Aristotle's observation that all human beings by nature desire to know aptly captures the spirit of "intellectualist" research in psychology and anthropology. Intellectualists in these fields agree that humans' have fundamental explanatory interests (which reflect their rationality) and that the idioms in which their explanations are couched can differ considerably across places and times (both historical and developmental). Intellectualists in developmental psychology (e.g., Gopnik and Meltzoff, 1997) maintain that young children's conceptual structures, like those of scientists, are theories and that (...) their conceptual development--like the development of science--is a process of theory formation and change. They speculate that our explanatory preoccupations result, at least in part, from a natural drive to develop theories. Intellectualists in the anthropology of religion (e.g., Horton, 1970 and 1993) hold that, although it may do many other things as well, religion is primarily concerned with providing explanatory theories. They maintain that religion and science have the same explanatory goals; only the idioms of their explanations differ. The connections between the concern for explanation, the pursuit of science, the persistence of religion, and the cognitive processes underlying each clearly merit further examination. By considering both their cultural manifestations and their cognitive foundations, I hope to clarify not only how science and religion are related but some of the ways their explanatory projects differ. I shall argue that, despite their centuries' old antagonisms, no development in science will ever seriously threaten the persistence of religion or the forms of explanation religion employs or the emergence of new religions. (I strongly suspect that science will never seriously threaten the persistence of particular religions either, but I only aim to defend the weaker, collective claim here.) In this paper's fourth section I shall show that religion and its characteristic forms of explanation 1 are a natural outgrowth of the character and content of human association and cognition.. (shrink)

Philosophers might be misled by the title of this book, particularly philosophers of religion. Although the author argues that some religious ideas are natural, he does not try to vindicate "natural religion" or "natural theology." Instead, he argues that some religious concepts are natural in that they depend on "noncultural constraints" like genetics and the effects of evolution on human brain development, and that these ideas are considered to be "perfectly obvious" and "self-evident" to those who hold them. Boyer focuses (...) on a few religious concepts which, though not absolutely universal, are nevertheless very widespread in human cultures. He warns that his approach has no "philosophical relevance" to the truth or falsity of these ideas and little significance for systematized theology. Boyer pays little attention to major world religions and, aside from a few references to Catholicism, concentrates upon primitive religions like that of the Fang peoples of Cameroon or the Aguaruna of the Peruvian Amazon, including their religious practices and social categories or roles, as well as their religious ideas. (shrink)