Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought is a book by cognitive anthropologist

Cognitive anthropology

Cognitive anthropology is an approach within cultural anthropology in which scholars seek to explain patterns of shared knowledge, cultural innovation, and transmission over time and space using the methods and theories of the cognitive sciences often through close collaboration with historians,...

 Pascal Boyer

Pascal Boyer

Pascal Boyer is a French anthropologist, and Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis.He is a Guggenheim Fellow.-Work:...

 that discusses the evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology of religion

The evolutionary psychology of religion is the study of religious belief using evolutionary psychology principles. It is one approach to the psychology of religion. As with all other organs and organ functions, the brain and cognition's functional structure have been argued to have a genetic basis,...

 and evolutionary origin of religions

Evolutionary origin of religions

The evolutionary origin of religions theorizes about the emergence of religious behavior during the course of human evolution.- Nonhuman religious behavior :...

.

Synopsis

Boyer's multifaceted book explains the genesis of religious concepts through the mind's cognitive inference

Inference

Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions from premises known or assumed to be true. The conclusion drawn is also called an idiomatic. The laws of valid inference are studied in the field of logic.Human inference Inference is the act or process of deriving logical conclusions...

 systems, comparable to pareidolia

Pareidolia

Pareidolia is a psychological phenomenon involving a vague and random stimulus being perceived as significant. Common examples include seeing images of animals or faces in clouds, the man in the moon or the Moon rabbit, and hearing hidden messages on records played in reverse...

 and perceptions of religious imagery in natural phenomena resulting from face perception

Face perception

Face perception is the process by which the brain and mind understand and interpret the face, particularly the human face.The human face's proportions and expressions are important to identify origin, emotional tendencies, health qualities, and some social information. From birth, faces are...

 processes within the human brain

Human brain

The human brain has the same general structure as the brains of other mammals, but is over three times larger than the brain of a typical mammal with an equivalent body size. Estimates for the number of neurons in the human brain range from 80 to 120 billion...

. Boyer supports this naturalistic origin of religion with evidence from many specialized disciplines including biological anthropology

Biological anthropology

Biological anthropology is that branch of anthropology that studies the physical development of the human species. It plays an important part in paleoanthropology and in forensic anthropology...

, cultural anthropology

Cultural anthropology

Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans, collecting data about the impact of global economic and political processes on local cultural realities. Anthropologists use a variety of methods, including participant observation,...

, cognitive science

Cognitive science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary scientific study of mind and its processes. It examines what cognition is, what it does and how it works. It includes research on how information is processed , represented, and transformed in behaviour, nervous system or machine...

, linguistics

Linguistics

Linguistics is the scientific study of human language. Linguistics can be broadly broken into three categories or subfields of study: language form, language meaning, and language in context....

, evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology

Cognitive psychology is a subdiscipline of psychology exploring internal mental processes.It is the study of how people perceive, remember, think, speak, and solve problems.Cognitive psychology differs from previous psychological approaches in two key ways....

, evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology

Evolutionary psychology is an approach in the social and natural sciences that examines psychological traits such as memory, perception, and language from a modern evolutionary perspective. It seeks to identify which human psychological traits are evolved adaptations, that is, the functional...

, neuroscience

Neuroscience

Neuroscience is the scientific study of the nervous system. Traditionally, neuroscience has been seen as a branch of biology. However, it is currently an interdisciplinary science that collaborates with other fields such as chemistry, computer science, engineering, linguistics, mathematics,...

, and information processing

Information processing

Information processing is the change of information in any manner detectable by an observer. As such, it is a process which describes everything which happens in the universe, from the falling of a rock to the printing of a text file from a digital computer system...

.

Religion Explained frames religious practices and beliefs in terms of recent cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience

Cognitive neuroscience is an academic field concerned with the scientific study of biological substrates underlying cognition, with a specific focus on the neural substrates of mental processes. It addresses the questions of how psychological/cognitive functions are produced by the brain...

 research in the modularity of mind

Modularity of mind

Modularity of mind is the notion that a mind may, at least in part, be composed of separate innate structures which have established evolutionarily developed functional purposes...

. This theory involves cognitive "modules" ("devices" or "subroutines") underlying inference systems and intuitions. For instance, Boyer suggests culturally-widespread beliefs in "supernatural agents" (e.g., gods, ancestors, spirits, and witches) result from agent detection

Agent detection

Agent detection is the inclination for animals and humans to presume the purposeful intervention of a sentient or intelligent agent in situations that may or may not involve an intelligent agent.-Evolutionary origins:...

