If I were making a curriculum for life, community, and adulthood, this book would be of primary interest. What Pascal Boyer does in “Religion Explained” crosses that line between ‘interesting’ and ‘important’, then goes straight on into ‘imperative’. You see, what he does is provide a template, and thereby an opportunity, for all people of the world to start fresh, on the same page, as regards religious thought.
Boyer describes religion as being emergent from the complex interaction of various cognitive structures. Breaking each of these down, he shows where each piece of the puzzle contributes to survival via evolutionary psychology. Nearly each of these accompanies a ‘well duh’ moment. Taken individually, his exposition of these cognitive affectations seems trite and unimpressive, and taken alone none of them seems to have a smidgen of anything ‘spiritual’. Then he begins to stitch the pieces together, and shows the interaction between different parts of the brain working in parallel. He shows where the motives of different parts might interfere to cause cognitive dissonance and what the brain does with such events. He shows how etiological functions of religion are automatic and instinctual, rather than contrived. He shows how the imperatives of community and interpersonal interaction contribute to the mix. Most importantly, he shows how every higher-function of the mind, from language to tool use, from ontology to agency, from emotion to instinct, all have a stake in the emergence of religion.
For, you see, what Boyer has really done is use religion as a narrative tool to describe both where it is human’s came from evolutionarily, and how our minds work individually. This is satisfying and enlightening to a very great degree. The implications and application go significantly beyond religion alone, but he does an admirable job of keeping things from digressing too much (he leaves it to the reader to see all the little wormholes into other subjects and extrapolate for themselves).
Boyer’s essential proof is thus: That each of us, all 6.7 billion minds, ‘has’ religion. There is no distinction in the cognitive source of worldview between an Atheist and a fundamentalist of any creed. The number of religions on the planet is, for all intents and purposes, 6.7 billion. If we could all recognize and appreciate that, it would eliminate a great deal of the cyclical (read - useless) debate this subject engenders.
I could go into a lot more detail here, but I’m wondering rather if anyone else out there has read it and would like to weigh in?