Religion Explained by Pascal Boyer

Religion Explainedby Anonymous

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May 21, 2002: I am a psychologist with a lifelong interest in religion. I never cease to be struck by its tremendous psychological power in producing group solidarity, healing, overcoming hardship, even facing death itself. Evolutionary psychologists are yet to realize its full significance in early human survival. Equally significant is religion's horrendous power for malevolent destruction: e.g. the ancient Hebrew 'ban' allowing total mass murder of women and children in war, the medieval Christian slaughter of witches and heritics, the thousands of young Muslims being indoctrinated as suicidal mass murders today.... Yet 'religion Explained' blithly dismisses all of the above, citing ad hoc reasons unsupported by hard evidence. Instead it chooses to utilize the still undeveloped method of cognitive science to 'explain' all of religion. It does so by citing imagined mini-systems of the mind inferred from computer simulations and the like (e.g. social inclinations, linguistic tendencies, confirmation bias,dissonance reduction, mental decoupling, etc. etc.). these supposed mental systems are expounded with no matching correlates in the human brain. Moreover, they are not specifically related to religion at all, but to human behavior in general. 'Explaining' religion by citing trivial, mental mini-systems is tantamount to 'explaining' Einstein's relativity equations by citing the ways he made chalk marks on the blackboard. Apparently the new cognitive science as presented here is so far merely an unwitting offshoot from the postmodern emphasis on mental fragmentation and its centerless lack of depth in all modes of thought. A more appropriate title for the book might be 'Rligion Trivialized Ad Nausium'. However, I do recommend this book to shcolars and educatid laypersons alike if only to scrutinize the studied flight from profundity in postmodern academia today.