Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought

by Pascal Boyer

Book Overview

Many of our questions about religion, says the internationally renowned anthropologist Pascal Boyer, were once mysteries, but they no longer are: we are beginning to know how to answer questions such as "Why do people have religion?" and "Why is religion the way it is?" Using findings from anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary biology, Boyer shows how one of the most fascinating aspects of human consciousness is increasingly...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0465006965
• ISBN13: 9780465006960
• Release Date: May 2002
• Publisher: Basic Books
• Length: 384 Pages
• Weight: 0.92 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 5.3" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

A Groundbreaking Work in Behavioral Science.

In Religion Explained, Boyer attempts what no one else (to my knowledged) has: to present a comprehensive scientific explanation for religion. To undertake such a daunting task, Boyer employees numerous behavioral science disciplines, including evolutionary psychology, experimental social psychology, anthropology, sociology, and archeology just to mention a few. Early on, he debunks common and prevalent explanations for religion (many of which I subscribed to before reading this book) as facile and scientifically invalid. Using Evolutionary Psychology as a foundation, Boyer describes how specific brain structures evolved to perform specific inferences related to basic survival (especially relevant are predatory and contagion inference) and the numerous inter-related systems used for conspecific interaction and cooperation. [It is especially important to understand that most inferences operate apart from conscious perception.] After comprehensive discussion of the multitudinous, interactive inference systems, Boyer describes how they collectively work to form religion. He explains that most varieties religious concepts (gods, spirits and other supernatural agents and their abilities; morality; death issues, etc.) and public behavior (rituals and prayer, religious-associated violence) can be explained in terms of these inference systems.While he presents an effective argument for most aspects of religion, Boyer admits that a convincing scientific explanation for some forms of ritualistic behavior is elusive. He offers detailed speculation regarding the etiology of rituals, but admits the research at this time is inconclusive and mostly speculative. He compares rituals to similar non-religious activity, such as the compulsions associated with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, but this is only a plausible partial explanation because religious rituals exhibit distinct differences. OCD compulsions are undesired and cause psychological distress in the participant, while participation in rituals is usually voluntary and isn't inherently distressing to the participants (though sometimes it can be). Also, rituals normally occur in a culturally-related social context while compulsions are a repetitive form of individual behavior. The only element of Religion Explained that was a little disappointing to me was the cursory discussion of secularism. Boyer explains that religion (in one form or another) is conducive to normal human brain functions. This of course evokes discussion of why some people are completely irreligious. Boyer only touches on this issue briefly and in a manner which seems a little obtuse to me (he states the issue isn't completely explanable in the context of his argument). Religion Explained is a fascinating scientific treatise on a unique and undeniably significant form of human behavior. This is a fairly complex work (a behavioral science background is certainly helpful), but only to the extent necessary to form a coheren

Daring and disturbing insights

I have read some excellent books in Evolutionary Psychology but this one takes the cake. It is absolutely first rate and I recommend it without reservation. The book's goal - explaining religious behavior in humans - is hardly modest but, amazingly, it succeeds to an unimaginably high level. Boyer's insights are at once daring and disturbing. The picture that emerges is of a species so trapped within the evolutionary/architectural constraints of its own minds that insight and change on a mass level seem highly unlikely. The message of this book will probably antagonize most and enlighten few - but it is essential reading and will remain so for the foreseeable future. Boyer writes in an engaging style, much like Steven Pinker, but probably spends too much time trying to bring the general reader up to speed about Evolutionary Psych and cultural anthropology. However, the central insights, once they come, literally leap off the page with a clarity and precision that are startling. If the simple premises of this book were widely understood and accepted, the world would be literally changed overnight. Fundamentalists and conservatives needn't fear: such insight stands a snowball's chance in hell. The section dealing with the relationship between religion and morality is particularly important and should be required reading at every seminary on the planet. Plainly, RELIGION EXPLAINED will not enjoy widespread acceptance in our lifetime. That's a shame, to put it mildly. We will have missed a rare opportunity to examine the roots of the widespread irrationality that continues to plague our species.

To Know or Not Know Yourself...

