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This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.
- Sales Rank: #798643 in Books
- Published on: 2002-11-12
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 6.10" h x .90" w x 9.20" l, 1.20 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 388 pages
Review
"So how, [Atran] asks, is it that religious beliefs and practices are manifest, anywhere there are people, past or present? How could evolution have favoured wasteful investment in preposterous beliefs? ... Quite a project. He relies on a combination of the most recent human sciences. ... One of his exceptional talents is in weaving together a vast number of strands that most of us keep asunder."--Ian Hacking, London Review of Books
"Atran's work is a brilliant exposition of the evolutionary by-product interpretation [of religion] as well as a mine of references for empirical research into the psychology of religion."--Pascal Boyer, Current Anthropology
"Scott Atran fell in love with anthropology in 1970 when he went to work with Margaret Mead at the American Museum of Natural History in New York and found himself surrounded by a collection of thousands of skulls. He has spent the intervening years studying human cultures all over the world, dwelling among the secretive Druze sect in Israel, documenting conservation customs among the Maya of Guatemala, and analyzing the evolution of religion everywhere, a topic he explores in his book In Gods We Trust."--Discover Magazine
"With almost 1000 references and discussions of most of human history and culture, from Neanderthal burials to suicide-bombers in the Palestinian anti-colonialist struggle, this book is consciously and truly encyclopedic in scope, and shows both breadth and depth of scholarship...the reader finds himself constantly challenged and provoked into an intellectual ping-pong game as he follows the arguments and the huge body of findings marshaled to buttress them...Atran managed to combine the old and the new by relating the automatic cognitive operations to existential anxieties. This combination will be a benchmark and a challenge to students of religion in all disciplines."--Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Human Nature Review
About the Author
Scott Atran is a Director of Research at the Institut Jean Nicod at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (C.N.R.S.) in Paris. He is also Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, Psychology, and Natural Resources and the Environment at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A respected cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, his publications include Fondement de l'histoire naturelle, Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science, and Folk Biology. He has done long-term fieldwork in the Middle East and has also written and experimented extensively on the ways scientists and ordinary people categorize and reason about nature. He currently directs an international, multidisciplinary project on the natural history of the Lowland Maya.
Most helpful customer reviews
155 of 160 people found the following review helpful.
It's all in the mind!
By Stephen A. Haines
A surge of interest in the evolutionary basis for religion has resulted in some fine works. Few, however, approach the careful analysis and depth of insight offered by Atran's excellent book. Asking the question, "Why do humans put so many resources into a counterintuitive supernatural world?", he responds that the answers fall easily into an evolutionary framework. He goes on to explain, in ten easy steps[!] how this circumstance has come about. The core of the presentation is what practices we follow are derived from normal, everyday behaviour traits. These traits are human cognitive ones, which makes their biological roots distant but traceable. The human mind, derived from the sudden expansion of cognitive abilities about fifty thousand years ago, put us in a unique position in the animal kingdom. Religion is the price we pay for being "special".
The "ten easy steps" are not. The astute reader may jump to the Conclusion for an outline of Atran's thesis. There he explains that religion is not an "entity", even though we publicly commit resources to it. Since it's not an entity, religion itself cannot be an evolutionary adaptation. However, it does fit into an "evolutionary landscape". That landscape he describes in a metaphor of hills and valleys, with certain behaviours following the path of least resistance. The supernatural, Atran contends, arises from a "cultural manipulation" of habits derived from the Pleistocene - fear of predators, death and the quest for nourishment. Since humans live in groups, the interactions of individuals within the group reinforces these habits. When natural phenomena are transformed into the supernatural conformity results. Once completing the outline, readers will find enlightening and reasoned arguments supporting the thesis that the foundations for religious behaviour have well-established roots.
Atran discusses the distinction between pathological and mystical mental states. While these are useful, his analysis of the sociobiological and "group selection" theses make truly compelling reading. Sociobiology has sought the roots of many human behaviour traits in the actions of other creatures. While that works for some behaviours, Atran sees no justification for applying it to religion. Religion is too human specific, he argues. Nor, he contends, does the notion that "group selection" - which claims religion is a "superorganism" - has any basis. He further dismisses the notion that "memes" - a form of replicable and transmitted idea, cannot account for the persistence of religious ideas. Memes, he finds, require a fidelity of transmission that isn't reflected in reality. Religion, being highly variable across many environments, isn't supportive of such rigid definition.
