Evolutionary Accounts of Religion: Explaining and Explaining Away
This chapter summarizes evolutionary accounts of religion, points out some of their weaknesses as scientific accounts, and considers just how much of religion such explanations can explain away. All evolutionary accounts of religion agree that the human mind has a suite of cognitive mechanisms that collaborate in specifiable and predictable ways to generate religion pan-culturally. The chapter assesses the views made by these accounts, and whether their cognitive and evolutionary explanations are plausible. It also searches for answers as to whether evolutionary explanations undermine the truth of, or justification for, religious beliefs.
Keywords: evolutionary accounts, religion, religious beliefs
Oxford Scholarship Online requires a subscription or purchase to access the full text of books within the service. Public users can however freely search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter.
Please, subscribe or login to access full text content.
If you think you should have access to this title, please contact your librarian.
To troubleshoot, please check our FAQs , and if you can't find the answer there, please contact us .