(Religion Cognition and Culture.) Talmont-Kaminski, Konrad-Religion As Magical Ideology - How The Supernatural Reflects Rationality-Acumen Publishing LTD (2013)

religion as magical ideology
Religion, Cognition and Culture
Series Editors: Jeppe Sinding Jensen and

Armin W. Geertz, Aarhus University
This series is based on a broadly conceived cognitive science of religion. It

explores the role of religion and culture in cognitive formation and brings
together methods, theories and approaches from the humanities, psychol-
ogy and the social, cognitive and neurosciences. The series is associated with
the Religion, Cognition and Culture Unit (RCC) at the Department of the
Study of Religion, Aarhus University (www.teo.au.dk/en/research/current/
cognition).
Published
The Burning Saints: Cognition and Culture

in the Fire-walking Rituals of the Anastenaria
Dimitris Xygalatas
Past Minds: Studies in Cognitive Historiography

Edited by Luther H. Martin and Jesper Sørensen
Religion as Magical Ideology: How the Supernatural

Reflects Rationality
Konrad Talmont-Kaminski
Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture:

Image and Word in the Mind of Narrative
Edited by Armin W. Geertz and Jeppe Sinding Jensen
Forthcoming
Mental Culture: Towards a Cognitive Science of Religion

Edited by Dimitris Xygalatas and William W. McCorkle, Jr
Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture

Edited by Armin W. Geertz
Religion as Magical Ideology
How the Supernatural Reflects Rationality
Konrad Talmont-Kaminski
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© Konrad Talmont-Kaminski, 2013
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For now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part;
but then shall I know fully even as also I was fully known.
1 Corinthians 13:12
For the mind of man is far from the nature of a clear and equal glass, wherein
the beams of things should reflect according to their true incidence; nay, it is
rather like an enchanted glass, full of superstition and imposture, if it be not
delivered and reduced. Francis Bacon The Advancement of Learning
Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some

measure dependent on the science of MAN, since they lie under the cogni-
zance of men, and are judged by their powers and faculties. ’Tis impossible to
tell what changes and improvements we might make in these sciences were we
thoroughly acquainted with the extent and force of human understanding,
and could explain the nature of the ideas we employ, and of the operations we
perform in our reasoning. David Hume A Treatise on Human Nature
Contents
Acknowledgements ix
1. Introduction 1
2. Superstitious reeds 13
3. The superempirical 43
4. Magic as cognitive by-product 73
5. Religion as magical ideology 97
6. Religion as ancestral trait 123
Bibliography 145
Index 153
vii
Acknowledgements
Unavoidably, the author’s name as it appears on the front of any scientific

book is somewhat misleading. The problem is that such a focus upon a single
individual fails to acknowledge the fundamentally social nature of scientific
endeavours, in which cumulative cultural change has been sharpened to a fine
point. Much is often made of the competitive aspect of science, and this is true
enough. Yet I have found the scientific community to be one where generosity
and a cooperative attitude are very much the norm. Perhaps it is because the
challenges of coming to grips with the natural world are so great, but in my
experience scientists will gladly go out of their way to help others and very
often fit their actions to benefit others rather than just themselves. As research
is now making clear, part of the reason why science is so successful is because it
is structured in ways that encourage cooperation. On the personal level, I can-
not help but think of the scientists that I have had the pleasure of dealing with
as highly amiable, almost without exception, and I feel profoundly fortunate
to be part of this community. Any acknowledgements that I make here cannot
begin to repay the years of generous support I have received.
The project that led to this book was begun during my fellowship at the
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research (KLI) in
Altenberg, Austria. It is quite simply unthinkable to me that I should have
ever written anything like this book were it not for the always frank advice
and direction I received there from Werner Callebaut. It is primarily thanks
to the atmosphere I was exposed to at the KLI that my thinking was opened
up to the approaches pursued within this book. Vital to this development
was the intellectual exchange with the other fellows, Christophe Heintz in
particular, as well as participation in a number of KLI workshops. It was dur-
ing one of these that I had the benefit of several long discussions with David
Sloan Wilson, which helped to shape my thinking about his approach as well
as the pro-social account of religion in general.
ix
acknowledgements
At the same time, I have benefited from the friendship and support of
my colleagues at my institute at the Marie Curie-Sklodowska University in
Lublin, Poland. I am particularly grateful to Marek Hetmański, who has
assisted me in countless ways, helping me to navigate fields theoretical and
administrative. The sabbatical that I was granted by the faculty board led by
Dean Teresa Pękala gave me the time necessary to organize my various ideas
on paper.
During the course of working on the ideas that are presented in this book
I gave a great many talks in departments and conferences in Europe and
North America. Discussions with a number of colleagues at these talks, as
well as over many pints afterwards, have all helped me develop my thinking.
It is impossible to list everyone from whose views I benefited, but I must
mention Erik Angner, Andrew Atkinson, Mark Bickhard, Ken Binmore,
Simon Blackburn, Susan Blackmore, Maarten Boudry, Johan Braeckman,
Joanna Bryson, Joseph Bulbulia, Aleš Chalupa, Helen De Cruz, Thalia
Gjersoe, Katalin Farkas, Maria Frapolli, Christopher French, Andy Fugard,
Armin Geertz, Susan Haack, Bruce Hood, Nicholas Humphrey, Jeppe
Sinding Jensen, Jonathan Knowles, Justin Lane, Tom Lawson, Neil Levy,
Maria Lewicka, Edouard Machery, Luther Martin, Lee McCorkle, Panos
Mitkidis, Lucas Mix, Joanna Monti-Masel, Erika Nurmsoo, Samir Okasha,
Massimo Pigliucci, Robert Piłat, Manuel de Piñedo, Huw Price, Jesper
Sørensen, Finn Spicer, Kim Sterelny, Elisabeth Stöttinger, Sławomir Sztajer,
Claudio Tennie, Patrick Trompiz, David Voas, Don Wiebe and Dimitris
Xygalatas.
Draft versions of some of the chapters have been read and commented
upon by Michael Blume, Randy Mayes, Ryan McKay, Tom Rees and John
Wilkins. Their feedback helped me to see shortcomings with my argumenta-
tion that would have gone unnoticed by me alone as well as made me aware
of research that helped to expand my approach. Furthermore, the whole book
has been read and commented upon by Robert McCauley, who has aided
me in many ways during the process of writing this book and to whom I am
particularly grateful.
Over the years, including well before I started working on this book, I
have had the pleasure and benefit of having three friends with whom I could
talk through whatever ideas were going through my head: Matthew Spinks,
John Collier and Marcin Miłkowski. Whether by discussing topics covered
here or many others, these three friends have shaped my habits of thought to
an enormous degree.
During the whole time I worked on this book I have known the compan-
ionship and support of my family. My little girls have given me no end of joy
and frustration, running into my study and growing quickly while I worked.
x
acknowledgements
My wife has shared with me the path from a rough initial idea to the finished
manuscript, always helping me find the time, energy and focus necessary to
think and write.
Finally, I would like to thank my mother. In a way this book is about her
and her faith. It is only fitting that I dedicate it to her.
xi
1
Introduction
It was not long before her third birthday that one of my daughters saw her
first hedgehog. The summer evening was warm and she had been put into
the car for the drive home wearing only her pyjamas when she saw the hedge-
hog snuffling around next to a fence. She was so taken by it that we sat and
waited while she watched the little fellow go about his business. One evening
a few days later she insisted that she be dressed again in her pyjamas for the
drive home, and was most disappointed when the hedgehog did not reappear,
despite her efforts.
David Hume, renowned for his good-natured character, would have prob-
ably been quite amused by my daughter’s naive conjecturing. However, he
would probably also have pointed out that adults should not feel too self-
satisfied, as our causal conjectures are not altogether different from the fum-
bling theorizing of children. In the two and a half centuries since Hume’s
death, philosophers have either sought to find ways to reject this conclusion
or accepted it and claimed that, therefore, we do not possess knowledge about
what the very next day will bring. One of the ways in which this book can
be understood is as an attempt to show that accepting the problem Hume
first recognized leads to no more than an explanation for the existence and,
indeed, persistence of the very kind of supernatural beliefs and practices that
he argued against in another context. In short, this book can be understood
as examining the relationship between reason and (to use the Enlightenment
term) superstition; though not in the way attempted by a plethora of recent
books: no effort is made to argue for theist or atheist positions concerning
the existence of any deity – although it is quite possible that the account pre-
sented here has implications for that debate. The point of this book is not to
take an explicit stand for or against superstition or reason but to improve our
understanding of both. Reason as well as supernatural beliefs and practices,
to use a more modern terminology, are assumed to be natural phenomena:
1
underpinned by cognitive mechanisms, shaped by genetic as well as cultural

evolution, and open to explanation with the tools made available by modern
science.
The approach taken here is in some ways similar to that pursued by Robert
McCauley (2011) in his recent book comparing the cognitive basis of science
and religion (for discussion see Talmont-Kaminski 2013a, b). Indeed, much
of the focus within these pages is upon religions, and the book is organized in
such a way as to present a coherent account of some aspects of religion, even
as other topics are also developed. The account of religion presented combines
three major elements, which are understood to explore different facets of reli-
gions: their basis in cognitive by-products, their pro-social function and the
significance of the fact that their functionality is not connected to their truth.
Two of the elements of the picture have been explored by other research-
ers: versions of the cognitive by-product account have been put forward by
Stuart Guthrie (1993) and Pascal Boyer (2002), among many others, and the
pro-social function account has been put forward primarily by Richard Sosis
(Sosis & Bressler 2003) and David Sloan Wilson (2002). The originality of
my proposal lies in combining these two at-times-competing accounts, the
necessary glue coming in the form of the third element of the overall picture:
an examination of what is referred to here as the non-alethic function of reli-
gions. It is this third element that unavoidably ties my discussion of religious
beliefs and practices to questions that concern reason. My contention is that
a number of the features of religious traditions can be explained as conse-
quences of the function of religious traditions being non-alethic (i.e. not
connected to the truth of their claims). These features include the need for
believers to maintain that their beliefs are reasonable at the same time as they
act in ways that ensure those beliefs are not affected by any empirical counter-
evidence, as well as the need for religious traditions to include magical beliefs
and practices in order for these traditions to remain stable.
Varieties of religious research
Within the academic context, human religious commitments have tradition-

ally been thought about in two very different ways. The first of these goes back
many centuries and is most often pursued in the context of either philosophy
of religion or theology. It treats religious commitments as propositions whose
degree of reasonableness is to be revealed through the careful weighing of the
arguments for and against them. The assessment achieved by this method
can then be used to evaluate the commitments of individual people depend-
ing on the degree to which they concur with the propositions identified as
2
introduction
most reasonable. The other way of thinking about religious commitments

approaches them from a completely different direction. Pursued by numer-
ous anthropologists, sociologists and many other representatives of a plethora
of social sciences, it focuses on such aspects of religion as its utility, the sym-
bolic meaning of its elements, the practices involved or the experiences of its
adherents. On this approach any attempt to evaluate religious commitments
is typically thought to be directly in conflict with the aim of understanding
them. Although normally seen as entailing pluralism due to the great variety
of religious practices across various cultures, it need not necessarily be prima-
rily focused on this level. It could just as well focus on the evolutionary causes
for human religious commitments and seek out commonalities.
The basic distinction between these approaches is between evaluating reli-
gious commitments and describing them. This way of putting the difference,
however, does not do justice to how disconnected the two ways of think-
ing about religion have been. Indeed, on this portrayal it might seem (quite
rightly, actually) as though the evaluative and the descriptive tasks have much
to offer to each other. After all, how can one evaluate something without hav-
ing obtained a proper description of it? Yet it has been very rare for individu-
als to combine the two. William James, with his feet planted in philosophy
as well as psychology, could be seen as one of the rare exceptions, whatever
one thinks of his position (for a rare, relatively recent example see Jensen &
Martin 1997). James’s argument, found in “The Will to Believe”, that the
evidence necessary to justify religious commitment can only be found once
that commitment has been made, combines both ways of thinking about
religion (James 1896). However, it is much more common for those who
wish to evaluate religious commitments to begin by abstracting away from
most of the considerations that a description would need to include, just as
it is much more common for those engaged in the descriptive task to argue
that any attempt to evaluate the commitments will interfere with the job of
obtaining a satisfactory description.
Partly, the disconnect between the descriptive and the evaluative ways of
considering religious commitments can be understood as due to these two
approaches having become associated with two very different ways of think-
ing about humans. The descriptive approach all too often appears to treat
humans as essentially arational in that it effectively assumes that questions
of evidence and justification play no significant role in the way in which
people come to choose their beliefs. The evaluative approach, by presuming
the relevance of a particular standard of rationality to humans, often ends up
treating people as hyper-rational. This association between particular ways of
thinking about religious commitments and particular assumptions regarding
the rationality of humans seems to be based upon the failure to recognize
3
that the choice between humans being arational or hyper-rational does not
exhaust the possibilities.
When considering the evaluation of religious beliefs it is possible to engage
in two very different exercises. The first of these is to attempt to evaluate a
particular set of beliefs. This is the task traditionally undertaken by philoso-
phy of religion, of course. There is, however, a second task that cuts across
the possibilities that have been presented and which is much closer to the
aim pursued here. One can attempt to describe the evaluative processes that
are undertaken by people and which play a role in determining what kinds of
religious commitments they make. Engaging in this task only makes sense,
however, if one denies both the view of humans as arational and the view that
people are hyper-rational. If people were arational, considerations of evidence
would play no role in how they come to make any religious commitment.
If people were hyper-rational, there would be no difference between the task
of understanding how people reason about religion and the task undertaken
by philosophy of religion. To create the logical space necessary for the task
of understanding people’s thinking regarding the evidence for religion an
intermediate position is required. This is a position according to which issues
of justification do play a role in how humans come to accept particular reli-
gious commitments, but which reveals how people deploy reasoning in ways
that are constrained and idiosyncratic, ways that interact with other human
characteristics leading to surprising effects. Luckily, the empirical evidence
all points to the necessity of this third approach, as we will see in the course
of presenting an account of reason capable of dealing with such a considered
characterization of human reasoning capacities.
There is another way of thinking about the problem. Both the evaluative
and the descriptive enterprises as they have traditionally been pursued effec-
tively assume that the topic and the method of analysis have to be the same.
So, when evaluating, you only evaluate other people’s evaluations. But this
is like assuming that any conversation about philosophy is a philosophical
conversation and any conversation about religion a religious one. That kind
of confusion between the method and the topic, or the subject-level and the
object-level, is all too common, of course. A number of researchers have, for
example, recently claimed that scientific research into religion is bringing
religion and science together. While attractively reconciliatory, the proposi-
tion is sheer nonsense. One could just as well talk about criminology bringing
science together with copy-cat murders.
It is this distinction that explains why this book, although concerned with
religion and written by a philosopher, is not a philosophy of religion book.
Traditional questions regarding the existence of any of the gods that humans
have imagined over the centuries are simply not the issue here. Instead, the
4
introduction
focus is on why it is that people have deemed it reasonable to believe in a

