“All religions, I claim, involve counterintuitive beliefs in supernatural beings. Moreover, such beliefs are systematically counterintuitive in the same basic ways. As we shall see, these basic ways of entertaining supernatural beliefs are more or less predictable from a fairly… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“For my purposes, the differences among animistic, pantheistic, and monotheistic religions can be ascribed to differences in the content of beliefs in the supernatural, not to differences in the cognitive structure of those beliefs.” — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“All religions have core beliefs that confound these innate expectations about the world, such as faith in physically powerful but essentially bodiless deities. These… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“A closer look reveals that God may never have been wholly pleased with His most preferred creations in granting them the parts they have.… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“There are several types of comparative analysis for garnering evidence for an evolutionary adaptation: structural or behavioral resemblance in different phyletic lines owing to… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“Everybody, whether they are religious or not, implicitly knows that religion is costly, counterfactual, and even counterintuitive. The more one accepts what is materially… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“The individuals in a cooperative social group cannot afford to tolerate repeated defections by selfish “free riders,” such as those who hoard food or… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“Religious ritual invariably offers a sacrificial display of commitment to supernatural agents that is materially costly and emotionally convincing. Such ritual conveys willingness to… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“During the first year of life, a child acquires the concept of teleomechanical agency: the child is able to perceive an object’s physical movement… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“In religious thought, a person may ride a horse into the sky (Mohammed), ascend to heaven in a chariot of fire (Elijah), rise to… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“In theocratic societies, adherence to fundamentalism may enhance the fitness of fundamentalists, as opposed to nonfundamentalists, because fundamentalists are more likely to obtain productive… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“Cultures and religions exist, and are explained, to the extent that they reliably express stucturally enduring relationships among mental states and behaviors and where… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“Then there are the secondary, mostly “social” emotions, such as anxiety, grief, guilt, pride, vengeance, and love. These may be unique to humans—hence, at… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
“Vengefulness signals that a breach in contract will not be tolerated at any cost, even at the price of the avenging individual’s own life… — Scott Atran Copy Share Image
