Michael G. Parker – författare

Pascal Boyer argues that religion is largely an illusion. The anthropologist traces religion's cognitive and evolutionary aspects. By "religion" he means a kind of existential and cognitive "package" that includes views about supernatural agency (gods), notions of morality, particular rituals and sometimes particular experiences, as well as membership in a particular community of believers. The package, however, does not really exist as such. Notions of supernatural agents, of morality, of ethnic identity, or ritual requirements and other experience, all appear in human minds independently. This implies that there is no such thing as a conflict between science and religion. Boyer takes the reader onto a journey through science and the dissolution of religion.

Science deeply challenges classical descriptions of the human person as 'free' and as 'spirit'. This survey of contemporary neuroscience and evolutionary biology explores why these challenges have arisen. At the same time it finds in the religious dimension of human existence powerful resources for speaking of the 'Emergenz des Geistes' and of a deeper sense of human freedom.

Pascal Boyer pursues an individual approach by connecting the perspective of evolutionary cognitive science with religious thought and behavior.