: the intuitive modular process of assuming intervention by conscious agents, regardless of whether they are present. "When we see branches moving in a tree or when we hear an unexpected sound behind us, we immediately infer that some agent is the cause of this salient event. We can do that without any specific description of what the agent actually is." Boyer cites E. E. Evans-Pritchard

E. E. Evans-Pritchard

Sir Edward Evan Evans-Pritchard was an English anthropologist who was instrumental in the development of social anthropology...

's classic Zande story about a termite-infested roof collapsing.

For the anthropologist, the house caved in because of the termites. For the Zande, it was quite clear that witchcraft was involved. However, the Zande were also aware that the termites were the proximate cause of the incident. But what they wanted to know was why it happened at that particular time, when particular people were gathered in the house.

Within Boyer's hypothesis, religion is a "parasite" (or "spandrel

Spandrel (biology)

In evolutionary biology, a Spandrel is a phenotypic characteristic that is a byproduct of the evolution of some other characteristic, rather than a direct product of adaptive selection.-Origin of Term:...

") offshoot from cognitive modules, comparable to the way the reading

Reading (process)

Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols for the intention of constructing or deriving meaning . It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas...

 process is parasitic upon language module

Language module

Language module refers to a hypothesized structure in the human brain or cognitive system that some psycholinguists claim contains innate capacities for language...

s.

As I have pointed out repeatedly the building of religious concepts requires mental systems and capacities that are there anyway, religious concepts or not. Religious morality uses moral intuitions, religious notions of supernatural agents recruit our intuitions about agency in general, and so on. This is why I said that religious concepts are parasitic upon other mental capacities. Our capacities to play music, paint pictures or even make sense of printed ink-patterns on a page are also parasitic in this sense. This means that we can explain how people play music, paint pictures and learn to read by examining how mental capacities are recruited by these activities. The same goes for religion. Because the concepts require all sorts of specific human capacities (an intuitive psychology, a tendency to attend to some counterintuitive concepts, as well as various social mind adaptations), we can explain religion by describing how these various capacities get recruited, how they contribute to the features of religion that we find in so many different cultures. We do not need to assume that there is a special way of functioning that occurs only when processing religious thoughts.

Boyer admits his explanation of religion

is not a quick, shoot-from-the-hip solution of the kind that many people, either religious or not, seem to favor. There cannot be a magic bullet to explain the existence and common features of religion, as the phenomenon is the result of aggregate relevance – that is, of successful activation of a whole variety of mental systems.

Contents

Religion Explained has nine chapters:

1. What is the Origin?
2. What Supernatural Concepts are Like
3. The Kind of Mind it Takes
4. Why Gods and Spirits?
5. Why Do Gods and Spirits Matter?
6. Why is Religion about Death?
7. Why Rituals?
8. Why Doctrines, Exclusion and Violence?
9. Why Belief?

The first, third, and last chapters contain summaries that Boyer calls "Progress Boxes". For instance,

Progress Box 4: Religion and Reasoning

• The sleep of reason is no explanation for religion as it is. There are many possible unsupported claims and only a few religious themes.
• Belief is not just passive acceptance of what others say. People relax their standards because some thoughts become plausible, not the other way around.
• A different angle: We should understand what makes human minds so selective in what supernatural claims they find plausible.

Reviews and criticisms

Critical reception of Religion Explained has been mixed.

Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Haifa

University of Haifa

The University of Haifa is a university in Haifa, Israel.The University of Haifa was founded in 1963 by Haifa mayor Abba Hushi, to operate under the academic auspices of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem....

, called the book "a milestone on the road to a new behavioral understanding of religion, basing itself on what has come to be known as cognitive anthropology, and pointedly ignoring much work done over the past one hundred years in the behavioral study of religion and in the psychological anthropology of religion."
He continues:

The clearest virtue of this book is that of dealing with the real thing. Even today, most scholarly work on religion consists of apologetics in one form or another, and we are deluged by offers of grants to study "spirituality" or teach "religion and science". This all serves to make us forget that religion is a collection of fantasies about spirits, and Boyer indeed aims to teach us about the world of the spirits in the grand tradition of the Enlightenment. Any general introduction to the world of the spirits must be ambitious because it hasn't been done and also because it has been done intuitively by all of us.

