Religion explained (?) by evolutionary psychology

"Religion Explained" by Pascal Boyer is a hard read, and probably off limits for the general reader. The book often sounds like a rambling college lecture in which the author covers pretty much everything between Heaven and Earth, constantly jumping back and forth between the subjects. Still, the book is ultimately rewarding. At least if you're an advanced student of anthropology, comparative religion or psychology!

Many scholars of comparative religion have pretty much given up trying to explain religion. When I studied comparative religion I was told at the very first lecture that "methodological agnosticism" is the official line, and that religion ultimately cannot be explained, if only because archaeological artefacts or written sources are absent from most of human prehistory. I suspect this position is a counter-reaction to the self-assertive theories of the past, from Tylor and Spencer to Marx, Freud and Eliade. Ultimately, all these theories proved to be wanting, one way or another (I mean, Freud?!). Boyer, who is a French-American professor of anthropology with field experience from Cameroon is daring enough to propose another self-assertive theory!

Boyer rejects the standard sociological and psychological explanations of religion. He doesn't deny that religion have social or psychological aspects, indeed, one of the reasons why religion is so pervasive is precisely that it fits right into our social relations. However, Boyer believes that we must dig deeper. For instance, why aren't all our social relations completely secularized? After all, *some* of them are, showing that religion isn't absolutely necessary. So why is it so widespread? Boyer also wants to know why some supernatural concepts are more common than others. Why are religious beliefs about gods and spirits, rather than singing islands or talking cats? All these concepts are equally counter-intuitive.

Boyer's answer is a complex one, and only the barest out-line is possible here. In fact, he even makes a point out of its complexity: there isn't a simple solution to the problem "why religion". Boyer believes that religion is rooted in the way our brains work, in our cognitive processes. Many different cognitive processes are interacting to create religious concepts. Religion seems to be caused by the normal functioning of the human mind, with its decoupling, inference systems, and instincts. It may even be connected with obsessive-compulsive behaviour to relieve anxiety, not to mention the fact that counter-intuitive information is more attention-grabbing and easier to recall than normal information! Human fear of corpses is another important factor, and this fear in turn is created by the collision of several cognitive processes. If the religious concepts created by our minds are seen as socially relevant, they will tend to spread and become dominant, which explains why most religious beliefs are centred on gods and spirits, creatures that resemble humans in some ways, but seem to have access to a lot of socially relevant information. This presumably also explains why worship of ancestral spirits is one of the most common forms of religious behaviour.

But why do our minds work in this manner? The social interaction among chimpanzees is highly complex, yet they aren't religious. Why did natural selection favour the evolution of a religious-prone mind? Boyer's response is that it actually didn't. Rather, religious ideas are parasitical upon our cognitive processes. Natural selection favoured, say, our ability to decouple or our moral instincts, and religion emerged as an inevitable but unintended by-product. (If you pardon my teleological language!) Thus, religious ideas aren't really necessary for survival. However, they are more or less impossible to get rid of, being rooted in our very brains. In a sense, the atheist Boyer thus draws a pessimistic conclusion concerning the future of religion. It will always be around! He also admits that there is no good explanation for why some people, like himself, become atheists. It's some kind of natural variation, and that's all we can say.

I'm sure the conclusions of Boyer's book can be debated and problematized in various ways, but it's still a cogent case for an explanation of religion based on evolutionary psychology.