ENGLISH

The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion

By Pascal Boyer

Book information

Publisher
University of California Press
Year
2020
ISBN
9780520911628
DOI
10.1525/9780520911628
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
82 MB (86453503 bytes)
Edition
Reprint 2020
Pages
348\336
Library
degruyter.com
Time added
2023-08-21 17:10:05

Description

Why do people have religious ideas? And why thosereligious ideas? The main theme of Pascal Boyer's work is that important aspects of religious representations are constrained by universal properties of the human mind-brain. Experimental results from developmental psychology, he says, can explain why certain religious representations are more likely to be acquired, stored, and transmitted by human minds. Considering these universal constraints, Boyer proposes an exciting new answer to the question of why similar religious representations are found in so many different cultures. His work will be widely discussed by cultural anthropologists, psychologists, and students of religion, history, and philosophy.

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