variety of deities. This discussion will have implications for traditional philo-
sophical questions regarding religion, but they are not explored in this book.
Instead, because of its focus upon the cognitive mechanisms underlying reli-
gious commitment, this book falls much more under the recently proposed
rubric of cognitive science of religion (for introductions see Pyysiäinen &
Anttonen 2002; Slone 2006). At most, because of its focus on high-level
theoretical issues, it may be deemed to fall into the philosophy of the cogni-
tive science of religion – not a category that is particularly crowded.
Accepting that human reason is constrained and idiosyncratic, and
attempting to understand it, commits one to a naturalist approach that is
guided by empirical results coming out of the various cognitive sciences, and
which is reliant upon evolutionary explanations for human cognitive capaci-
ties (for statements of the philosophical naturalism in question see Callebaut
1993; Hooker 1995; Talmont-Kaminski 2011). However, both cognitive and
evolutionary considerations are very much taken into account by cognitive
science of religion. One could well ask what it is that is philosophical about
this book. Part of the answer is that once it is accepted that people are not
arational, it becomes necessary to deal with many of the traditional questions
that epistemology tended to ask, but in a transmogrified form. In particular,
although many of those working on cognitive approaches to religion have
acknowledged that the function of religious beliefs and practices must be
unconnected to the truth of those beliefs, the significance of this property has
not been investigated. Were it the case that people were arational, there would
be little to explore. However, people do claim that they desire to hold true
beliefs, as well as to be interested in ensuring that their attitudes are justified.
More importantly, there are good reasons for humans to seek to have accurate
descriptions of their environment, and it is quite useful for us to hold truth
as an explicit norm of belief, even if the ultimate evolutionary explanation
is purely pragmatic. Even given the limited degree to which such considera-
tions – explicit or not – play any role, we face a difficult problem in the case
of beliefs whose function is not tied to their truth. If we favour such beliefs on
the basis of their accuracy, we will end up with beliefs that are not particularly
useful. So the trick becomes to convince ourselves we are seeking accurate
beliefs while simultaneously studiously avoiding potential counter-evidence.
Such a mismatch between utility and truth is one that Plantinga (1991, 1993)
thinks can be used to argue against naturalism. It is ironic, therefore, that it is
the religious beliefs that provide the paradigmatic example of it.
The other reason why this book is philosophical in character is that I have
allowed myself the leeway to speculate in ways that might not be acceptable
for an empirical scientist. The account of religion that is presented here is (at
5
least in part) quite a high-level one in that it attempts to go quite a way beyond
the mental and cultural mechanisms that are typically focused on within cog-
nitive science of religion. Unlike traditional philosophical accounts, however,
an effort is made to ground the account in concrete results. Furthermore,
the need for additional empirical work that tests the particular claims made
here is recognized – that work having already been begun, its results to be
presented in other forums. In effect, the approach taken here assumes the
naturalist picture of the relationship between philosophy and the sciences
as constituting a pluralist research enterprise in which the theoretical and
empirical ends of the research are mutually reliant upon each other.
Outline
This book examines the relationship between reason, on the one hand, and
supernatural beliefs and practices, on the other. In this, it treats both as evolved,
cultural and cognitive phenomena. Without arguing for a false rapprochement
between reason and religion, it rejects the simple opposition between them
by developing a picture of their interrelationship as connected but competing
adaptations produced by the interaction of cognitive and cultural processes.
Falling within broadly construed cognitive science of religion, it differs
from other books in the area in its focus on the deep theoretical issues. It
is there that it makes its main contributions. Central to my argument is
the development of a dual inheritance account of religion that combines the
currently popular cognitive by-product and pro-social adaptation accounts.
Similar dual inheritance accounts have recently been put forward by Scott
Atran, Joe Henrich and Ara Norenzayan, among others. However, the
account provided here goes further in that it argues that the by-product
and adaptation accounts deal with, respectively, magic and ideology – with
religious traditions gaining their extraordinary stability from the way they
combine aspects of both those phenomena. Key to their success is how they
manage to maintain the stability of beliefs whose function is unconnected
to their truth – supernatural beliefs are naturally plausible and likely to be
communicated; they are also significantly less open to potentially destabiliz-
ing counter-evidence. Not surprisingly, maintaining the stability of religious
traditions requires cultural attitudes that conflict with the kinds of attitudes
necessary for the development of science. The overall picture developed here
is an account of the epistemic considerations that shape religious beliefs and
practices, which range from individual cognitive mechanisms, through gen-
eral functional considerations, all the way to the basic epistemic limits that
evolutionary and cognitive processes are moulded by.
6
introduction
Chapter 2 sets up the ground by elucidating an account of reason that

makes it possible to explain what has been learned about the human predi-
lection for supernatural beliefs and practices. The first step is to explain the
shortcomings of the view of reason that is still common and highly influ-
ential, even when only held implicitly. This is the view first popularized by
Enlightenment thinkers who thought of reason as opposed by what they
called superstition, and who saw this opposition as explanatory in respect to
many social and intellectual processes. Three forms in which this view persists
are then examined, starting with the idea that reason is to be closely identified
with progress, in terms of social as well as personal development. The idea
that the scientific examination of human behaviour must pursue a radically
different set of aims from non-human sciences is the second form of the view
under examination, and the idea that reason is to be identified with some
type of logic is the third. Each of these forms is criticized, but is also shown
to have some justification, which must be taken into account by any more
sophisticated approach. Ultimately, the fundamental difficulty identified with
the Enlightenment view of reason is that the view falls to Hume’s problem of
induction. This difficulty would not be so significant if it were the case that
there was no non-sceptical alternative available. It is possible, however, to see
Hume’s account of habits as providing just such an alternative. This alterna-
tive does not solve the problem but relies on a limited, fallibilist conception of
what can be expected of reason, which thereby shows how we manage to live
within the constraints identified by Hume. This bottom-up approach invites
an evolutionary understanding of reason and finds its modern-day expression
in bounded rationality theory in which heuristics play the equivalent role to
that of Hume’s habits. Turning to this account of reason provides an existing
conception of reason that fits well with what we know of human susceptibil-
ity to supernatural thinking, thereby returning the argumentation to the issue
of the relationship between reason and supernatural beliefs and practices.
The reason is that heuristics are unavoidably systematically biased, which
provides a deep explanation for why it is that human reasoning is subject to
cognitive by-products, with supernatural beliefs and practices representing a
subset of those by-products. The details of these by-products are necessarily
idiosyncratic in that they depend upon the particularities of human men-
tal mechanisms. However, the existence of cognitive by-products, including
supernatural beliefs and practices, is ultimately due to the need for human
reasoning to work within the bounds that are delineated by the considerations
first identified by Hume.
Chapter 3 concentrates upon the category of the supernatural, with the
aim of getting to grips with the basic similarities and differences between reli-
gion and magic. The first step is to examine the traditional way of defining
7
the supernatural in opposition to the natural. This view reflects the tradi-
tional Enlightenment opposition between reason and superstition that is
discussed in Chapter 2. However, it turns out to be largely unhelpful, as
well as running counter to how people actually use the term. Keeping in
mind the lessons learned from the discussion of the Enlightenment view of
reason, a very different strategy is pursued. Instead of simply attempting to
provide a relatively neutral definition, the focus is placed upon the mecha-
nisms that render beliefs about supernatural entities stable within a culture.
Taking Pascal Boyer’s (2002) idea of minimally counter-intuitive concepts as
an example, a distinction is made between two different types of beliefs on
the basis of the factors that primarily stabilize them. One group of beliefs,
the paradigmatic example of which are scientific beliefs, is primarily stabilized
by empirical considerations. The other, to which supernatural beliefs belong,
is stabilized by dint of cultural mechanisms and cognitive by-products. The
degree to which cultural and cognitive factors shape particular beliefs depends
largely on whether empirical considerations can impinge upon the content
of those beliefs. This means, however, that in the case of supernatural beliefs
it is vital for their stability that they be protected against potential empirical
counter-evidence.
The impact of empirical counter-evidence on particular beliefs in a given
culture depends upon three kinds of issues: the content of the beliefs, the
social context the beliefs find themselves in, and – finally – their methodolog-
ical context (i.e. what scientific tools are available). In the case of religious and
magical beliefs, all three of these kinds of determinants are working in favour
of severely constraining the impact of empirical factors. This suggests that
such beliefs should, in fact, be called superempirical rather than supernatural.
Importantly, the further issue of the difference between magical beliefs and
religious beliefs can also be explored in terms of the effects of limiting the
impact of empirical factors on the content of beliefs. This requires that the
focus be placed upon the purported effects of religious versus magical prac-
tices. In the case of magical beliefs, these effects are at least potentially subject
to destabilizing counter-evidence – that is not the case with beliefs that are
religious, however. The problem is that, if this way of drawing the distinction
is accepted, it turns out that all religions contain a mixture of religious as well
as magical beliefs. Nonetheless, there is significant analytical value in framing
this issue in this way. The immediate effect is that the superempirical status
of religious and magical beliefs helps to throw light on several of the features
of ritualized behaviour – the suggestion being that they result from a lack of
information regarding the effectiveness of those practices. Furthermore, this
way of thinking of the difference between religion and magic leads to the
question of how it is that religious beliefs maintain their relevance.
8
introduction
Chapter 4 focuses on the magical beliefs and practices, exploring how

these can be explained in terms of cognitive by-products. Rather than merely
considering particular mechanisms, the effort is made to arrive at a general
understanding of the conditions that shape magical beliefs and practices.
While remaining closely connected to cognitive mechanisms, this overview
is intended to bring the disparate proposed mechanisms together into an
account that is not reliant for its plausibility upon any particular mechanism.
The starting point for the discussion is provided by Malinowski’s recognition
of the way that people are much more influenced by supernatural beliefs
when in threatening conditions. There is extensive evidence for the essential
correctness of this view, with relevant results coming from a range of sciences
and research traditions. More problematic, however, is how this connection is
to be explained. Malinowski’s own explanatory story claims that magical prac-
tices calm our nerves in stressful situations. An alternative to this motivational
explanation is provided by a cognitive one, according to which magic repre-
sents a misdirected effort to control the situation. The basic problem with the
motivational explanation is that evolution does not care whether people are at
ease, and it is evolution that is the ultimate arbiter. Indeed, anxiety – just like
the other emotions – plays an important role in ensuring human survival and
any mechanism which keeps people calm in the face of danger is prima facie
maladaptive. The relative weakness of the motivational explanation becomes
clear once the cognitive explanation is explored further in terms of error man-
agement theory. This is because error management theory elegantly explains
the connection between threatening environments and magical beliefs as the
by-product of an adaptive increased sensitivity to potential causal connec-
tions. The hyperactive agency detection device and the contagion heuristic
– two by-product mechanisms that have been proposed – can be understood
as examples of the principle of error management at work. At the same time,
while error management theory forms an important part of the basis for a
cognitive by-product explanation of magical beliefs and practices, it is impor-
tant to supplement it with discussion of two further elements of the story:
an account of why supernatural explanations for the illusory causal connec-
tions become accepted, as well as an account of how magical beliefs and the
connected practices come to be stabilized within a culture. The first of these
is provided by the concept of inference to convincing explanation developed
by Heintz and Mercier, while the second calls for the notion of credibility-
enhancing displays that has been put forward by Henrich. The final piece of
the puzzle is to bring religious beliefs and practices back into the picture by
showing that, when faced with destabilizing counter-evidence, magical beliefs
can undergo reinterpretation, which renders the effects they purport no longer
subject to investigation, thereby turning these beliefs into religious ones.
9
Chapter 5 develops the discussion of religious beliefs and practices, look-

ing at the factors that make them different from magic. It does so by showing
how the superempirical status of the purported effects of religious practices is
connected to the pro-social functionality of those beliefs. This makes it pos-
sible to put forward a cohesive dual inheritance account of religion, according
to which religions work by recruiting supernatural beliefs to motivate pro-
social behaviour. The claim is that the by-product and the pro-social accounts
of religion only identify aspects of religions that they share with other social
phenomena, so that understanding the way in which religions differ from
those phenomena requires, at a minimum, combining the two accounts. As
already established, the cognitive by-product account fails to sufficiently dis-
tinguish between religions and magical beliefs, including superstitions. At the
same time, the pro-social adaptation account of religion fails to differentiate
between religions and other sets of beliefs that motivate pro-social behaviour.
The crucial point on which the dual inheritance account turns is that the
pro-social functionality of such ideologies is not connected to the truth of the
claims they make (i.e. it is non-alethic). This means, however, that ideologies,
to remain stable, must be rendered superempirical. Religions, by recruiting
supernatural beliefs, fulfil this requirement particularly well. The difficulty
religions face is how to deal with the dilemma that magical and religious
beliefs balance on either side of. While different religions deal with the prob-
lem in different ways, all tend to combine magical elements with strictly reli-
gious ones. The more successful religions tend to hold the magical elements at
some remove, drawing upon them to motivate belief in their religious claims
when possible, but disowning them when necessary.
Having brought together the cognitive by-product account of religion with
the pro-social adaptation account thanks to the concept of non-alethic func-
tionality, it becomes possible to consider why David Sloan Wilson’s version
of the pro-social account failed to make the connection. The problem lies in
Wilson’s conception of practical realism and factual realism as two competing
attitudes. This way of putting the relation between the function and accuracy
of beliefs makes it hard to appreciate how unusual ideologies are in having
non-alethic functionality and what this special status entails.
Chapter 6 deals with the phenomenon of secularization, and considers
what the dual inheritance account of religion tells us about the relationship
between reason and the supernatural. The starting point for this discussion
is the realization that secularized societies present any account of religion as
a pro-social adaptation with a significant problem due to their high levels of
social stability. Consequently, being able to show that the dual inheritance
account of religion can explain not only why secularization has occurred, but
also a number of the features of the process, serves to provide the account
10
introduction
with significant support. The explanation of secularization turns on the fact