I cannot but recommend this book to anyone who is truly interested in expanding their views of how, and most of all "why" religion is such a widespread, compelling, cross-culture type phenomenon.Why do so many religious systems have common themes? Is the concept of God produced by a specific neural correlate in the brain, or is there a module of sorts that evaluates religious information? Why does the instinctual mind work well with religious ideologies? Why are people prone to accepting some forms of religion and not others? All these are questions that I have both asked myself and have heard others speak about in the past, and in our evaluation of these issues we can get carried away in directions that apparently might be completely off target.Boyer speaks about how counterintuitive ontological definitions "stick" more in the mind. Experiments show that when the brain's biases are defied, attention is aroused leading to better memorization and retention. For example when my guinea pig "Piglet" runs from one corner of the room to another, and in the process hops a few times, it is very unlikely for this to be retained in memory. But if Piglet hopped and FLEW to the corner instead of running, my brain would have a field trip!The relevance of the defied expectation is dictated by the fact that my ontology of guinea pigs does not include levitation or Super-G-Pig stunts of any kind. I would more than likely remember Piglet's feat for some time! Perhaps it will lead to a broadening of my ontological classification of rodents. Similarly, and you will have to read the book to grasp the relevance of this jump, supernatural agents also are characterized by counterintuitive ontology. Boyer proposes that the reason all supernatural agents have counterintuitive aspects to them is because those that were proposed in the past that lacked these didn't survive, or weren't remembered,transmitted, or found relevant.Boyer gives a compelling presentation of evolutionary psychology's ideas about the mind, and specifically of what kind of mind it takes to conceive the religious. Religion is presented as a cultural possibility arising from the underlying complex machinery of the brain. Various types of inference systems are identified and explained, and how these apply in the computation of the salience of one religious proposition over another. Religious doctrines that are successful are those that tap into various types of cognitive modules (these have no specific relevance to religion per se), creating salient inferences. The more a religion is relevant in terms of the salient inferences it creates, the more likely we are to intuitively feel that its propositions are correct.Boyer also speaks about issues such as death and why so often religion deals with death and the continuation of the agency of men as spirits after death. He explains how the mind has an internal contrast between inference systems when witnessing death, and the relevance of this to religion.Hi

why certain types of religious belief are plausible

This is a great book that, if I summarized it, would probably either make little sense or strike you as preposterous. Read it! It's quite readable if you have a college-level education -- dry, but utterly logical. The key to understanding Boyer's analysis is that he uses evolutionary psychological theory, which maintains that the human mind evolved in modular fashion, with a collection of various inference systems. Boyer does not present any neat, memorable explanation for religious belief -- in fact he carefully dismantles all such theories as the introduction to his book. What he shows is that these beliefs result from the operation of several different inference systems. Lost? You really have to follow his exposition to be convinced. (For background, and detail on inference systems, he refers the reader to Pinker's HOW THE MIND WORKS, and I think I'll take a look at that next.) If you're familiar with Shermer's HOW WE BELIEVE, which has a great section on the evolution of religion, Boyer argues that Shermer's approach is too simple, and he backs up his position with extensive research findings. The absolute strength of Boyer's approach is his rigorous, logical application of the scientific method, based on two types of evidence -- 1) the anthropological data on the variety of religious beliefs, and 2) psychological experiments which indicate the mechanisms of belief. Since neither of these are commonly known, and since neither correspond to the common sense of a typical American (or substitute any other society/culture), the reader is taken around the bend by Boyer into a totally unfamiliar way of thinking. Personally, though, my response, though not quite "Aha!" was a more drawn out "...yes, this makes a lot of sense." (As a sociologist, I came away mightily impressed with evolutionary psychology as well as the importance of anthropological data.) After all, religious beliefs are strange and wondrous, and demand nothing less than an extraordinary and complex explanation!

Very effective use of evolutionary tools to study belief

Whether you agree with author's ideas or not, this is an excellent and perhaps even brilliant book. It very well developed and explained, thought-provoking, and remarkably persuasive, especially considering how counter-intuitive some of the concepts are. Boyer makes a clear presentation of the most common and intuitive explanations for religious concepts and practices, and then offers his alternative for each point, with empirical support where available. Boyer's book is one of the best examples of making good use of evolutionary thinking from the young science of evolutionary psychology and the proto-science of memetics to bring new insights to anthropological data. His concepts become not just a way of explaining away "weird beliefs" but explanations for broad patterns in human belief in general. Boyer applies a coherent evolutionary epistemology to human belief and especially to the concepts and practices we consider religion. The result is fascinating speculation with a new perspective and a good foundation. Since this is the kind of book that tries to explain why we believe what we believe, people starting with a different set of metaphysical assumptions will find it difficult to appreciate. Just as skeptics are fun to read until they attack our own beliefs, people of one religion will probably find Boyer's explanations fit well to other religions, but not their own. Such is life I suppose. To what extent can the same kind of explanations apply to scientific theories? Boyer addresses this by emphasizing that scientific ideas are very counter-intuitive and result from a lot of hard work to formulate and communicate them in specific ways, making them distinguishable from other kinds of concepts that arise more naturally. Boyer argues that the domain we think of as religion is largely artifical. He believes that the experience of the numinous or special contact of certain individuals with supernatural agents cannot explain the widespread transmission of "religion" in culture. However, neither is the transmission of culture or the appearance of beliefs in different cultures arbitrary. Some concepts are passed on or reappear and others don't, and certain patterns emerge in every culture. The concepts that take on special importance to human life, as diverse as they seem, actually share certain qualities in all cultures. Looking carefully at the cognitive processes that produce concepts and make them likely to be remembered and passed on, religious ideas and practices, Boyer insists, must be a result of the same cognitive processes that are used in other contexts, rather than special ones for perceiving supernatural agents in a transcendental domain.There is an important nuance here. Some authors have argued from an evolutionary perspective that we have concepts for supernatural agents and perform behaviors relevant to those agents because of adaptive pressures specifically to perceive and act on "religious" forces of some sort.Boye