David Klinghoffer

David Klinghoffer

David Klinghoffer is an author and essayist, and a proponent of intelligent design. He is a Senior Fellow of the Discovery Institute, the organization that is the driving force behind the intelligent design movement...

, a journalist and intelligent design

Intelligent design

Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...

 proponent, wrote in the National Review

National Review

National Review is a biweekly magazine founded by the late author William F. Buckley, Jr., in 1955 and based in New York City. It describes itself as "America's most widely read and influential magazine and web site for conservative news, commentary, and opinion."Although the print version of the...

 that "Boyer's talk of 'religion is suspiciously generic" and describes his work as "professorial noodlings" that beg the question whether "all religions are somehow the same". He further claims that "debunkers like Boyer ... have their own unconscious motivations (to undermine religious faith, after all, is to set oneself free of its many inconvenient strictures)."

Michael Shermer

Michael Shermer

Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members...

, founder of The Skeptics Society

The Skeptics Society

The Skeptics Society is a nonprofit, member-supported organization devoted to promoting scientific skepticism and resisting the spread of pseudoscience, superstition, and irrational beliefs. The Skeptics Society was originally founded as a Los Angeles-area skeptical group to replace the defunct...

, described Boyer's book as:

a penetratingly insightful scientific analysis of religion because as an anthropologist he understands that any explanation must take into account the rich diversity of religious practices and beliefs around the world, and as a scientist he knows that any explanatory model must account for this diversity. Boyer is at his ethnographic best in describing the countless peculiar religious rituals he and his anthropological brethren have recorded, and especially in identifying the shortcomings of virtually every explanation for religion ever offered. … As a consequence, however, Boyer himself fails to provide a satisfactory explanation because he knows that religion is not a single entity resulting from a single cause.

Brigitte Schön, a theology professor at the University of Bonn

University of Bonn

The University of Bonn is a public research university located in Bonn, Germany. Founded in its present form in 1818, as the linear successor of earlier academic institutions, the University of Bonn is today one of the leading universities in Germany. The University of Bonn offers a large number...

, wrote,

Apart from being fascinating to read and containing many more highly original ideas than could be mentioned here, Religion explained is an important book for a number of reasons. First of all, Boyer is able to present a very dense network of theories which not only explains many religious phenomena but also sets them in relation to each other. The integration of cognitive science research leads to a very realistic model of how religious concepts are processed and communicated, something which has been conspicuously absent from most theories of religion so far. Boyer's account of the natural basis of religion explains very well the persistence and re-emergence of religion even in a secularized environment, as well as the tensions between official and folk religion.

Garry Runciman

Garry Runciman, 3rd Viscount Runciman of Doxford

Walter Garrison Runciman, 3rd Viscount Runciman of Doxford, CBE, FBA , is a leading British historical sociologist, usually known informally as Garry Runciman...

, sociologist at Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College, Cambridge

Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...

, asked "Are we hardwired for God?"

The diverse beliefs which Boyer cites extend from Apollo and Athena, to shamanism among the Panamanian Cuna, to aliens from remote galaxies allegedly landing in New Mexico. But his central agenda is the particular set of unobservable causal agencies cited in his subtitle, and his primary concern is with the question of how we are to account for beliefs that involve the attribution of conscious agency to beings other than humans and animals of the normal and familiar kind. Such beliefs are, as Boyer says, remarkably widespread, and for all their variant forms the variation is neither limitless nor random. His answer falls into two parts: first, these beliefs have in common a counterintuitive attribution of a certain range of properties to certain kinds of quasihuman being; second, the explanation of their diffusion and persistence is to be sought not in the extensive anthropological literature about the origins and functions of religion, but in recent advances in developmental, cognitive and evolutionary psychology.

Author and economist Zachary Karabell

Zachary Karabell

Zachary Karabell is an American author, historian, money manager and economist.Karabell is President of , where he analyzes economic and political trends. He is also a Senior Advisor for Business for Social Responsibility...

 found stylistic faults. "Boyer's use of cognitive psychology, anthropology and other disciplines does generate a new template for examining old questions. But his method, however compelling, does not save the book from its considerable flaws. To begin with, the writing is frequently impenetrable." He concludes, "Of course, Boyer may be right. Human existence may simply be a story of living, breathing, eating and dying. But by not grappling with the possibility that a nonmaterial realm exists, Boyer has written a book about religion that is occasionally illuminating and utterly unconvincing."