that all adaptations only serve their function within a particular environ-
ment. Modern democracies have significantly altered the cultural environ-
ment in which religions exist. In particular, they have found ways to maintain
social stability and cohesion without recourse to religion. In this situation it
is hardly surprising that we should be witnessing the gradual atrophying of
the no-longer-necessary religious institutions. The growing heterogeneity in
religious beliefs within secularizing societies is a further concomitant of the
process begun by the loss of function. The proximate reason for secularization
appears to be the degree to which people live out their lives in security, rarely
experiencing the dangerous conditions that bring to the fore the cognitive
by-products that produce supernatural beliefs. However, because of the lack
of any fundamental change in the human cognitive system, we remain just as
susceptible to supernatural beliefs as ever. Taken together, these two consid-
erations serve to explain why belief in supernatural entities remains relatively
common, while at the same time the hold such beliefs once had upon our
behaviour appears to have lost its strength. We may still believe in luck, but
we are unlikely to carry a rabbit’s foot. We may still believe in God, but we
are unlikely to go to church.
In the end, it is necessary to return to the Enlightenment view of reason,
and to re-evaluate the way in which it presented the relationship between
reason and the supernatural. This means examining in turn each of the claims
that go into this view. Doing so shows them to be significantly misleading, yet
partly insightful. To a large degree, they are misleading in so far as they fail
to think of reason as well as supernatural beliefs and practices in sufficiently
naturalized terms. Having said that, they do manage to point towards features
of the relationship between reason and the supernatural that turn out to be
crucial to the thoroughly naturalized account that is presented here.
11
2
Superstitious reeds
Why do people find supernatural beliefs and practices attractive? Why are
religions present in all human societies? Why is it that common superstitions
remain common?1 A good answer to these questions will involve an expla-
nation of how it is that human cognitive mechanisms are shaped in such a
way that supernatural beliefs come readily to mind, seem to be confirmed
by common experiences and are passed on to others in ways that ensure
these beliefs remain stable in a culture. This kind of approach has been pur-
sued by a number of thinkers and will be part of the view developed in this
book. In this chapter, however, an attempt will be made to push the question
one step further back. Why is it, after all, that human cognitive mechanisms
are shaped in the particular fashion that makes supernatural beliefs “natu-
ral”? Why, in particular, are not humans more like the ideal reasoners of the
Enlightenment philosophes and modern rational choice theorists?2
One traditional answer that serves to demonstrate the problems with
responses to the question of why people are superstitious falls back upon the
reason/emotions dichotomy, and claims that superstitions and supernatural
beliefs in general are the product of the emotions, so that a purely rational
being would not be burdened by them. This is a fundamentally unsatisfactory
response, however. After all, if emotions are merely a burden, why do people
have them? Claiming that emotions are vestiges of humanity’s evolutionary
past does not help to answer this question at all. It merely pushes the ques-
tion back, since why should humanity’s ancestors have been thus burdened?
1. Jahoda’s (1969) Psychology of Superstition was a relatively early attempt to use modern
psychology to answer these questions. For more recent approachable explanations see Vyse
(1997) and Hood (2009).
2. The critique of Enlightenment reason developed here is a version of the critique in
Talmont-Kaminski (2007).
13
That point might not have seemed important when nonhuman animals were
considered as nothing more than brute beasts but it has to be taken very seri-
ously by anyone who holds that evolved traits must be explained in the con-
text of natural selection and that even “simple” animals are capable of highly
adaptive behaviour.
To make things worse for this traditional attitude to emotions, recent
decades have shown that emotions are far from an evolutionary remnant.
Research into the cognitive role of emotions has provided us with extensive
evidence that without them humans could not be rational at all (Damasio
1995). This explains why people are emotional, but it creates a basic problem
for anyone who hoped that by tying supernatural beliefs to emotions they
could show that supernatural beliefs have nothing to do with reason.
Although the research on emotions does inform some of the points to be
made in this chapter, the main focus is on the “big picture” conceptions of
reason, both in terms of the description of human reasoning and in terms of
the normative conception of rationality. In particular, the main aim is to show
that the view of reason that has informed much thought on the topic since
at least the times of the European Enlightenment is quite problematic. In its
stead is put forward a naturalist conception of reason, one of the advantages
of which is that it lends itself much more readily to understanding why it is
that human reasoners are generally susceptible to supernatural beliefs.
To begin it is necessary to explain the view of reason that has been inher-
ited by modern thinkers from the philosophers of the Enlightenment. This
account presented reason and superstition as a pair of basic entities, with
progress being understood in terms of the displacement of superstition from
human minds and practices by reason. While understandably attractive, this
view led to a number of consequences that proved to be problematic. Three,
in particular, are examined.
The first consequence is that reason has often been viewed as the engine
of social progress, so-called social Darwinism providing the classic example
of this attitude. The attitude is criticized on several grounds. First, if cultural
progress is understood in evolutionary terms, any notion of global progress
becomes difficult to justify. Second, history has failed to bear out the simple
picture in which reason pushes supernatural beliefs to the margins. And third,
the relationship of reason to human wellbeing is also less than completely
straightforward. Underpinning all of these problems is the tendency to reify
reason and superstition, and to treat them as forces that act in the world – a
view that no naturalist can ultimately accept.
The second consequence is to assume that the scientific efforts aimed at the
study of humans must be altogether different from those within disciplines
dealing with the “natural” world. However, just as the distinction between
14
superstitious reeds
the natural and the supernatural does not cleave a naturalist’s ontology, nor
does the distinction between the natural and the human. Examining the form
this view took with Dilthey, it is shown that while the methodologies used by
the sciences that examine humans differ from those in other sciences, these
differences are of much the same magnitude as those between any disciplines
with sufficiently different subject matters. Most definitely, it is not the case
that scientists who study humans must give up on the project of explaining
the phenomena they examine – which was Dilthey’s main contention. The
contrary point is made using the example of the recent efforts to apply evo-
lutionary theory to explaining human behaviour.
The final consequence that is considered is the attitude that reason is to be
understood in terms of some logical system, with human psychology play-
ing little or no role in the account. Out of the three modern aspects of the
Enlightenment view of reason that are considered, this idea comes under the
harshest criticism. It is argued that this aspect of the Enlightenment view
was shown to be incorrect over two and a half centuries ago by no less than
Hume’s problem of induction. That its falsehood has not been accepted by
philosophers is much more the result of them being unaware of a better alter-
native than of them having a satisfactory response.
Having criticized the traditional view of reason, it is necessary to develop a
naturalist account of reason that will then serve as the basis upon which it will
be possible to understand the relationship between reason and supernatural
beliefs. The first step in developing that account is to consider Hume’s own
discussion of “habits of the mind” as distinct from what he called reason.
Contrasting top-down and bottom-up views of reason, the Enlightenment
view is shown to fall prey to Hume’s objections due to its top-down approach.
Unlike the top-down approach, bottom-up approaches – such as the hab-
its Hume wrote about – avoid starting with universal claims. They accept
Hume’s conclusion that there is no guarantee of universal applicability of
the methods and, instead, merely build up from individual predictions; any
apparent universal applicability turns out to be indicative of ignorance con-
cerning its limitations. In this, the bottom-up view is very much in tune with
the evolutionary story of the development of human reasoning – unlike any
top-down view.
Moving beyond Hume’s views, Herbert Simon’s bounded rationality the-
ory is put forward as the modern version of such a bottom-up view. The key
step is to consider the characteristics of the heuristics that constitute human
reasoning according to the bounded rationality view. It is argued that these
characteristics are a response to the constraints identified by Hume. Or, to
put it the other way around, the epistemic limit that underpins the prob-
lem of induction shapes the fundamental characteristics of heuristics. In this,
15
euristics are like all adaptations, as they rely upon environmental conditions
h
that may change without warning.
Having put forward a bottom-up account of reasoning that is modest
enough to live within the constraints identified by Hume, it is time to con-
sider what this account has to say on the topic of supernatural beliefs. As
noted previously, the Enlightenment view had a problem explaining why peo-
ple are subject to “superstitions”. It also failed to predict the degree to which
supernatural beliefs will prove to be capable of maintaining their popularity
in the face of science and education. In both these respects, bounded rational-
ity theory is much more successful. One of the costs of using heuristics is that
they are unavoidably systematically biased. Given that many of the most basic
heuristics are common to all humans, the biases they introduce will be shared
by everyone. At the same time, one of the most popular explanations for the
human propensity to believe in supernatural entities is that such beliefs result
from cognitive by-products (i.e. they are side effects of the normal function-
ing of human cognitive systems). It appears that cognitive by-products and
systematic biases are two different ways of talking about the same phenome-
non, in which case tying bounded rationality theory to the problem of induc-
tion provides a deep explanation for supernatural beliefs.
Enlightenment reason
In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire asks whether there may be a place

that is free of all superstition. Such a place, he concludes, would be a nation
of philosophers. He is, however, quite sanguine regarding the possibility of
its existence, thinking it more likely that the influence of superstition can
only be moderated rather than eliminated. Still, this would be no bad thing,
according to Voltaire, who concludes: “In a word, less superstition, less fanati-
cism; and less fanaticism, less misery” (Voltaire [1764] 2010).
The view that reason, embodied by the philosophers, and superstition are
in conflict is one that was shared by most of the Enlightenment thinkers,
motivating them in their efforts to improve humanity and its circumstances.
The view can be found already in Francis Bacon’s aphorisms: “Neither is it to
be forgotten that in every age natural philosophy has had a troublesome and
hard to deal with adversary – namely, superstition, and the blind and immod-
erate zeal of religion” ([1620] 2010: aphorism 89).
Of course, reason had been considered a virtue – by some – since the time
of Socrates. The Enlightenment was special in that it was the first era during
which reason was raised to the status of the pre-eminent virtue, to be used in
order to fundamentally alter the world.
16
superstitious reeds
As is often the case, especially when it comes to broad, pejorative terms,

there was much disagreement as to what superstition was – the main point
of contention being to what degree religion fell under this rubric. Radical
thinkers such as Holbach (1766) and Diderot (Diderot & D’Alembert
1772) argued that all religion had to be considered this way. Most, includ-
ing Voltaire, argued for the possibility of a “natural religion” that would be
based on rational thought – the issue turning on the degree to which reli-
gious beliefs could be defended by reason. Even those who sought a natural
religion, however, were putting forward a conception of religion that was far
from the various Christian faiths that actually existed in Europe at the time.
In effect, the existing Christian religious traditions were thought by the great
majority of philosophes to be in opposition to reason.
If there was disagreement about what to think about religion, there was
even more concerning reason. The most basic disagreement was between the
rationalists and the empiricists, whose views of reason differed fundamentally
concerning the role of experience. Another debate, which will be of much
more direct significance to the argument to be developed here, concerned
the relationship between reason and the natural world. At one extreme was
the dualist view put forward by Descartes and later inherited by many of the
philosophes. For Descartes, the natural world was the world of the res extensa –
material substance – while the human mind was made of an altogether differ-
ent substance: res cogitans or mental substance. Infamously, Descartes deemed
all (non-human) animals to be made only of material substance, and therefore
incapable of either thinking or feeling. According to this view, human reason
was much more divine than mundane, the capacity for reasoning being only
shared with God and the angels.
Pascal expressed this juxtaposition between the mind and the body quite
poetically:
Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking

reed. There is no need for the whole universe to take up arms to
crush him: a vapor, a drop of water is enough to kill him. But even
if the universe were to crush him, man would still be nobler than
his slayer, because he knows that he is dying and the advantage
the universe has over him. The universe knows nothing of this.
(Pascal [1669] 2003: 64)
Yet not all thinkers of the Enlightenment shared this starkly dualist view of
the relationship between the human mind and body, with materialism becom-
ing an option that was taken up by a few. For the most part, though, mate-
rialism (as well as atheism) was more often something that Enlightenment
17
thinkers were accused of than necessarily believed in. The popularity of the
dualist view was highly significant in that it made it easy for many to think
of reason and superstition as not just in conflict with each other but as some-
thing like cosmic forces in a Manichean struggle for humanity, with historical
events being explainable in terms of this struggle. Organizations such as the
Freemasons represented this view in its most radical version, organized as they
were around the ideal of reason, but most Enlightenment thinkers shared
the tendency to reify reason to a greater or lesser degree. Thus, for example,
Condorcet could write about women (as well as men) being “governed” by
reason (Condorcet 1790). The essential point here is that reason and supersti-
tion were thought of as something that could be used to provide an adequate
explanation of other things and which did not necessarily require an expla-
nation in themselves – a view that was particularly fitting for the rationalist
philosophers and reached its epitome in the work of Berkeley (1710).
An important aspect of this view was expressed in the belief that humans
(or perhaps humanity) were capable of perfecting their rationality – this proc-
ess typically being seen as requiring that all superstition be expunged. The
author of Candide was sceptical of the degree to which this could ever be
achieved, but this was not how Voltaire thought when he was younger, nor
was it the case with Condillac (1754) or others. Indeed, Leibniz’s (1710)
assertion that we exist in the best possible world had to assume that God’s
reasoning was perfect, a perfection in which – according to Leibniz – we
must share to some degree, being God’s handiwork. Pascal’s previously quoted
thought continues in much the same vein: “All our dignity consists, then, in
thought. By it we must elevate ourselves, and not by space and time which
we cannot fill. Let us endeavour, then, to think well; this is the principle of
morality” (Pascal [1669] 2003: 64).
The various aspects of this conception of the relationship between reason
and superstition can be brought together in order to characterize a particular
view of reason:
• Reason and superstition are in conflict.

• Reason brings about human wellbeing, while superstition causes misery.
• Traditional religion is a form of superstition.
• Reason is an aspect of human nature that is separate from the physical.
• Reason and superstition are to be used to explain other entities or forces,
rather than to be explained in terms of other entities or forces.
• Reason is perfectible through the total elimination of superstition.
Perhaps no Enlightenment philosopher believed in all of these claims simulta-

neously. Yet they were quite common and, more importantly, have remained
18
superstitious reeds
connected and influential since the Enlightenment. I will therefore refer to

them jointly as the Enlightenment view of rationality – keeping in mind
that this is something of a shorthand for what is more of a family of views
that resemble each other. The various degrees to which different writers of
the Enlightenment came to accept this view could perhaps have something
to do with the tension between this view of reason and some of the other
aspects of Enlightenment thought; in particular, the empiricist focus of some
of the thinkers that would ultimately lead to strictly materialist and natural-
ist positions.
Before moving on, it would be well to ask what made these particular ideas
about rationality and superstition so influential. Apart from the way they
reflected earlier conceptions of the relationship between the mind and the
body as well as Christian ideas regarding heaven and hell, these conceptions
also fitted well with what the philosophes would have experienced. They found
themselves often at odds with religious authorities and popular supernatural
explanations, making superstition a natural adversary. They were also faced
with the need to explain the obvious behavioural differences between humans
and other animals. Finally, and at a much more fundamental level, the dual-
ism that underpinned much of this view of human reason is something that is
very natural to human minds. Paul Bloom explores this intuitive dualism by
explaining that developmental psychology has shown humans to be “natural
born dualists”:
We are dualists who have two ways of looking at the world: in

terms of bodies and in terms of souls. A direct consequence of
this dualism is the idea that bodies and souls are separate. And
from this follow certain notions that we hold dear, including the
concepts of self, identity, and life after death.
(Bloom 2004: 191)
The concept of reason as something over and above the material substance
that makes up the body is yet another notion that follows.
Understanding the cognitive and historical reasons why people found
the Enlightenment view of reason attractive should not blind us to the
more fundamental question of the degree to which this view is correct. It
should be stressed, therefore, that the evaluative question is much closer to
the main interest of this chapter, the ultimate aim of the historical analysis
being to throw light upon it. At the same time, part of the reason why the
Enlightenment view of reason has been so attractive is that it is in part cor-
rect, as will be discussed at the end of the final chapter.
19
Reason as progress
While the influence of the way the philosophes saw reason could be traced to
many of the more recent views on this and related topics, I will only consider
three that are most relevant to the questions that will be dealt with in this
book: reason as the engine of social progress, the human sciences as funda-
mentally separate from the natural sciences, and reason as logic. The claim is
not that these three views are totally incorrect but, rather, that they are sig-
nificantly flawed and misleading.
The notion of progress that the Enlightenment view of rationality embraces
could refer to individuals as well as to whole societies. In both cases, particular
entities would be seen as more enlightened and more rational to the degree
to which they had rejected superstition. The societal version came to play a
particularly significant role through Auguste Comte, who placed it at the
heart of his view of social “evolution”. He viewed this process of “evolution”
in terms of progress towards a scientific stage that would be characterized by
the use of reason in the form of science to solve all of humanity’s problems
(Comte & Bridges [1848] 2010). The idea that societies progress toward a
particular endpoint, often thought to be driven by intellectual developments,
remained popular among social theorists until the twentieth century, with fig-
ures such as Herbert Spencer and Karl Marx developing versions of this pro-
gressivist and intellectualist account of the development of human societies.
Significantly, the conception of evolution that these accounts depend upon
is incompatible with Darwinian evolutionary theory because of its progres-
sivism – evolution, Darwin insists, lacks any overall direction with progress
being only local. Until the progressivist account of social development came
to be rejected, it was felt that only the failure of certain societies to progress
towards the scientific stage required any individual explanation; changes that
seemed to lead towards a more rational social organization being explained
by the belief in general progress.
All visions of a utopian future brought about by science and technology
have had a rough time since the industrialized slaughter of the two world
wars. Still, the willingness to believe in the transformative power of reason
is alive and well. Even though it would be a rare philosopher of science who
would be willing to claim to be able to spell out the nature of scientific
progress, it would also be rare to find one who would claim that there is no
significant sense in which science is progressive. The situation with social
progress is just as highly complex, yet there are a number of measures on
which life in modern industrialized democracies appears much superior to
that available to people at any other place or time, and this life has been
made possible by scientific advances. At the same time, the shortcomings and
20
superstitious reeds
f ailures we have experienced should give us all pause. The historical record
since the Enlightenment does not allow for a simple interpretation in terms of
the growth of the unequivocally positive effects of the application of reason.
A number of humanist, atheist and sceptic organizations aim to repre-
sent Enlightenment values in today’s society. The many criticisms that have
been raised against them almost always tell us much more about those mak-
ing those criticisms than anything substantive about those who do see in
reason a central virtue. Even so, it would be unlike humans for proponents
of these views not to be subject to some of the very same illusions that the
philosophes were subject to; in particular the tendency to think in terms of a
struggle between reason and superstition (in all its forms) where the welfare
of humanity is tied unambiguously to the success of reason. This tendency
finds expression in one of the things that the physicist Nobel laureate Steven
Weinberg is claimed to have stated: “Religion is an insult to human dignity.
With or without it you would have good people doing good things and evil
people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes
religion” (Weinberg 1999).
Dan Dennett’s (2006) call for a science of religion has quite rightly attracted
loud protests from those who had already been involved in the scientific study
of religion prior to Dennett’s call (Geertz 2008). While misleading in the
apparent presumption that the science of religion had not been previously
done by anyone, Dennett’s call could still be seen as having potential value.
His primary audience consists of the very people who are modern-day pro-
ponents of something like the Enlightenment view of reason. For them, the
book may provide help in breaking a different spell from that which Dennett
was thinking of. Getting people to think of religion in terms of the evolu-
tionary and cognitive processes that underpin its various aspects should help
to make less attractive the Manichean view of the universe as the stage for a
conflict between reason and superstition. This should assist in ensuring that
people understand the very real conflict between the social forces aligned
around science and religion in a more nuanced and multifaceted manner. To
avoid reifying reason and superstition it is necessary to understand the natu-
ral processes that underpin them. Having said that, Dennett’s presentation of
recent work on religion is far from free of passages that give that category a
lot more substance than that work actually supports.
Perhaps the most relevant piece of empirical evidence that counts against
the philosophes’ identification of reason with progress is that their predictions
regarding the future of supernatural beliefs have turned out to be significantly
flawed. Reason was meant to be the engine of social progress, leading to the
elimination of superstitions. However, while the last two and a half centuries
have witnessed great scientific achievements and technological changes, the
21
phenomena the philosophes would have recognized as superstition have not

