ISBN: 0465006965
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Avg Cusomer Rating: 3
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Summary: New ways to think about why we think the way we do
To start, this book is pretty dry. It does have its moments where it picks up the pace and you find yourself really interested in what you are reading. Most of the first half of the book, however, Boyer explains the background brain dynamics needed to understand the later application to religious thought. To me, this seems to explain primitive religious ideas and concepts, but for the more developed world religions it can only act as the base, with everything else piled on top. I liked the idea that our brains are really sophisticated computing machines. (He never compares our brains to computers but I think that is a good analogy) We have inbuilt programs, or what I like to think of as human instincts, which allow us to take in a great deal of information and create inferences about things such as other peoples' thoughts, emotional responses, and possible future actions. Boyer then goes on to show how our different inference systems react to different types of stimuli, and eventually how certain sets of systems can generate religious ideas. It's an interesting read, only if you are keen on understanding the intersection of the human animal with the sapient beings we are.
Summary: Circumstantial
The subject of the book is interesting but the writing style is vague and very circumstantial. What can be said in one sentence is explained in one or several paragraphs and what can be explained in one paragraph is said in a chapter or more. You don't want to put some books down once you piced them up. This book is the opposite; you cannot wait to put it down. It is very boring to read.
Summary: Misses the point
Boyer sees religion as a by-product of the way our minds have evolved. His "explanation"--laboriously presented in a most excruciatingly detailed manner--left this reader exhausted and a little annoyed. Much would have been gained had the text been reduced by perhaps two thirds. Although Boyer writes in a clear manner, the tedious qualifications and the needless repetitions make the book exasperating to read.
But that's just the minor problem. The major problem is that after all these words, Boyer does not really explain much at all. Clearly religion of one form or another is found in virtually all human societies. Consequently it doesn't take a very sophisticated deduction to conclude that we believe the things we believe because our minds work that way. Religion is part of human nature, hard-wired to some very real extent in our brains similar to the way grammar is. What needs explaining is how religion is adaptive. If it didn't somehow increase our ability to survive and reproduce--that is, make us more fit--it would not be universal.
This is the key that Boyer marches around, hovers over, and, alas, misses. As famed biologist Edward O. Wilson wrote, "When the gods are served, the Darwinian fitness of the members of the tribe is the ultimate if unrecognized beneficiary." (On Human Nature (1978) p. 184)
But just how does religion increase the fitness of the members of the tribe? By making them accept their lot on earth because they will get their reward in the hereafter? As Boyer points out, this can't be the answer--at least not the entire answer--since some religions don't have a hereafter. How about increasing the coalition among members of the tribe thereby increasing cooperation and mutual trust? I think this is on the right track. If the tribe works together toward a common goal, the tribe will be more effective in dealing with the environment, and the tribe will increase. But what is the most important and demanding aspect of the human tribal environment? Other tribes!
This brings us to what I think Boyer missed entirely: the war system. Religion, because it persuades people to believe in things greater than themselves, facilitates the kind of fearlessness that is most effective in killing members of the other tribe. A tribe that has a ferocious leader who is followed as one might follow a god, or one of god's representatives, is a more effective fighting unit than a tribe that doesn't have that kind of cohesiveness. If a belief system can get the young males of the tribe to lay down their lives for the good of the tribe, that tribe will take over the rich valley, the land of milk and honey, and the less fit tribe will go into the mountains or perish.
If the leader of the tribe can get the tribe to see that a victory over the enemy is God's will or that God or the spirits or the angels are on the side of the chosen tribe, so much the better. To make this work people have to be able to believe in things not seen or understood, things that go bump in the night, things mysterious, frightening, things brought forth by the shaman amid smoke and ritual.
But as Boyer points out, no single explanation for religion is adequate. In religion we also find the beginnings--paradoxically--of science. When the rains didn't come and the grain grasses didn't grow and the animals became few, the people asked why and wanted to know what they could do. Religion supplied the answer. Throw the sheep bones and know which way to go. By happenstance the tribe wandered in the right direction and this was remembered. Sacrifice an animal to the gods and the gods will cause the rains to return. (And if the rains don't return, you did it wrong.)
This is sympathetic magic, surprisingly not mentioned specifically by Boyer, although he treats superstition at some great length. Sympathetic magic is part of almost all religions in the form of ritual and prayer. It was but a step or two (giants steps of course) from throwing salt over one's left shoulder to broadcasting plant seeds over the ground. Sympathetic magic which is at the heart of religion became, after many a moon, science.
Although Professor Boyer admirably attempts to account for religion from an evolutionary point of view using an anthropologist's eye, I am afraid that he got lost in the thickets and missed the pure essence of his subject matter. I suggest he read some Edward O. Wilson and Marvin Harris (both absent from his bibliography). Harris shows how religious beliefs work to support adaptive behaviors (e.g., not eating cows in India) while Wilson will give the reader a good understanding of human psychology from an evolutionary point of view.
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