As a final topic, Atran addresses the dichotomy between religion and science. The underlying distinction between these two social forces is that science recognises that humans are incidental elements in the universe, while religion places them at the centre. Religion fares poorly in knowledge, while science lacks a strong moral element. It's a fitting conclusion to a book closely examining how science has addressed the phenomenon of human belief in the supernatural.
Although Atran's prose style is a bit stiff, the information he conveys is too significant and well thought out to make that objection important. His command of the sources is indicated in the bibliography and carefully shown as presented in the text. He acknowledges in his first note that Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained" was published as this book was going to press. Any student of causes for human religion will need to carefully study both books. They are a major contributions in understanding why humans engage in such seemingly bizarre practices as religion. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]
84 of 89 people found the following review helpful.
Thoughtful analysis of the origin of religious beliefs
By DR P. Dash
There have been a slew of recent books by scientists on religion which fall basically into two camps. The first, exemplified by Sam Harris' "The End of Faith," are essentially attacks on the logical plausibility of the major religious belief systems. For those who have already realized that these sorts of beliefs are absurd, such works are entertaining but are a bit like preaching to the choir, if you'll excuse the metaphor. The second camp, exemplified by Pascal Boyer's "Religion Explained," are attempts at explaining WHY people believe in such absurdities, from the perspectives of cognitive neuropsychology and anthropology. Atran's book is in the latter camp, and in fact overlaps to some extent with Boyer's book, published at about the same time, although each author has unique insights. I especially liked Atran's analysis of the origin of beliefs in the supernatural as stemming from a cognitive module predisposed to interpret environmental stimuli as coming from a potential predator, and I also found his analysis of "meme theory" to be enlightening (he strongly discounts it). Atran's book is the harder to read of the two and is largely missing the dry sense of humor in Boyer's book, which is why I docked it one star. I also disagree with the pessimism in Atran's last chapter about why religions are likely to endure indefinitely; I believe the secular trends present especially since Darwin must ultimately prevail. But his book is certainly a valuable contribution to the discussion of the origins of religious thought and behavior, which is of paramount importance in understanding today's world of religious fanaticism.
67 of 72 people found the following review helpful.
The Mickey Mouse Problem
By The Spinozanator
NOT FOR THE THEOLOGICALLY SENSITIVE!
Atran describes religion as
(1) a community's costly and hard-to-fake commitment (2) to a counterfactual and counterintuitive world of supernatural agents (3) who master people's existential anxieties, such as death and deception.
Later in the book he adds that 1, 2, & 3: (4) demand ritualistic & rhythmic co-ordination of 1, 2, & 3 such as "communion."
He later describes religion (paraphrased by me) as a thought process which involves exaggerated use of everyday cognitive processes to produce unreal worlds that easily attract attention, are readily memorable, and are subject to cultural transmission, selection and survival.
THEN, HE ASKS, "HOW IN PRINCIPLE, DOES THIS VIEW DISTINGUISH
MICKEY MOUSE OR FANTASY FROM BELIEFS ONE IS WILLING TO DIE FOR?"
While sprinkled with interesting and provocative comments, Atran tries to show that cognitive modules exist, thanks to natural selection. The tendency to invent supernatural agency is an evolutionary by-product, trip-wired by predator-detection schema...people interactively manipulate the universal cognitive susceptibility. Add a few hopeful solutions to the problems involving the tragedies of life and death, and you get religion.
Alternate theories of religion's ability to sprout and fluorish wherever humans have lived for any length of time are discussed and rejected. These include "memes" for religion, "group selection" for religion, cultural entrees, and others.
While myriad types of gods have been invented, Atran maintains they all end up as described in the 1st few lines of this review. He offers an analogy of mountain ridges and their many precipitation routes, ending in always the same few major waterways. In the middle of the book is a photo section of various religious relics, including a photo of the "Nunbun." This cinnamon bun became famous, and really does look like Mother Theresa!
He ends with the thought (and I concur) that religion will always be with us because there is no other system that gives humanity solace from the tragedies that beset daily life...with some brands even promising the bonus of an afterlife - only, of course, if you follow the prescribed tenets.
This is the first book I have ever read that espoused such openly irreligious ideas. I thoroughly enjoyed reading someone else's formulated ideas, which were so close my own unformed thoughts. I LOVED THIS BOOK!!!
Disadvantage: As excellent as this book is, I would have enjoyed it more had Atran made an effort to make it more readable and less technical. It reads as if parts may have been intended for his learned peers rather than the general public.
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