disappeared. Also, the level of education achieved in modern Western democ-
racies is something that the Enlightenment thinkers would find astounding.
Yet superstition in all its forms has proved much more tenacious than might
have been expected, and supernatural beliefs are far from eliminated.
The major change in most European countries in terms of supernatural
beliefs has taken place as part of the overall process of secularization, which
will be discussed at length in Chapter 6. Starting at various points in history,
the official churches in these countries have suffered from a gradual erosion of
support both for their institutions and for their standpoints. In some coun-
tries such as Denmark and the Czech Republic the process has proceeded far
enough to seemingly lend credence to the Enlightenment view that reason
will defeat such supernatural beliefs. However, the United States of America
provides a significant counter-example to this theory by being both highly
religious and home to many of the most significant scientific institutions in
the world. More significantly, the almost total elimination of the influence of
organized religion in a few Western societies has not been accompanied by
the elimination of folk supernatural beliefs such as common superstitions. As
Roud (2003) observes, superstitions of this sort are far less influential than
they had been previously, but they are still commonly held. What is more,
there are now numerous examples of pseudoscientific beliefs that have the
same cognitive basis as traditional superstitions and are treated quite seriously
despite a lack of evidence.
It should be noted that the topic of secularization has been very controver-
sial, with a great range of positions having been put forward regarding it in
recent times, including some that have denied the very existence of the proc-
ess or which even talk about post-secular societies (Blond 1998). Individual
intellectual and emotional attachments as well as the fundamentally different
experiences of those living in the United States as opposed to the European
Union have played a hand in making a consensus based upon the available
evidence much more difficult to achieve than in areas of research that do not
engage people on as emotional a level. Even so, societies in which religion and
common superstitions play a relatively minor role are novel phenomena. In
fact, empirical evidence indicates that European nations are at various stages
within what turns out to be a steady process of secularization. The process
follows much the same trajectory across all those societies despite the fun-
damental differences in their national histories – a highly surprising result,
which is discussed at length in the final chapter.
A further source of evidence against the Enlightenment view that reason
will erase superstition is provided by studies of individual beliefs. Were the
Enlightenment view correct it would be expected that education should lead
22
superstitious reeds
to the rejection of supernatural claims. And, indeed, this is the case. However,
as numerous studies have shown, the anti-correlation between years of educa-
tion and levels of belief in supernatural claims is relatively weak (for a review
see Vyse 1997). Taken together with the social changes wrought by seculariza-
tion, these results follow the general pattern of supernatural claims being far
less influential yet far from eliminated. This might seem to still give support
to a modified view of the conflict between reason and superstition – the view
that reason will not be sufficient to eliminate superstition but that it will
render it relatively toothless.
Something like this claim may be true – the question of the causes under-
lying the process of secularization is far from clear. However, it is important to
take into consideration an effect that largely explains the connection between
the development of science and the weakening of the hold that supernatural
beliefs have upon people. As will be discussed in Chapter 3, it is now clear
that levels of supernatural belief are very strongly influenced by perceived
threat levels, both at the social and at the individual scale. This suggests that
the connection between the rise of science and the weakening of supernatural
beliefs is indirect and actually due to the changes in living conditions that
technological progress has made possible.
This line of evidence affects the Enlightenment view of reason in three dif-
ferent ways. First, it suggests that human reason may not be so perfectible nor
superstition so eliminable as at least some philosophes hoped. Second, it sug-
gests that misery may cause supernatural beliefs so that correlations between
the two do not necessarily have to be explained in terms of supernatural
beliefs causing misery. Finally, in turning around this connection, superstition
is presented as something to be explained in terms of other social phenom-
ena, rather than as the force that drives social changes. This last point has the
further significant consequence that it opens the possibility that the category
of “superstition” as understood by the Enlightenment thinkers might not be
particularly useful when it comes to developing a proper understanding of the
phenomena. Various “superstitions” may require significantly different expla-
nations. Such a break-up of the category is typical of the way that science
comes to analyse entities that were previously treated as explanatorily basic.
The Geisteswissenschaften
The relationship between Wilhelm Dilthey’s position concerning the sta-

tus of the human sciences and the Enlightenment view of reason is perhaps
more complex than in the case of the other two positions considered here,
since Dilthey owes as much to romanticist writers as he does to Kant. This
23
is made clear when we consider that Dilthey saw his work as very much in
opposition to that of Comte and Spencer. For the purpose of this analy-
sis, however, it makes sense to focus on the similarities between it and the
views of the philosophes. If anything, his opposition to the positivists helps
to bring out how much they shared in common. The particular highly influ-
ential aspect of Dilthey’s views to consider is his claim that any scientific
attempt to examine humans would have to look radically different from the
sciences that dealt with the rest of reality, thereby reasserting exceptionalism
regarding human mental life (Dilthey 2008). To express this insight, Dilthey
distinguished between the Naturwissenschaften – the natural sciences – and
the Geisteswissenschaften – the human sciences. The most relevant difference
between the two, according to Dilthey, was that the human sciences should
focus not on explaining the causal connections behind human behaviour but
should attempt to understand life experiences.
Dilthey’s views were highly influential, coming to underpin methodology
in many social sciences throughout most of the twentieth century. Genera
tions of social scientists came to believe that humans were too complex, too
unpredictable and altogether the wrong kind of entity to attempt to derive
meaningful explanatory generalizations about their behaviour, leaving social
sciences with the task of interpretation.
A couple of points need to be made about Dilthey’s claim that the human
sciences require an altogether different methodology from the natural sci-
ences. Working in the second half of the nineteenth century, Dilthey was
reacting against attempts to create an explanatory social science, such as that
of Spencer’s progressivist sociology. Given the profound problems with that
work, it is hardly surprising that Dilthey would wish for a very different sci-
ence of the human; Spencer’s attempts were based upon a false view of his-
tory and lacked the methodology sufficient to deal with the particularities
of human behaviour. Nonetheless, the path that Dilthey blazed ultimately
turned out to be something of a dead end. During the twentieth century it
was the sciences that turned their back on Dilthey’s call for a focus on under-
standing to the detriment of explanation that had the greatest long-term suc-
cess. Consider, for example, the progress made by cognitive psychology and
the other sciences of cognition, which have made serious inroads into explain-
ing human behaviour in terms of a plethora of mental mechanisms. With
the rapid development of neurobiology these mechanisms are now coming
to be further explored in terms of the underlying brain structure. None of
the human sciences that have stayed true to Dilthey’s view of a distinction
between the natural and the human sciences have achieved anything like that.
It is over the last few decades that particularly significant changes have
taken place in terms of the extent to which Dilthey’s distinction is honoured
24
superstitious reeds
by the sciences that study humanity. The 1970s witnessed the rapid appear-
ance of a variety of approaches that seek to use methods and theories deriving
from the biological sciences to study human behaviour in all its complexity.
With a century of methodological development since the times of Spencer
and a much improved understanding of the underlying evolutionary proc-
esses, these approaches have made serious inroads into doing exactly that
which Dilthey thought impossible (i.e. providing insightful explanations of
human behaviour). There is now a broad spectrum of different theoretical and
methodological approaches that seek to explain human behaviour in evolu-
tionary terms (surveyed by Laland & Brown 2002). These approaches in vari-
ous ways all reject the fundamental divide between culture and nature whose
existence Dilthey’s distinction must assume in order to make sense. Cultural
processes are just a type of natural process, with the dual inheritance theory
of Richerson and Boyd (2005) perhaps going the furthest in integrating cul-
ture with biology by explicating how biological and cultural evolutionary
processes interact with one another to shape human cognition and behaviour.
Vital to this rejection of a fundamental divide between humans and the
rest of reality is a bottom-up approach to explaining human cognition. Niko
Tinbergen (1963) famously claimed that to provide a complete evolutionary
explanation of any trait it is necessary to answer four basic questions:
• What is the mechanism underlying the trait?

• How does the trait develop?
• What is the current function of the trait, if any?
• What is the evolutionary history that led to the appearance of the trait?
In the case of human cognition, a proper answer to that very last question
would require showing how even the most advanced features of human cog-
nition have evolved from the much simpler cognitive mechanisms possessed
by our ancestral species, going all the way back to simple single-cell life-
forms that only exhibited rudimentary behaviour involving moving towards
or away from basic stimuli such as light or local concentrations of particular
chemicals. At this point only a rough and incomplete map of this evolution-
ary path can be provided. Nonetheless, it shows that we could “get here from
there” – that human cognition is very much to be explained in natural terms
that fit human cognitive abilities into the context of the broader evolution-
ary landscape.
This is not to say that there are no differences between humans and other
animals, of course. Clearly, the cognitive abilities possessed by us are sig-
nificantly different from those of any other animal we care to think about.
However, spelling out the details has turned out to be a lot more difficult than
25
might have been thought even recently. For example, while the existence of
culture used to be thought a uniquely human characteristic, it is now recog-
nized that a number of non-human animal species show evidence of culture
(Laland & Galef 2009). The cultures those animals possess are rudimentary
compared to the byzantine cultural complexities that humans thrive within
but, even so, we are forced to be much more careful in spelling out what
precisely makes us different. Work in comparative ethology has been trying
to achieve just this goal, but with a totally different set of basic assumptions
from those that Dilthey would have us accept. It may be that the differences
between humans and other animals entail that different methods of study
need to be employed when looking at humans. But, then, you also do not
use the same methods to study songbirds in the jungle as you employ to
learn about ant colonies. The differences between such methodologies are at
a much lower level, however, from those that Dilthey envisioned. This is evi-
denced by the fact that exactly the same four questions get to be asked, and
potentially answered, regarding human behaviour as the behaviour of any of
the other animal species we might choose to investigate.
Most interestingly, current research seems to be pointing towards human
uniqueness being not so much due to general cognitive capabilities but,
rather, underpinned by the specific cognitive abilities that allow us to coop-
erate in terms of the actions we undertake as well as in terms of how we think
through problems. Tomasello puts it the following way:
As compared with their nearest great ape relatives, who all live
in the vicinity of the equator, humans occupy an incredibly wide
range of environmental niches covering almost the entire planet.
To deal with everything from the Arctic to the Tropics, humans
have evolved a highly flexible suite of cognitive skills and motiva-
tions for modifying the environments in adaptive ways. But these
are not individual cognitive skills that enable them to survive
alone in the tundra or rain forest, but rather they are cooperatively
based social-cognitive skills and motivations that enable them to
develop, in concert with others in their cultural groups, crea-
tive ways of coping with whatever challenges may arise. Humans
have evolved not only skills of individual intentional action and
cognition but also skills and motivations for sharing intentions
and cognition with others in collaborative activities of all kinds.
(Tomasello 2010: 42)
It should be clear that this kind of work hits right at the heart of the
Enlightenment view that human reason is to be seen as in some significant
26
superstitious reeds
sense separate from the physical aspects of human existence or, indeed, of
reality in general.
Reason as logic
It is hardly surprising that philosophical positivism also inherited aspects of

the Enlightenment view of reason. The account of reason developed within
early-twentieth-century philosophy, however, was so idealized that it could no
longer be comfortably located within the confines of the human mind. Due to
the realization that human cognitive abilities are frail, logical positivism came
to view rationality as a norm that should be considered completely independ-
ently of human psychology. Human cognition could at best be in agreement
with this norm to a greater or lesser degree, rather than being seen as defini-
tional of it. The original proponent of this anti-psychologism was, of course,
Gottlob Frege (1884), but the view was central to much of analytical philoso-
phy during the twentieth century, only coming under sustained critique with
the ascendance of naturalist positions at the end of the century. It is also in this
form that the view came to be explicitly tied to the idea that formal logic eluci-
dates the norms that thought must follow in order to be rational. It is instruc-
tive to compare the writing of C. S. Peirce (1877), who could write that the
alembic is a logical machine, with the purely formalized conception of reason
of Carnap’s ([1928] 2002) Aufbau. With the development of a variety of formal
tools, this view of reason as logic has made it possible to put forward a number
of explicit glosses on the concept of a perfectly rational being. One particularly
influential example of these is the Homo economicus of rational choice theory.
Breaking reason away from the human mind in this way left the problem
of describing precisely what it was that the human mind engaged in. This
descriptive project was taken up by many but the approach of most inter-
est here is that originally pursued by Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky
(Tversky & Kahneman 1974). Their work in the last few decades of the
twentieth century lay the groundwork for the heuristics and biases approach
which explores human decision making in terms of simple rules of thumb
(i.e. heuristics). Their elegant examples, such as that of Linda the feminist
bank worker, have served as a catalyst for much discussion and development
in our understanding of human reasoning. As Kahneman and Tversky always
stress, heuristics systematically differ in their assessments from the results that
would be obtained using the kinds of formal reasoning such as maximization
of expected utility that they treat as normative.
Even though the heuristics and biases approach helped to partly fill the
psychological lacuna left by the idealization of reason, it still had the problem
27
that people do sometimes use the kinds of reasoning Kahneman and Tversky
saw as normative. In recent years Kahneman has sought to deal with this
problem by developing with Shane Frederick a type of dual process account
of human reasoning (Kahneman & Frederick 2002), similar to those put for-
ward by several other researchers (including Stanovich & West 2000; Evans
2008). According to Kahneman and Frederick, heuristics-based reasoning
is an evolutionarily old type of mental process shared with other animals
while logical reasoning is a recent development that is singularly human. The
approach has a number of obvious attractions. Yet it will be argued here that
it is a fundamentally mistaken position, nonetheless.
The obvious approach to juxtapose Kahneman’s work against is that of
Gerd Gigerenzer. Indeed, later on in the chapter much use will be made of the
work of not just Gigerenzer but also of Herbert Simon and William Wimsatt,
both of whom have pursued the same basic approach as Gigerenzer. At this
point, however, it is important to consider a general critique of the view that
reason can be understood in terms of a decontextualized logic. A variety of
authors have criticized something like this view of reason. A particularly clear
formulation is to be found in Harold Brown’s (1988) critique of what he calls
the classical model of rationality. He characterizes this model as constituted
by three characteristics (ibid.: 5). First, the results of rational thought must be
universal in that, given the same information, everyone reasoning rationally
will arrive at the same conclusion. Second, they must follow by necessity from
the available information – the universality of the results is not due to coin-
cidence or some factor outside of the reasoning process. Finally, the rational-
ity of the results is determined by whether they conform to the appropriate
rules. If we consider the example of maximizing expected utility we can see
how it fits this model. Given a particular set of known utilities and outcome
probabilities, anyone who seeks to maximize expected utility will necessar-
ily arrive at precisely the same recommended course of action for the simple
reason that it follows logically from the available information and the axioms
of the theory.
Brown criticizes this view of rationality as requiring foundations but being
unable to provide them:
On the classical model of rationality, reasons are provided by the

