Origin of Human Nature: A ZEN Buddhist Looks at Evolution

by Albert Low

From the author of the best-selling Zen and Creative Management (75,000+ copies sold) Albert Low has provided a YouTube link, which he updates regularly: http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=8iqP5aw... For those interested in the work of Albert Low, you can visit the Zen Center at http://www.zenmontreal.ca/en/center/c... The Origin of Human Nature offers an original and fertile way to integrate spiritual and scientific views of human evolution. It offers a new and refreshing alternative to the way we think about our origins: random mutation (mechanistic neo-Darwinism), Genesis (God did it all personally), and Intelligent Design (God personally does what we can’t otherwise account for). The result is an invigorating perspective on how our best qualities – our capacity for love, our appreciation of beauty, our altruistic capability, our creativity and intelligence –have come into being and evolved. … How we think about our origin matters: if we think we are machines living among other machines, we will act accordingly. By showing evolution as a creative and intelligent process with its own inherent logic, The Origin of Human Nature resolves the dilemma of how to have, at the same time, both truth and ethics. Instead of starting in an imagined remote and uncertain past and moving to the present, this book starts at the certain and immediate present and works back. That consciousness, creativity, and intelligence exist is certain. The question is: how can these have evolved? … Dr Albert Low has made a study of human nature throughout his life. To write this book he draws on his prolonged meditations on creativity and the human condition, his years of providing psychological and spiritual counseling, and a wide-ranging knowledge of Western psychology, philosophy, and science.

245 pages, Paperback

First published February 1, 2008

About the author

Albert William Low was a western Zen master in the Philip Kapleau-lineage, an internationally published author, and a former human resources executive. He lived in England, South Africa, Canada, and the United States and resided in Montreal since 1979. He held a BA degree in Philosophy and Psychology, and was a trained counselor. In 2003, he was awarded an honorary degree of Doctor of Laws for scholastic attainment and community service by Queen's University, in Kingston, Ontario.

Reviews

[Moonie Ali · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book takes a very different approach to explaining the big question. From a Buddhist point of view, Low looks to squash all the theories of Darwin and Atheist's, especially Dawkins.

Of course as a believer of God, Low writes the whole book to question the doubters and also raise awareness to why God must exist.

The arguments are valid and believable, as Dawkins theories do have serious holes in them; but the book just is not laid out and written in a concise and engaging manner unfortunately.

This book is definetely an opportunity missed. Shame