The comparative religion

Comparative religion

Comparative religion is a field of religious studies that analyzes the similarities and differences of themes, myths, rituals and concepts among the world's religions...

 author Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong

Karen Armstrong FRSL , is a British author and commentator who is the author of twelve books on comparative religion. A former Roman Catholic nun, she went from a conservative to a more liberal and mystical faith...

 reviewed Boyer's thesis.

Religion, he argues, is nothing more or less than a by-product of the human mind. It is a side effect of having a particular kind of brain. By far the most fascinating part of this highly accessible and informative book is Boyer's description of the way our minds work. We have an inbuilt set of ontological expectations and a tendency to dwell on intuitions which violate these, such as mountains that float or companions whom we do not see. From the dawn of modern consciousness, men and women have focused on certain imaginary personalities that transcend the norm, convinced that they can help them in strategic ways. These supernatural agents link with other mental systems, such as our moral intuitions and social categories, for which we can find no conceptual justification.

John Habgood

John Habgood, Baron Habgood

John Stapylton Habgood, Baron Habgood PC , was Bishop of Durham from 1973 to 1983, and Archbishop of York from 18 November 1983 to 1995....

, formerly Archbishop of York

Archbishop of York

The Archbishop of York is a high-ranking cleric in the Church of England, second only to the Archbishop of Canterbury. He is the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of York and metropolitan of the Province of York, which covers the northern portion of England as well as the Isle of Man...

, wrote.

This is a bold and far-reaching book. What its author lacks in modesty, he makes up for in cogency of argument and elegance of style. His "explanation" of religion is lucid, entertaining, full of valuable insights and almost, but not quite, convincing. The usual explanations of religion—as an attempt to explain what is otherwise puzzling, as a provider of comfort, as a good thing for society or as an escape from reason—are quickly dismissed. Pascal Boyer seeks to demonstrate that its origins and motivations are more deep seated in our mental structures than any of these, which is why religion is so universal, so powerful and so unlikely to disappear even though, as he also claims, it is in the end only a mental phenomenon. Recent experience of the dreadful consequences of religious fanaticism gives his analysis a frightening contemporary relevance, not least because of the minor role within religion that he assigns to rationality.

Editions and translations

Boyer's book is available in several English versions, as well as French, German, and Greek translations. Publishers have variously altered the Religion Explained title.

The American edition was published as:

• Religion Explained: The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors, hardcover, Basic Books, 2001, ISBN 0-465-00695-7.
• Religion Explained: The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors, paperback, Vintage, 2002, ISBN 0-09-928276-3.
• Religion Explained, paperback, Basic Books, 2002, ISBN 0-465-00696-5.

The British edition, which changed the subtitle from "The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought" to "The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors", was published as:

• Religion Explained: The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors, hardcover, William Heinemann Ltd, 2001, ISBN 0-465-00695-7.
• Religion Explained: The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors, paperback, Vintage, 2002, ISBN 0-09-928276-3.

Translated editions of Religion Explained are available in for European languages:

• French translation by Claude-Christine Farny as Et l'homme créa les dieux: Comment expliquer la religion [And Man Created the Gods: How to Explain Religion], Paris: Robert Laffont, 2001, ISBN 978-2-221-09046-6.
• German translation by Ulrich Enderwitz, Monika Noll, and Rolf Schubert as Und Mensch schuf Gott [And Man Created God], Klett-Cotta, 2004, ISBN 978-3-608-94032-9.
• Greek translation by Dimitris Xygalatas and Nikolas Roubekas as Και ο Άνθρωπος Έπλασε τους Θεούς [And Man Created the Gods], Thessaloniki: Vanias, 2008. ISBN 978-960-288-225-2.
• Italian translation by Donatella Sutera Sardo as "E l'uomo creò gli dei. Come spiegare la religione" [And man created the Gods. How to Explain Religion], Bologna, Odoya, 2010 ISBN 978-88-6288-073-2.

External links

• Review – Religion Explained, David Livingstone Smith, Metapsychology Online Reviews
• Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought, Jim Rossi, NaturalScience
• Anthropology of Religion, Wordtrade.com Social Science
• Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer, The Complete Review
• God on the brain: is religion just a step away from mental illness?, Anjana Ahuja
  Anjana Ahuja
  Anjana Ahuja is a British Indian science journalist and columnist for The Times. Ahuja read physics at Imperial College London, followed by a postgraduate course in space physics during which she worked on data about the Sun's magnetic field from the Ulysses probe.After receiving her PhD in 1994,...
  
  , The Times, April 17, 2003