information we begin with, along with the rules that establish
the connection between this information and the proposition
believed. But as soon as the model is put this starkly, two ques-
tions arise – or, rather, the same question arises in two contexts:
on what basis do we select the information from which to begin,
and on what basis do we select our rules? (Ibid.: 38)
28
superstitious reeds
Thus, for example, how should we justify the choice of rules to be used? It
cannot be justified on the basis of those rules as we could construct a self-
justifying set of rules that contradict the rule we do wish to use – as seen in
the example of counter-inductive rules justifying the use of counter-inductive
rules. However, choosing the rules on any other basis would be irrational
given that, on the classical model, to be rational is to use the rules.
This dilemma is more than a little reminiscent of a somewhat earlier cri-
tique of the Enlightenment view of reason. Using modern terminology, that
critique can be expressed in terms of the choice between induction being
justified using a deductive or an inductive argument. Clearly inductive rea-
soning cannot be justified using an inductive argument as this would be a
circular justification. However, it also cannot be justified using a deductive
argument as that would entail showing that necessarily “the course of nature
continues always uniformly the same”, whereas uniformity of nature is only
contingent. This critique of inductive reasoning is, of course, David Hume’s
famous ([1739–40] 1985) problem of induction.
Hume’s problem is quite fatal to the Enlightenment view of reason. Not
only does Hume show that, by its own lights, reason understood in this man-
ner is unable to justify the inductive reasoning that constitutes a major part of
what reason is about. He also shows that on this basis it must be impossible to
differentiate between good inductive inferences and the many non-deductive
inferences that are in no way reasonable. Indeed, it is possible to argue that
Hume’s problem also affects our ability to justify our use of deductive reason-
ing, rendering futile Popper’s (1959) attempt to retreat to the safer ground
of deduction. As George Couvalis (2004) has argued, the epistemic grounds
people have for thinking that we are able to effectively use deductive rea-
soning must be inductive, making our justification for the use of induction
epistemically prior to our justification for the use of deduction. With these
problems foremost in mind, claims that reason is to be identified with logic
become somewhat less than convincing.
Yet, even though Hume’s original critique of reason was published in the
mid-eighteenth century, most philosophers have gone on assuming that there
must be a solution to the problem. And there is some justification for doing
this. If Hume’s assessment was correct and did apply to human reasoning then
it would seem to be miraculous if human inductive inferences turned out to be
accurate. This might be a problem for realists when it comes to future inductions
but it presents a problem for the sceptics when it comes to past inductions. After
all, we appear to have a long record of overwhelming success in using inductive
inference. This is not enough to justify using induction, of course, but it does
mean that the inductive sceptic is potentially in as much of a bind as the realist.
There is a third way to react to Hume’s argument, however.
29
Good habits
Having put forward his problem, Hume ([1739–40] 1985) goes on to explain
that, even so, people do have certain “habits of the mind” that are formed
under the influence of experience and which mean that people do come to
anticipate events. Hume’s use of habits can be understood in two ways. It
can, first, be understood as a sceptical response to the problem. On this inter-
pretation, Hume is merely pointing out the undeniably limited power of
philosophical arguments – even though he had shown that induction does
not work, he knew full well that people would continue to make predictions
and other inferences that could not be justified by deductive reasoning. Of
course, if this sceptical interpretation is correct then it leaves Hume with the
question of what to do with our apparent memories of seemingly miraculous
past predictive success. The second possible interpretation of Hume’s habits is
much more interesting, however. A naturalist take on habits interprets Hume
as doing two things. On the one hand, as critiquing the Enlightenment view
of reason, or something very close to it. On the other, however, as saying that
humans are capable of reasoning about the future but that this reasoning
is not properly captured by the Enlightenment view as this reasoning does
manage in some way to live with the problem that Hume identified. Not by
solving it but by merely finding a means of coping with it that makes sense
of our knowledge-seeking activities.
What Hume’s actual view was on this question is of great historical inter-
est and his writings can be examined in order to try to decide that issue.
However, the issue that is of significance in the current inquiry is which of
these views is correct in and of itself, rather than which accurately represents
Hume’s own predilections. It is in those terms that I will argue that the natu-
ralist approach is the one to take (although I do tend to think that Hume
would concur). Arguing for the naturalist approach requires considering what
brought about the downfall of the view of reason that Hume criticized, as
well as of its twentieth-century descendant that Brown objected to. This will
then lead directly into a discussion of how it is that human reasoning actually
manages to cope with the problem Hume pointed out. This discussion will
show that what Hume actually achieved was to identify a basic limitation that
shapes cognition as well as evolution, and that ultimately helps to answer the
question about the existence of superstitions with which this chapter opened.
The argument between the rationalists and the empiricists as to the nature
of evidence has already been mentioned. One of the ways of putting the
main difference between their views is by contrasting the bottom-up view of
evidence possessed by the empiricists with the top-down view the rationalists
preferred. By this comparison I am referring to the way that according to the
30
superstitious reeds
empiricists our view of the world was built up from countless little pieces of
evidence that slowly added up to the overall big picture whereas the ration-
alists felt that our knowledge of the world rested upon a single key piece of
evidence, or a small set of such pieces, from which the remainder of what we
could know followed to a greater or lesser degree.
A very similar distinction between top-down and bottom-up views can be
made concerning reasoning. The top-down view holds that there is some-
thing like a single universal rule or principle which is necessary to derive a
general picture of rationality. So long as this basic principle is justified, every
thing else about rationality follows. Laplace’s demon provides the epitome
of this view:
We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of

its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain
moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all
positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect
were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would
embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies
of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intel-
lect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past
would be present before its eyes. (Laplace [1820] 1995: 4)
The view that Hume critiques is precisely such a top-down view, with the
principle of the uniformity of nature playing the key role in both justifying
and distinguishing all rational inductive inferences. As such, his critique can
be understood as pointing out that the empiricists were insufficiently empiri-
cist about rationality. What would a bottom-up, empiricist view of rational-
ity look like in outline, however? It would need to start with something like
individual inferences, Hume’s habits.
If we first consider the justification side of Hume’s problem, the bottom-
up approach to the issue is to first point out that the sceptical argument
comes, in an important sense, too late. People are forced to make decisions
by the sheer fact of their existence but the sceptic cannot offer a strategy to
pursue in the making of such decisions – a passive acceptance of what will be
is a decision just like any other. The same point can be made even if we just
consider people’s (potentially false) beliefs rather than their objective situa-
tion. Given that we have a set of beliefs that includes the belief that we are
forced to make decisions, accepting the kind of global scepticism that might
seem to follow from Hume’s problem does not provide a satisfactory solution
to the practical problem we believe we face. Furthermore, the sceptic cannot
even claim to be standing on the high ground due to the problem of what to
31
say about past inferential success once one does accept the sceptical position.
This means that, although the Humean sceptic may well be correct, we have
no choice but to act as if the sceptic was wrong. The kind of pragmatic justi-
fication of inductive inferences offered by this sort of argument is quite weak;
definitely much weaker than what the rationalists would have hoped for.
This does not, by itself, tell us which inferences to make, of course. The
problem here is not as great as the top-down view would have it, however.
The inferences that are made do not have to be correct universally to be use-
ful. It is merely sufficient that they be adequately accurate in the instances
we use them. Our lack of a universally broad base of empirical evidence from
which to derive such inferences is neatly matched by the limited range of
their application. We do not have to know that all bread is nourishing always
and everywhere – only that it is reasonable to assume that the loaf in front of
us will nourish us. This assumption may well be incorrect, of course. But, as
already noted, we are forced to make substantive assumptions about what the
world outside of our experience is like.
The bottom-up view of rationality invites an evolutionary perspective, and
pursuing it helps to see how the identification side of Hume’s problem is cut
down to size when approached this way. It could be said that the simplest
life-forms that alter their behaviour depending upon stimuli have prospered
because they had found themselves in environments in which the mecha-
nisms that control their behaviour lend a selective advantage. For example,
the paramecium is able to find local sugar concentrations by simply alternat-
ing between swimming forwards and tumbling, depending on whether it is
currently moving up a sugar-concentration gradient (Campbell 1974). The
match between stimulus and behaviour is, at its base, caused by the underly-
ing physical processes. It may be that there are environments in which the
paramecium’s strategy fails – for example if the form of sugar present in the
water is not one that the paramecium can metabolize. Also, a more complex
response to the environment may be possible where the environment has
varied predictably in the past. However, the basic point is that, over evolu-
tionary history, the bet that the environment fits the behavioural response
has turned out correct in a sufficient number of cases for the paramecium
to survive. The force that drives the bottom-up response to Hume’s problem
is evolution, with both evolution and reason sharing a number of similari-
ties due to them being processes of discovery constrained by what is possible
given the problem.
It is important to consider that there are countless clear examples of envi-
ronments that have changed in ways that meddle with previously successful
behavioural responses, in much the way that Hume feared. Sea tortoises hatch
on moonlit nights in order that they can use the light reflecting on the waves
32
superstitious reeds
to guide them to the water. This simple habit, however, fails when humans
build beachside homes and insist on lighting their surrounds, thereby draw-
ing the baby tortoises up the beach and further away from the water (Salmon
& Witherington 1995). Indeed, as is well known by biologists, such changes
in the environment may well be caused by the organisms themselves. For this
reason, among others, evolutionary change is progressive at most only locally.
This, again, is a price paid for having to function within the constraints iden-
tified by Hume. The kind of predictability necessary to escape them is simply
not up for grabs.
It may well be argued that what is true of the evolutionarily driven proc-
esses and the simple behavioural responses of the “lower animals” simply does
not apply to human reason. A naturalist view of reason denies this, of course,
but something more is necessary to give reason for thinking that drawing
this kind of connection is appropriate. The best way to do so in the context
of a discussion of Hume’s problem is to show how even the very epitome of
human reason – science itself – has all the hallmarks of the kind of bottom-up
development that we have been looking at.
One of the main achievements of thinkers such as Thomas Kuhn (1962)
was to rid philosophy of science of the assumption that the rationality of sci-
ence must be underwritten by a monolithic scientific method. In some cases
rejection of that top-down view was replaced by various sceptical positions.
However, many philosophers of science have retained a more positive view.
This has required several changes from the previous approach to scientific
methodology. The first is an awareness of the historical development of sci-
ence, very much mirroring the historicity of evolutionary biology. Another
change has been a focus on the different methodologies used by the various
scientific disciplines in order to get at the particular phenomena those disci-
plines study. As a result, even scientific realists are often willing to talk about
the limited scope of existing scientific approaches and theories.
Two kinds of examples from science are particularly enlightening. On the
level of scientific theories, we can consider Newtonian mechanics, which,
when it was originally discovered, was thought to be adequate to describe the
motion of all objects, no matter how small or how fast. With the revolution-
ary discoveries that Einstein and others made roughly a hundred years ago,
it was found that Newton only managed to describe the motion of relatively
slow-moving, medium-sized objects of the sort that most human experience
deals with. This is a good example of science discovering that particular sci-
entific inferences have a certain limited applicability. Similarly, recent work
in physics seems to indicate that the four forces that are currently thought to
underlie all physical interactions have not always had their current form, hav-
ing instead become individuated at some time after the Big Bang.
33
The limited scope of the theories is mirrored on the level of scientific

methodologies in the variety of specific methods used to obtain useful data
about the particular phenomena under investigation. The development of
the double-blind method, with its basis in an understanding of the highly
suggestible nature of human psychology, provides a good example of this.
On the one hand, the double-blind method is only appropriate when testing
phenomena significantly affected by the beliefs the subjects hold concern-
ing the experiment. On the other, an understanding of the ways in which
experimenters can affect those attitudes is necessary to know that special care
is needed in the first place.
In both the evolutionary and the scientific context, the basic point is that
the development has been bottom-up both in terms of the evidence collected
and the very reasoning applied. The empiricists were wrong to think of the
human mind as a tabula rasa, but only because their perspective was not broad
enough. From the evolutionary perspective, life has been a tabula rasa in two
different but closely connected senses. It is not just that we started off not
knowing what the world was like; we did not even know how to investigate it.
From this naturalist point of view, the problem of induction is not so
much a problem to be solved but a basic “boundary condition” that shapes
both evolution and reasoning. As such, the bottom-up response is not a solu-
tion to the problem but simply how life copes, managing to exist despite it.
Better heuristics
We have sketched some of the basic consequences of taking the natural-

ist response to the problem of induction. We had also seen earlier that the
account of rationality that is still very influential within analytical philosophy
falls prey to this problem. It remains to ask whether there is a properly natu-
ralist conception of rationality that exhibits the kind of bottom-up approach
I have been arguing for and to ultimately show how supernatural beliefs are
a predictable product of such rationality.
Bounded rationality theory – the conception that I will argue best serves
our desiderata – was originally put forward by Herbert Simon (1947, 1955,
1996). Key to it were three concepts that will need to be compared with the
Kahneman position:
• The recognition that human cognitive abilities are always limited and
that this has fundamental consequences for cognition. In effect, accord-
ing to Simon, the Laplacean Demon provided neither a useful model of
cognition nor a relevant standard for it to be compared to.
34
superstitious reeds
• This meant that humans are forced to use cognitive strategies, or, to use
Simon’s term, “heuristics” which satisfice rather than optimize. In other
words, human cognition is not aimed at obtaining the best possible
result but, merely, a result that is deemed to be adequate.
• Finally, the view that humans are capable of simplifying the cognitive
problems they have to solve by making use of the features of their envi-
ronment that are reliably present. The price paid for this approach is
that heuristics have an applicability that is limited to the context in
which the necessary features are present, and fail outside of it.
Simon’s original work on bounded rationality has been extended in two direc-
tions in recent years. Gerd Gigerenzer (Gigerenzer & Todd 1999) has worked
on detailed models of particular heuristics that are backed with psychological
evidence showing that people do make use of them, as well as with computer
simulations that demonstrate the effectiveness of these heuristics. At the same
time, William Wimsatt (2007) has worked to develop the theoretical under-
pinnings for bounded rationality. Without directly considering the relevance
of the problem of induction, both Wimsatt and Gigerenzer explicitly juxta-
pose bounded rationality against the Enlightenment view of reason. Thus, for
example, Wimsatt argues against what he thinks are the still current “myths
of LaPlacean omniscience”, while Gigerenzer and Goldstein write: “This
Enlightenment view that probability theory and human reasoning are two sides
of the same coin crumbled in the early nineteenth century but has remained
strong in psychology and economics” (Gigerenzer & Goldstein 1996: 650)
Wimsatt (2007: 345) places heuristics squarely within an evolutionary pic-
ture by presenting them as “problem-solving specializations of a broader class
of adaptive tools”. He makes very clear the bottom-up nature of the view of
reason that results, comparing evolution to a “backwoods mechanic, con-
stantly fixing and redesigning old machines and fashioning new ones out of
whatever comes easily to hand” (ibid.: 10). In the context of understanding
the relationship between a naturalist view of reason and a naturalist view of
supernatural beliefs Wimsatt makes a further key contribution. Gigerenzer
has a general conception of what heuristics are but mostly focuses upon indi-
vidual examples of heuristics – a task of significant worth in itself. Wimsatt,
however, spells out a list of properties that he thinks are shared by all heuris-
tics. The significance of this list is that it provides a concrete but very general
understanding of heuristics. This makes it possible to consider how it is that
bounded rationality is an account of the bottom-up rationality necessary to
cope with Hume’s problem.
Wimsatt (2007: 345–6) lists six properties (while making clear that the
list may need to be extended). We will discuss each in turn, as well as their
35
significance for a bottom-up view of rationality. According to Wimsatt, heu-

