Adem reviewed In Gods We Trust by Scott Atran
Review of 'In Gods We Trust' on 'Goodreads'
3 stars
Atran attempts an extremely in-depth anaylsis of current research on the cognitive bases of religion. In Gods We Trust was published a year after Pascal Boyer's [book:Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought], which covers the same basic ground (Atran admits as much in the first endnote to this book) in a less intimidating fashion. For the academic reader, Atran's book is probably very valuable. For the casual reader (i.e. me), Boyer's is a much lighter read, although Atran uses fun phrases like "logocentric iconophobia".
One idea that intrigues me is Atran's suggestion that religious statements are "quasi-propositional", by which he means that they share the syntax of ordinary propositions but, since they counter-intuitively violate the expectations of the core modules that make up our brains, we can never resolve them to propositions that have actual meaning. That's comforting to me, as someone who has wasted countless hours trying …
Atran attempts an extremely in-depth anaylsis of current research on the cognitive bases of religion. In Gods We Trust was published a year after Pascal Boyer's [book:Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought], which covers the same basic ground (Atran admits as much in the first endnote to this book) in a less intimidating fashion. For the academic reader, Atran's book is probably very valuable. For the casual reader (i.e. me), Boyer's is a much lighter read, although Atran uses fun phrases like "logocentric iconophobia".
One idea that intrigues me is Atran's suggestion that religious statements are "quasi-propositional", by which he means that they share the syntax of ordinary propositions but, since they counter-intuitively violate the expectations of the core modules that make up our brains, we can never resolve them to propositions that have actual meaning. That's comforting to me, as someone who has wasted countless hours trying to pin down definitions in discussions about religion. What does it actually mean, for example, to say that god is omnipotent?. Atran's answer is simply that it literally means nothing. We do not make religious statements to relate facts about the world, we make them because they activate the components of our brain in emotionally satisfying ways.
