The author breaks down the subject of the seven sins into a series of intellectual and conversational topics that build on each other in a concise and educational manner. The book peeked my interest immediately and held it to the very last page. I would recommend this book to all those interested in human behavior and those curious about why they do what they do.

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