ristics are:
• Fallible – even when used properly, heuristics do not guarantee that

the result they produce is the correct one. In this, heuristics reveal their
inductive nature. Whereas deductive reasoning must lead to true con-
clusions if the premises used are true, inductive reasoning makes no
such promise. Given that heuristics are fallible, the problem of induc-
tion is clearly relevant to them.
• Frugal – unlike Laplace’s demon, heuristics assume limited cognitive
resources. They are intended to achieve a satisfactory result using the
minimum resources. While being frugal does not by itself deal with
Hume’s problem, it is necessary in order to understand how human
cognitive systems manage to navigate through what is a very complex
reality.
• Systematically biased – being fallible, heuristics produce errors. However,
the errors they produce are not random. Each such bias is the price of
frugality – it results from the systematic mismatch between the com-
plex reality and the simplified representation assumed by the heuristic.
Systematic biases, because of their systematicity, are easier to counter-
act than random error. An archer who consistently hits to the right of
the bull’s eye has a much easier job of improving their aim compared to
an archer whose shots scatter all over the target. At the same time, the
systematicity of the biases produced by heuristics also means that they
can generate much more significant side effects – the point that will lead
us back to the discussion of supernatural beliefs.
• Problem-transformative – heuristics take problems that for some reason,
such as their complexity, are too difficult to solve directly and turn them
into problems that are soluble given the available resources. It is this
that makes it possible for heuristics to be frugal.
• Purpose-relative – part of the reason why heuristics can afford to take
certain liberties with reality is that they are only intended to be used
for particular purposes. On the one hand, this allows them to take into
account the qualities that the required solution must have in order to
be satisfactory. For example, a quicker heuristic can be often used when
only a rough estimate is required. On the other hand, being purpose-
relative, the heuristics only have to work in the kinds of circumstances
in which they are likely to be applied.
• Descended from other heuristics – new heuristics are commonly developed
by modifying existing ones to better serve a new purpose or to work in a
new environment. Since they are a subclass of adaptations or, perhaps,
36
superstitious reeds
just another way of thinking about adaptations, it is hardly surprising

that heuristics should be the product of such tinkering. Indeed, it is
necessary that it be possible for new heuristics to be developed in this
manner if the bounded rationality approach be capable of providing a
bottom-up account of reason.
Key to many of the properties that Wimsatt lists, and a potential addition
to his list, is context-dependence. Heuristics make assumptions about the
context in which they are going to be applied. It is thanks to making these
assumptions that they can be frugal, as they can build that assumption into
their structure, implicitly or explicitly, thereby simplifying the problem to be
solved. An illustration will help to understand this vital point. As one exam-
ple of how people use heuristics, Gigerenzer (Gigerenzer & Goldstein 1996)
discusses how people judge the relative size of pairs of cities. Typically, when
someone has only heard of one of the cities in the pair, they assume it to be
the larger of the two. This heuristic makes the assumption that the person
using it is more likely to know the larger cities in the sample they are provided
with. As Gigerenzer has shown, this heuristic appears to work better when
people use it to judge the relative size of cities from a country other than
their own – the obvious reason being that many people know nearly all the
cities in their own countries, making the heuristic much less useful. Another
potential problem for the heuristic is when size and prominence do not go
hand in hand, as is the case with some national capitals such as Australia’s
Canberra and West Germany’s pre-reunification capital of Bonn. So, it is pos-
sible to predict that one bias of this heuristic will be to overestimate the size
of national capitals.
Simon uses a famous metaphor to get at this property of heuristics:
“Human rational behavior is shaped by a scissors whose two blades are the
structure of task environments and the computational capabilities of the
actor” (Simon 1990: 7). So, one aspect of the context-sensitivity of heuris-
tics is the cognitive resources available for their use. This is the flip side of
their frugality. The other aspect of their context-sensitivity is somewhat more
complex. It includes the particulars of the environment in which they are
generally used, where those particulars can be assumed in order to simplify
the task. It also includes the particulars of the purpose for which they are
used, which determines which heuristics will satisfice the needs of the organ-
ism using them.
Another way of putting the point that heuristics are context-sensitive is
by saying that they are limited. In this, they are very much unlike the classi-
cal view of reason that Brown writes about or, for that matter, the idealized
Enlightenment view of reason that Hume was arguing against. This is vital
37
as it is because of their modest aims that heuristics succeed where idealized

reason failed. The principle of the uniformity of nature would have a global
reach, and so its failure invites a global scepticism. Heuristics only assume
local uniformities that may disappear over time, just like the environments
that support particular species. Their limited failures only invite limited scep-
ticism. Their limited successes, however, pragmatically justify a limited and
fallible optimism. So, where the Enlightenment view of reason failed because
it tried to work across all situations, heuristics succeed thanks to their very
modest aims.
The bounded rationality approach would be in serious trouble if the lim-
ited scope of heuristics was all there was to it. It would be able to provide only
the “bottom” of the bottom-up explanation of reason. Given that any cogni-
tive system will, on the bounded rationality approach, consist of a finite set of
heuristics, it will also have a limited set of capabilities. To account for reason
fully it is necessary to also consider how it is that the scope of what reason can
achieve can be extended. Doing so, however, requires that the account moves
from considering individual heuristics to a discussion of the way that the vari-
ous heuristics that people rely upon are organized in relation to each other
and, crucially, how novel heuristics are developed and integrated in a way
that ensures they are applied in the appropriate circumstances. Admittedly,
this element of the overall account of bounded rationality is less developed
than one might wish at this point, with Simon and Wimsatt both having
done important work in this area but without having provided anything like
a complete account. Having said that, it appears that much of value can be
carried over from what has been learned by evolutionary biologists concern-
ing evolutionary processes.
The ultimate justification for drawing upon the lessons of evolution is that
both evolution and reasoning are bottom-up responses to the basic limitation
identified by Hume. Key to these responses is not just that the capabilities
of reasoning and of evolved systems in general do exhibit particular limita-
tions. Just as important is that both evolutionary and reasoning processes are
open-ended, in the sense that they can over time produce novel capabilities,
extending the bounds of what is possible for the systems in question. Wimsatt
points to this very trait in his discussion of the way that heuristics often are
descended from earlier heuristics.
Hume did not show that inductive reasoning cannot work, only that there
can be no justification for thinking that it always will. The bounded ration-
ality approach to reason recognizes this fundamental problem and explains
how it is that reasoning explores various environments in order to identify
those in which inductive inferences (i.e. heuristics) do produce worthwhile
results. Even when such areas are identified, there is no claim made that the
38
superstitious reeds
inferences will necessarily continue to function in the future. Only that, given
the unavoidable need to make decisions, it is necessary to assume that they
will go on functioning for what is, quite precisely, the foreseeable future.
One significant consequence of this view is that, if correct, it implies that
evolutionary processes are the only means by which reasoning can come about
– other kinds of reason having being shown as impossible by Hume’s argument.
This is a consequence Hume would have almost certainly gladly consented to.
Heuristics and by-products
The aim thus far in this chapter has been to show the shortcomings of the
Enlightenment view of reason and to argue that a bottom-up account of rea-
son such as is provided by bounded rationality theory is much more success-
ful. Two main lines of argument have been pursued. The most fundamental
question has been that of the significance of the problem of induction, in
the context of which the bottom-up approach has been proposed not as a
solution but as a means of managing within the constraints identified by the
problem. The question that is of more direct relevance to the issues to be
discussed later in the book, however, is that of how the two different views
of reason manage to explain the way in which humans appear to be readily
susceptible to supernatural beliefs, even in our modern society.
As we have already seen, the Enlightenment view does not fare well here.
The development of science has not managed to displace supernatural beliefs
to anything like the degree the philosophes expected. While in many European
societies neither religion nor common superstitions play anything like the
role they used to, supernatural beliefs remain the norm rather than the
exception. At the same time the United States, which was a creation of the
Enlightenment era, remains very much an outlier among developed nations
in terms of high levels of religious commitment. What is more, as will be dis-
cussed in the next chapter, much of the change appears to have more to do
with transformations in living conditions than directly with increased levels of
education or developments in scientific understanding. Given these problems
with the Enlightenment view of reason, what is it precisely that a naturalist
view of reason gets us? To understand that, it is necessary to consider the
empirical research into why humans believe in supernatural entities. This is
exactly what could be expected of an approach that seeks to explain reason
and “superstition” in terms of natural phenomena.
Without going into the details that will be explored in later chapters, two
main kinds of evolutionary explanations for religious and similar beliefs have
been developed over the last couple of decades. The first of these explains
39
supernatural beliefs as a by-product of the normal functioning of human cog-

nitive systems. The second argues that religions have functioned as a means
for motivating pro-social behaviour. Of the two theories, it is the cognitive
by-product approach that is of more immediate relevance to the naturalist
account of reason as it is this theory that deals directly with the cognitive sub-
strate of supernatural beliefs. According to the cognitive by-product account,
the human cognitive system produces numerous by-products, some of which
render supernatural beliefs particularly likely to be retained and passed on
to other people. In effect, if this explanation is correct, these cognitive by-
products are responsible for the continued popularity of supernatural beliefs.
The Enlightenment view of reason has a hard time explaining why it is
that human cognitive systems produce by-products. It can talk about how
people fail to completely embody the ideal of rationality, but this adds up to
not much more than acknowledging that the view fails to describe the status
quo. The best response available to someone who wishes to retain something
of the traditional view of reason is to go down the route taken by Kahneman
– describing human reasoning in terms of heuristics and biases while retain-
ing the traditional view for the normative question of what it means for
something to be rational. As we will see, this kind of approach owes all of its
success to heuristics and none to the view inherited from the philosophes. To
see that this is the case, however, it is necessary to first consider how bounded
rationality deals with cognitive by-products.
Given the elements of that theory that have already been set up, the answer
is almost trivial – cognitive by-products reflect systematic biases. Given that
on the bounded rationality view human reasoning consists in the use of heu-
ristics and heuristics inevitably produce biases, it must be the case that the
human cognitive system will produce by-products. Of course, from the basic
bounded rationality theory it could not be predicted that these by-products
will result in the susceptibility of human cognizers to supernatural beliefs.
Far more detailed information about the nature and use of human cognition
is necessary to determine why at least some of the by-products take on this
form. For example, appreciation of the degree to which human reasoning is
aimed at dealing with social situations is necessary to understand why super-
natural beliefs reliably involve social reasoning by concerning themselves with
supernatural, moral agents. Also, bounded rationality theory is not necessar-
ily enough to be able to predict that some of the by-products will share basic
similarities between individuals and across cultures. For that it is necessary
to understand that many of the heuristics that humans use are, to use Robert
McCauley’s (2011) phrase, maturationally natural. In other words, people
share a set of heuristics that they come to use largely independently of the
details of their upbringing. Given the cross-cultural incidence of supernatural
40
superstitious reeds
beliefs, such beliefs must be largely the by-products of such maturationally

natural heuristics. It is in this sense that supernatural beliefs “reflect” rational-
ity – they are the result of the unavoidably biased nature of human cognition
and in their details reveal information about the structure of the cognitive
mechanisms that produce them.
What about Kahneman’s approach? The first thing to note is that the
explanation for the human susceptibility to supernatural beliefs involves the
descriptive, rather than the normative, side of the account of reason. This is
highly significant as the descriptive side of Kahneman and Tversky’s account
of heuristics is largely the same as Herbert Simon’s earlier account, despite
significant differences in their focus and attitudes to heuristics.3 This means
that in so far as Kahneman and Tversky are presenting human reasoning as
consisting of heuristics, their account is just as capable of explaining human
beliefs regarding supernatural entities. The problems with Kahneman’s posi-
tion begin where it abandons heuristics. Throughout his work – both with
Tversky and, in more recent years, with Frederick – Kahneman retains a
normative account of rationality that is very much in the traditional,
Enlightenment camp, and therefore subject to all of the problems with that
view. Furthermore, in putting forward the dual process version of his account,
Kahneman reintroduces the Enlightenment assumptions into the descriptive
side of the story. He appears to believe that this is necessitated by the obvious
differences between the kinds of reasoning that humans are capable of. In par-
ticular, reasoning involving logical arguments appears to lack the hallmarks
of heuristic reasoning, such as context-dependence. Clearly, if correct, this
view undermines the fundamental element of the account being put forward
here (i.e. the idea that heuristic reasoning is necessitated by the ubiquitous
problem of induction). Proper discussion of this point goes beyond the scope
of the narrative that is pursued in this book. However, the question is too
significant to ignore altogether.
Tversky and Kahneman (1974) introduced a very small number of very
simple heuristics, such as anchoring and adjustment or availability. In vari-
ous works Kahneman appears to be of the view that the list they proposed
accounts for all or most kinds of heuristic reasoning that humans are capa-
ble of. Given that humans are capable of a lot of reasoning that cannot be
accounted for using those heuristics, Kahneman must conclude that there is
much to human reasoning that goes beyond heuristics. Part of the problem
is that the heuristics and biases tradition that Kahneman and Tversky started
3. Tversky and Kahneman almost completely fail to acknowledge Simon’s work, a failure
which is astonishing given that Simon’s ideas predate their work by a generation, are very
similar to their own ideas and have been very influential.
41
tends to think of heuristics as necessarily very, very simple. However, if we

