ENGLISH

The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion

By Pascal Boyer

Book information

Year
1994
ISBN
0520075595, 9780520075597, 9780585135090
LCC
BL48 .B6439 1994
Open Library ID
OL1732814M
Language
english
Format
PDF
Filesize
729 kB (746394 bytes)
Edition
First Edition
Pages
344\207
Topic
Religion
Time added
2011-06-04 13:46:07

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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