consider the list of traits Wimsatt suggests, we can see that on the bounded
rationality view heuristics need not be simple. They merely have to be simple
enough to be used given our limited resources, while being as simple as they
can be and still satisficing. This can make for quite complex heuristics in cer-
tain cases. Also, the heuristics and biases tradition treats heuristics as “innate”,
thereby making it reasonable to identify them with the inborn System 1 (as
characterized by Stanovich & West 2000) of the dual system account of rea-
soning. However, again, Wimsatt and Gigerenzer can allow that many heu-
ristics will have to be learned through specialized training.
The core of the issue, however, is the question of the status of logical rea-
soning – the one area that seems to most clearly escape description in terms of
heuristics. Without trying to provide a full response to this problem, the main
point to consider is how such reasoning is actually used by people. The neo-
classical economics that Kahneman and Tversky argued against treats humans
as rational agents where a rational agent is understood to be maximizing their
expected utility. As Kahneman and Tversky showed, human economic rea-
soning does not generally fit this picture, relying as it does upon heuristics.
However, given that expected utility theory does exist as a tool to use when
making decisions, it might seem that people are capable of leaving heuristics
behind by forcing themselves to work through the calculations necessary to
maximize their expected utility. Yet people’s use of expected utility theory
does not actually provide a counter-example to the view that it is “heuris-
tics all the way up”, to use a phrase from Wimsatt (2007: 11). The reason is
that the theory is never applied straightforwardly to the real world. In order
to apply the theory it is always necessary to make a number of simplifying
assumptions. Thus, for example, only the most direct consequences of any
of the options under consideration are taken into account. This is necessary
to make any problem tractable. At the same time, however, it fundamentally
alters the significance of the use of a theory with universal reach. The reason
is that the assumptions that are made are not optimal but, at best, are good
enough for the purpose to which the theory is being put (i.e. they satisfice).
Also, these assumptions necessarily constitute substantive claims about the
environment in which the theory is applied (i.e. they render the use of the
theory context-dependent). And so on, for all of the characteristics of heu-
ristics identified by Wimsatt. On this view, the difference between the use of
a theory like expected utility theory and the use of the availability heuristic
is not that one involves heuristic reasoning while the other does not. Both
involve heuristics. The difference is that, in the case of the application of
expected utility theory and similar theories, the substantive assumptions that
are made are often explicit, as they are separate from the theory.
42
3
The superempirical
We have seen, thus far, that to do justice to the values of the Enlightenment it
is necessary to move away from thinking of reason and religion as fundamen-
tal elements of explanations offered for cultural and psychological processes.
Instead, these categories – if they are to retain any meaning – must be spelt
out in terms of concrete cultural and cognitive phenomena that tend to take
on somewhat different forms under various conditions. We have also seen
that all processes of discovery, be they evolutionary or cognitive, share certain
basic characteristics as a result of functioning in the face of the fundamental
epistemic limitation originally identified by David Hume. One of those char-
acteristics that we focused on due to its particular relevance to understanding
supernatural beliefs and practices was the ubiquity of by-products that such
processes generate. This served to explain the pervasiveness and the durabil-
ity of supernatural belief and practice. Having understood that basic point,
it is now time to develop an understanding of such beliefs and practices
that is informed by the evolutionary and cognitive work that has recently
been undertaken. The focus in this chapter is on the basis for the distinction
between the two categories that the supernatural is usually thought to be
made up of.
Adequate accounts of the relationship between magic and religion have
proved as elusive as the entities to which they refer. Even so, it is in search
of such an account that this chapter sets out. Given an awareness of the
difficulties encountered by earlier attempts, however, the focus is not upon
putting forward cut and dried definitions. Instead, the aim is somewhat more
limited. Treating magic and religion as phenomena explainable in cognitive,
cultural and, ultimately, evolutionary terms, the aim is to sketch the relevant
mechanisms that underlie these particular kinds of beliefs and practices. As
such, the proposals put forward here build upon the work of researchers such
as Pascal Boyer, but focus upon the epistemic aspects that have not been
43
overtly present in the cognitive science of religion literature. The point, as

throughout this book, is to relate our understanding of religion and magic
to our understanding of science and reasoning but without relying upon the
simplistic dichotomies of the past.
A common, though problematic way of thinking of magic and religion
is as dealing with supernatural entities, where the supernatural is defined as
that which cannot be investigated by science. This view exemplifies the very
dichotomy between reason and superstition that is the starting point of my
investigations, yet despite being naive it is ultimately worth examining – even
refuted positions normally contain insights that prove valuable in arriving at
a richer understanding of the phenomenon. In the case of the category of the
supernatural I focus on three issues. The first is that this way of defining the
supernatural is typically combined with the attempt to define science as the
investigation of natural phenomena – the circularity in the two definitions
leading to a tautology. The second is that the definition fails to fit the phe-
nomena that are normally classified as supernatural since many of them are
subject to scientific investigation. Finally, the third issue is that the definition
appears to assume that it is possible to indicate an unchanging set of limits
beyond which science can never progress – a claim that does not stand up to
scrutiny.
Rejecting the idea that religion and magic can be defined as that which sci-
ence cannot grasp, however, does not entail that the issue of constraints upon
empirical investigation is irrelevant to understanding religion and magic, as
can be seen once discussion turns to the question of the factors that can sta-
bilize particular beliefs within a culture. Using Pascal Boyer’s explanation of
religious beliefs in terms of minimally counter-intuitive concepts as an exam-
ple, it is possible to make the general point that religious and magical beliefs
are mainly stabilized by cognitive and cultural factors. This way of putting the
cognitive by-product thesis makes it easy to contrast such beliefs with those
that are mainly stabilized by empirical considerations. Recognizing that some
beliefs are stabilized by some of these factors more than others leads to the
question of what determines which factors are the most relevant to particular
beliefs.
I go on to identify three general types of constraints that determine a
belief ’s openness to investigation. The most obvious one is the content of
the belief in question, since claims that are hard to verify are less open to
empirical investigation. Just as important, however, are two kinds of con-
straints arising out of the context in which the belief finds itself. The first of
these is the social context (i.e. the various social attitudes that may make it
more or less likely for the belief to undergo investigation), while the second
is the methodological context (i.e. the set of conceptual and technological
44
the superempirical
tools available for investigating the belief ). In the case of religious/magical

beliefs, frequently all three of these types of constraints on investigation work
to protect them, thereby ensuring that their content is solely constrained by
cognitive and cultural factors.
This connection between religion/magic and being effectively closed to
investigation (in a particular context) is ultimately responsible for the attrac-
tiveness of the idea that the supernatural is, by definition, not open to sci-
entific investigation. As I go on to show, it also lies behind Durkheim’s
conception of religion/magic as sacred, since being treated as sacred gives
the claims of religion and magic special social status that renders them less
likely to be investigated. The resulting view of religious/magical beliefs is that
they are rendered stable within culture by cognitive and cultural considera-
tions, while being protected against potentially destabilizing empirical factors.
Although this does not provide a definition of religion/magic, it does serve
to broadly distinguish it from other human beliefs, maintained by different
mechanisms.
Having thus characterized what it is that religion and magic have in com-
mon, the time comes to examine the difference between them. This task
is made all the more difficult by both kinds of beliefs and practices being
present in all religious traditions. The difference focused upon is that while
magical practices are intended to have mundane effects, religious practices are
meant to primarily affect the world of the supernatural entities and forces.
At the same time, both magical and religious practices share the property
that their purported effectiveness is explained by a causal connection that
is supernatural in nature. The difference is vital in that it puts religious and
magical practices in very different epistemic positions. The efficacy of magical
practices remains potentially investigable, where the social and methodologi-
cal contexts allow it. This means that magical beliefs are being maintained
in the face of potential counter-evidence. Religious practices, however, have
purported effects whose very content renders them effectively uninvestigable.
The price is that no experiences may be interpreted as showing the effective-
ness of religious practices.
This way of understanding religious and magical practices bears immedi-
ate fruit in the way that it helps to understand why such practices have a
strong tendency to become ritualized – the essential point being that behav-
iour becomes stereotypical when cues to its effectiveness are unavailable or
unreliable. Also, drawing the distinction between magic and religion in this
way allows us to formulate the dilemma that is faced by supernatural beliefs
– religious beliefs may be better protected against potential counter-evidence
but they also have less direct relevance to mundane human existence. It is for
this reason that religions require magical elements.
45
Science and the supernatural
A category that was made free use of in the previous chapter and which is
most commonly used these days to set religion and magic apart from other
beliefs and practices is that of the supernatural. This is as true of philosophical
arguments as it is of dinner party discussions (the significant exception being
anthropologists who, probably wisely, avoid the term). Yet it appears that this
category is much younger than the phenomena it covers, its origin having
been traced as late as Descartes (Martin 1995: 4–6). This fact alone should
make us somewhat wary regarding the relation between the conceptual cate-
gory and the beliefs and practices it aims to group together – particularly so if
we should come to consider the supernatural via a discussion of the definition
of the term. Since Quine’s work undermining the analytic–synthetic distinc-
tion, we should be awake to the fact that a concept is often as much a theory
as a premise (Quine 1951). Perhaps for this reason, however, it is all the more
important to consider what if anything the concept of the supernatural tells
us about religion and magic.
It is possible to specify what things fall within the category of the super-
natural in two basic ways. The first of these is simply to begin listing such
things as are generally agreed to be supernatural: ghosts, magic wands, angels,
etc. Of course, any such list will be incomplete. However, it seems that peo-
ple are able to achieve a high level of inter-subjective agreement on whether
novel candidates belong to the category, even though there are bound to be
controversial cases. This, in itself, is interesting as it suggests that the basis
upon which people categorize things as supernatural is broadly shared even
if it is not necessarily conscious. This leads to the second means of specifying
the supernatural – trying to explicitly formulate a rule which determines the
scope of the category. The purely internalist version of this approach particu-
larly popular within analytic philosophy is that of conceptual analysis. This
requires taking people’s naive notions regarding concepts such as that of the
supernatural and clarifying them until any logical inconsistencies are removed
and we have arrived at the logical reconstruction of what people mean to
talk about when they are using the term. Of course, however interesting and
valuable it may be to understand people’s preconceptions about religion and
magic, this approach does not necessarily do anything to cast light on the
actual phenomena, having effectively ignored that side of the equation. A
more rounded, externalist approach is to take into consideration people’s
preconceptions but also to consider the phenomena that appear to corre-
spond to them. The end result of this approach may not be clear and distinct
enough to deserve the title of a definition, however, it should provide us with
a description that casts significant light on the phenomenon or phenomena
46
the superempirical
the category at least partially corresponds to. The practical implications of this
approach are that when we do come to consider the various ways in which
people have sought to categorize religion and magic we should do two things.
First, we must remain sceptical about the degree to which the proposed defi-
nitions succeed at grouping together a set of beliefs and practices that natu-
rally fall together – a point made very powerfully with regard to religion by
Pascal Boyer (2010). Second, even while they may fail, such definitions may
come to reveal something significant that will be of use when we attempt
to put together an improved definition or, failing that, an accurate though
incomplete description of what it is that magic and religion have in common.
This is precisely the case with the commonly used definition of the super-
natural. Seen in opposition to the natural, the supernatural is most com-
monly defined as whatever falls outside of the scope of what science can
investigate or, more weakly, what science can explain.1 While this ultimately
fails as a definition, I will come to argue that it does add to our understand-
ing of religion and magic. Not coincidentally, this way of thinking about the
supernatural looks quite similar to the Enlightenment view of the relationship
between reason and superstition. In both cases we are presented with a simple
opposition: in this case between the natural, to be investigated/explained by
science, and the supernatural, which is not open to such investigation/expla-
nation. Unfortunately, the definition is not particularly insightful. While the
supernatural is defined in terms of the limits of science, the related question
concerning the limits of science is all too often answered in terms of natural
phenomena (i.e. that science can only investigate or explain phenomena that
are not supernatural). Unless more substance is given to either the concept
of the supernatural or of the limits of science, the whole exercise remains in
the realm of tautology. That it is often seen to be more than that probably
indicates that people are relying on their intuitive sense of what phenomena
are understood to be supernatural.
Apart from the proposed definition being tautological, two further prob-
lems can be identified with it. The first is that it does not fit the intuitive
list of supernatural entities. Perhaps the clearest means for showing this is
the case provided by the Million Dollar Challenge organized by the James
Randi Education Foundation. The challenge is for those claiming to have
1. Significantly, the explanandum in such cases is taken to be the seemingly miraculous

event, rather than the fact that some people believe that such an event took place. The second
of these alternatives, of course, is the explanandum that cognitive science of religion has been
busily explaining. That we cannot assume that people’s beliefs are veridical in such cases was
already argued for by Hume. The presumption that science should explain the purported event
potentially ignores this problem.
47
s upernatural abilities to prove that they possess these abilities under exper-
imental conditions, and thereby to win the eponymous million dollars.
Numerous individuals have undertaken the challenge under mutually agreed-
upon experimental conditions, which suggests that all concerned felt that
the particular claimed supernatural abilities could be meaningfully examined
empirically – a view that runs directly counter to the proposed definition of
the supernatural as that which cannot be investigated scientifically. At the
same time, this is not necessarily a problem for the weaker definition of the
supernatural as that which cannot be explained by science. Of course, since
none of the claimants managed to ever pass even the initial phase of the chal-
lenge, no examples of even this kind of the supernatural were identified. Yet
there are significant problems with even this weaker definition.
A possible response to these examples is to say that while magical or super-
stitious claims can be investigated in this manner, properly religious ones
cannot. As usual, there is certainly something right about this claim, as we
will see later in this chapter when we come to discuss the differences between
magic and religion. Yet the claim is problematic and does not achieve what
might be hoped for. First, if we take seriously the idea that only religious
claims cannot be investigated, then – on the definition of the supernatural
as that which cannot be investigated scientifically – it turns out that the
only supernatural claims are those made by religions. This leaves the status of
magical claims rather less than crystal clear. Second, and much more impor-
tantly, all religions are what Ilkka Pyysiäinen calls magico-religious complexes
(i.e. they are a mix of religious and magical beliefs; Pyysiäinen 2004: 105ff.).
Without, for the moment, going into the magic/religion distinction – which
will be dealt with later in this chapter – the point is that this approach ends
up cutting through the middle of real religions, rather than explaining what it
is that is special about religious traditions as opposed to other kinds of human
practices and beliefs. Or, to put it another way, if we accepted the idea that
only properly religious beliefs are supernatural, the question of what it is that
magical and religious beliefs have in common would have to be answered
quite separately from the issue of what the supernatural is.
Returning to the idea that magic and religion involve the supernatural,
which is to be identified as that which science cannot investigate or explain,
we get to its most fundamental problem. The problem with this definition
of the supernatural is that it appears to depend upon a conception of science
that is, at best, highly controversial. This becomes clear when we consider an
ambiguity in this definition of the supernatural. What is entailed by the idea
that the supernatural lies beyond the (investigative or explanatory) limits of
science depends greatly upon whether we think of those limits as unchang-
ing or as shifting over time – this ambiguity leading to a version of Hempel’s
48
the superempirical
dilemma (Hempel 1969). The dilemma originally applied to physicalism,

the view that everything can be explained in terms of physics. One horn of
the dilemma was that physicalism referred to current physics. Given the fail-
ure of current physics to fully explain mental phenomena (among countless
other things), this would entail that physicalism is false. The other horn of the
dilemma was that the physics in question was the ideal physics that would be
achieved given unlimited time and resources. However, that claim is empty.
Given that we have no idea what the content of such ideal physics would be,
such physicalism gives no basis for determining whether it is correct. Much
the same tension between current and ideal science applies in the case of the
definition of the supernatural.
In the way that the supernatural is normally conceived of it is implicit
that the relevant limits of science do not shift. This assumption is necessary
for the category of the supernatural not to change its range: otherwise things
previously belonging to the supernatural would become natural the moment
science became capable of examining them. Considering the example of the
Million Dollar Challenge, that would mean that all the abilities tested became
natural (though non-existent) upon testing. If one considers the history of
science, there seems to be ample evidence that the limits of what can be inves-
tigated by the science of the day do alter over time. A clear example of this is
Comte’s famous remark in Cours de philosophie positive (1842) that we would
never learn the chemical composition of distant stars, a claim that was shown
to be false only a few years later by the use of the spectroscopic analysis of
light gathered using a telescope. Indeed, just recently, astronomers have iden-
tified the main components of the atmosphere of a planet circling a distant
star and even measured the speed of the winds blowing within that atmos-
phere (Baraffe et al. 2010) – outcomes that Comte had not even considered.
The flip side of the Million Dollar Challenge rendering claims of telepa-
thy natural is that, before spectrographic analysis, the chemical make-up of
distant stars was, on this way of understanding the term, supernatural. It was
“supernatural” in the sense that it was incapable of being investigated by the
then current science. And if it is the explanatory limits of science that are
focused upon, anything that the science of the day cannot explain must, at
that time, be supernatural – a result that shows that being beyond the lim-
its of science is, at best, a necessary though not sufficient property for being
supernatural. The reason is that many (if not all) of the things we now con-
sider mundane – such as the tides, to give one example – would have once
been beyond scientific explanation. However, that those phenomena have
been subsequently explained by science is normally taken as evidence that
they never were supernatural in the first place. So, it seems necessary to con-
clude that the limits of science do shift over time, leaving the way open for a
49
version of Hempel’s dilemma. Furthermore, tying the limits of the supernatu-

ral to the limits of whatever the current science can do leads to the kind of
unacceptable implications we have seen. But tying them to the limits of ideal
science is no more informative than was the case with physicalism. We have
no means of determining what phenomena would be open to investigation
or explanation by such science. This would entail that we have no means of
determining which phenomena fit such a definition of “supernatural”. But
there is more to be usefully said about the limits of science and their signifi-
cance for our understanding of religion and magic.
If we further consider Comte’s claims, we can see how it is that the lim-
its of what can be investigated by science do change. Comte assumed that
to investigate the chemical composition of a star we would have to be close
enough to it to be able to gather physical samples – not something that we
could even remotely do today. At the time he made his remark spectroscopy
had not been invented so this seemed to be the only way to obtain that
kind of information. So, the limit of what could be investigated came to be
extended by the discovery of the fact that atoms of different elements absorb
electromagnetic radiation of specific wavelengths. This led to the possibility
of designing instruments which looked for these absorption patterns and, in
effect, identified the elements present in sources of light, even ones as distant
as the stars Comte had considered beyond our grasp. In short, a scientific dis-
covery opened the way to new empirical methods that made possible further
discoveries that had previously been held to be impossible. Of course, this is
a pattern that has been repeated countless times, leading to the progressive
opening up of new phenomena to scientific investigation. This is another way
in which science is open-ended – a property that we already discussed with
relation to human reasoning in the previous chapter.
As the same time, the discussion from the previous chapter puts limits on
how science can develop. There remains the further possibility that, while
there is change over time in what science can investigate or explain, there is
a more basic limit to scientific endeavours, one that, sooner or later, science
will come up against. This is possible. However, it does not help to provide
a useful definition of the supernatural. The reasons are twofold. First, as the
Comte example suggests, we have no real grasp of what such ultimate limits
of science might be. Time and again, claims that science cannot explain or
investigate some phenomenon have turned out to be incorrect. At this point
in time, it is popular to claim that science will never explain consciousness or
normativity. Also at this time, there are plenty of scientists who would beg
to differ, claiming that serious steps toward these goals are being made as we
speak. This property of science is perspicaciously compared with what pseu-
doscience is like by Nicholas Rescher:
50
the superempirical
The inherent unpredictability of its internal changes is an ineradica-

ble feature of science. It sets real science apart from the closed struc-
tures of pseudoscience, whose deficiencies are reflected precisely in
the “elegance” with which everything falls much too neatly into
place. As regards the question-resolving potential of real science,
we can set no a priori restrictions, but have to be flexible. Nobody
can say what natural science will and will not be able to do, simply
because the science of today is unable to speak decisively for that
of tomorrow. (Nicholas Rescher in Dancy et al. 2010: 491)
This inability to know what will always remain beyond science is problem-
atic for the view that such things must be considered within the purview
of religion and magic. The simple reason is that it makes it impossible to
know what that purview is. In some cases, the claim that science is limited
in its scope seems to turn on the assumption that science has a set method
by which it investigates the world – a version of the Enlightenment view of
rationality. This assumption is impossible to defend in a post-Kuhnian con-
text, however.
If this were not enough of a problem, the extent of what science has
already managed to investigate and explain entails that the scope of what
could possibly remain uninvestigable or unexplainable by science is already
very constrained. Indeed, it is far more constrained than what popular reli-
gion and magic would wish to talk about. Of course, a deist religion may
forever remain beyond the realms of what science can engage with, but that
is hardly what constitutes religion for anyone except a tiny minority of believ-
ers with a particular highly philosophical attitude, including a number of the
original Enlightenment philosophes.
The difficulties with thinking of religion as talking of things that lie beyond
the ken of science are clearly presented by the example of Stephen Jay Gould’s
“NOMA proposal” (Gould 1997, 1999). He explained his proposal’s central
idea of non-overlapping magisteria (NOMA) as follows:
The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack
of overlap between their respective domains of professional exper-
tise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and
religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual
meaning of our lives. (Gould 1997: 18)
Immediately we can see the previously mentioned difficulties arising in the

case of this proposal. Gould is assuming that science cannot meaningfully talk
about normative issues. The underlying assumption that facts and values are
51
to be seen as radically distinct is currently under attack from within both phi-
losophy and science. From the philosophical side, the fact/value distinction
has been argued against by Hilary Putnam, among others (Putnam 2002).
From the scientific side, work in biology concerning the function of altruism
and pro-social behaviour is also quickly making headway (Sober & Wilson
1999). Furthermore, Gould appears to ignore the historically relevant possi-
bility that meaning and ethics are the proper magisterium of neither science
nor religion but philosophy. Indeed, between science and philosophy it is not
clear that there is much for religion to claim as its own. Even if Gould were
right, however, the magisterium that is supposed to belong to religion is a
very constrained one. If religion – in Gould’s discussion, primarily Christian
religion – is to limit itself to the topics he sets out, it must give up any and all
historical claims. Not just the claims that appear to be made in the book of
Genesis concerning the creation of the world or the Garden of Eden – both
of these stories having long been reinterpreted by the majority of Christian
theologians as metaphorical or allegorical in nature – but also the whole of
the New Testament with its potentially historically verifiable claims about the
life, death and the resurrection of Jesus Christ. The problem is not only that
this does not look like the Christianity of anyone, with the possible exception
of liberal theologians such as Karen Armstrong (2005). The problem is that
to make claims within the magisterium specified by Gould, any religion must
also make claims outside of it, as Robert McCauley points out in his critique
of Gould’s position:
that process of making sense of things inevitably involves appeals to

explanations about the origins, the make-up, and the behavior of
things generally and about our origins, make-up, and behavior in
particular. Religious meaning making, indeed all meaning making,
always makes explanatory assumptions. (McCauley 2010: 249)
It is an empirical matter whether Christ rose from the dead. That he did do
this, however, is a vital assumption for the way in which Christianity con-
structs its view of the moral structure of its universe.
We have seen that the concept of the supernatural, understood as that
which is beyond scientific investigation, does not provide us with an adequate
description of either magic or religion. However, the way in which the term
is normally applied has very little to do with the common definition and sim-
ply relies upon our implicit understanding of what religion and magic are.
In other words, it is more that the supernatural is religion and magic than
the other way around – it is this usefully vague meaning of supernatural that
will be referred to every time this word is used from now on. This leaves us
52
the superempirical
with a couple of points that will be worth returning to. First, a corollary of
the failure of this way of understanding religion and magic is that science can
investigate religious and magical beliefs, at least partially. Second, if counter-
examples to the proposed definition of the supernatural are so easy to come
upon, why is the definition so popular in its many guises? The search for the
answer to this question will help to motivate the next couple of sections.
Cognitive cheesecake
Having seen that the commonly used definition of the supernatural is not
adequate to identify what religious and magical beliefs have in common, we
can move on to developing a more satisfactory account. This will not lead us
to a definition but to an understanding of the mechanisms that underlie what
is normally thought of as supernatural beliefs and practices. The approach,
treating supernatural beliefs as cognitive by-products, was introduced in the
previous chapter. The starting point for our discussion is provided by Pascal
Boyer’s (2002) highly influential account of the role played by the minimally
counter-intuitive nature of religious beliefs in rendering supernatural beliefs
and practices stable.2
According to Boyer, to understand religious (and magical) beliefs it is essen-
tial to notice that religious concepts that function in the general community,
outside of the very specific context of theological or philosophical discus-
sions, are minimally counter-intuitive. Boyer argues that people classify newly
obtained concepts into one of several general ontological categories, such as
person, natural object, plant or tool. On the basis of this classification
we are able to make a great range of very powerful assumptions about what
we can expect. Thus, upon hearing of a new kind of animal we do not have to
be told anything more about it to be able to assume a number of things, such
as: members of the species have limited lifespans, they have a means for giving
birth to young (of the same species), they interact with their environment on
the basis of information they gather using their senses and their inner drives,
and so on. Being able to make such assumptions is vital as it allows us to
quickly react to novel elements of our environment. Concepts that fit with
the expectations that classification into general ontological categories provides
2. Boyer, similarly to a number of other researchers working in the cognitive science of

religion, is not particularly concerned with the religion/magic distinction and uses “religion” to
refer to phenomena that might traditionally fall on either side of that divide. While discussing
his work on minimally counter-intuitive concepts I will generally follow his broader use of the
term.
53
are intuitive. However, there are also concepts that are not fully intuitive, with
religious concepts being among them. The degree to which such concepts
run counter to our intuitions may differ greatly. An invisible iron turtle that
grows from the ground and sings poetry is definitely counter-intuitive, but
so much so that it is difficult to know what assumptions can be made about
it, undermining the utility of the ontological categories. If it can sing poetry,
does that mean we can talk with it? If it is iron and grows out of the ground,
how does it reproduce? As Boyer argues, such concepts are not likely to sur-
vive long, either being forgotten or undergoing simplification to a minimally
counter-intuitive form (i.e. the form which fits with the expectations created
by belonging to some particular ontological category, except for one or two
expectations that are explicitly barred). According to Boyer, minimally coun-
ter-intuitive concepts have the best of both worlds, on the one hand being
memorable thanks to the counter-intuitive elements and on the other being
easy to “think with” thanks to fitting with nearly all of our natural assump-
tions. This, he thinks, explains the success of religious concepts, which are
minimally counter-intuitive concepts par excellence:
A good illustration is the familiar concept of ghost or spirit. This

is found more or less the world over, not just in Gothic novels and
Victorian seances. The concept is that of a person who has coun-
terintuitive physical properties. Unlike other persons, ghosts can
go through solid objects like walls. But notice that apart from this
ability, ghosts follow very strictly the ordinary intuitive concept of
person. (Boyer 2002: 73)
Boyer does not suggest that minimal counter-intuitiveness serves to define

religious concepts. Instead, it is meant to explain the cognitive mechanism
which underlies the efficient spread of religious ideas. It is well that he does so
as it is clear that it is not just religious concepts that are minimally counter-
intuitive. A couple of examples can be used to point out two ways in which
minimally counter-intuitive concepts can be non-religious. The first is the
often discussed example of Mickey Mouse (Atran 1998: 602; 2004). The car-
toon character of Mickey Mouse is minimally counter-intuitive in that it has
all the normal traits of a person but, instead of being a human, it is a mouse.
Yet, clearly, Mickey is not a religious entity. The usual way to deal with this is
to point out that religious entities have to be believed in seriously enough to
motivate behaviour that assumes they exist. Behaviour connected to Mickey
Mouse or Santa Claus, at least among adults, does not generally require that
assumption. If it did, parents would not bother doing any Christmas shop-
ping, for one thing. Fictional characters are not the only counter-intuitive
54
the superempirical
concepts that are not religious, of course. The real world often fails to fit with
our intuitions. Indeed, the more that science investigates it, the greater the
chasm between what we intuitively expect the world to be like and what sci-
ence reveals about it. This means that a lot of scientific concepts are massively
counter-intuitive (McCauley 2000, 2011). At the same time, it is possible to
come up with many examples where investigation of the world has revealed
entities which only minimally conflict with our intuitions. One example is
that of the Venus flytrap, a plant that has the counter-intuitive trait of con-
suming animals (Barrett 2004). The response to the Mickey Mouse example
is not appropriate in the case of the Venus flytrap, of course. People do believe
in the existence of Venus flytraps; they do so for the good reason that some
have them growing on their windowsills.
Since Boyer is not trying to provide a definition of religion, he does not
have to explain why the Venus flytrap is not a religious entity. Still, part of
what he says is somewhat relevant to the question. As he points out, for reli-
gious concepts to be successful they have to not only be minimally counter-
intuitive but they also have to have a lot of inferential potential. In other
words, they have to be concepts that will be highly relevant in many circum-
stances that people come across, making it likely that those concepts will be
used and, therefore, remembered and passed on to others. Given the signifi-
cance of social interaction, Boyer thinks this means that religious concepts are
likely to be relevant to this interaction. This leads him to point out that quite
often the entities posited by religions are full-access strategic agents – “agents
whom one construes as having access to any piece of information that is stra-
tegic” (i.e. any information that is considered relevant to social interaction;
Boyer 2002: 159). Of course, having full access to strategic information is,
in itself, a counter-intuitive property since agents normally have only limited
access to information. Boyer’s point is relevant to the Venus flytrap since it
and many other entities like it are not normally considered relevant to social
interaction, making them unlikely to play a role in religious beliefs without
their associated concepts undergoing some further alteration. Yet minimally
counter-intuitive entities such as this can help us to usefully expand upon
Boyer’s approach.
It is possible to generalize the line of reasoning pursued by Boyer in his
discussion of minimally counter-intuitive concepts and full-access strategic
agents. In both cases, Boyer is pointing out that such concepts will tend to
spread successfully due to how they interact with human cognitive and cul-
tural systems. In effect, understanding why particular religious and magical
beliefs are popular requires this kind of investigation of their interaction with
human cognition and culture. This basic underlying thesis (the cognitive by-
product thesis) needs to be appreciated in separation from Boyer’s proposals
55
for specific mechanisms thanks to which particular beliefs and concepts can
be rendered attractive to human minds. There are three basic reasons for this.
First, there is no cause to think that we have identified all of the possible rel-
evant mechanisms by which the peculiarities of human cognition and culture
render particular beliefs attractive. Second, the significance of the general
insight should not be thought to necessarily depend upon whether particular
proposed mechanisms, such as those identified by Boyer, stand up to empiri-
cal scrutiny. And, finally, by drawing out this general insight we can readily
relate it to an aspect of how religious and magical beliefs and concepts come
to successfully persist that has not been given sufficient consideration thus far.
For any belief to become common and influential within any culture it
must be relatively stable. There are a number of factors that may render any
particular belief more or less stable, only some of which we have already con-
sidered. For example, the belief that the sky is blue is rendered stable by the
fact that nearly all members of the society can easily check that this is the case.
To use another example, the (counter-intuitive) belief that the Earth orbits
the Sun is rendered stable by the relevant astronomical observations whose
import has been successfully disseminated throughout modern cultures by
scientific and educational institutions. It is also possible to consider factors
that might render a belief less stable; the idea that the people across the border
are fundamentally different and not to be trusted will be rendered unstable
if members of our society come to travel across the border and personally
interact with the foreigners.
The examples of factors we considered in discussing Boyer’s work were cog-
nitive and cultural. However, what about the concept of a carnivorous plant
(given that it does not necessarily reflect human folk preconceptions)? As was
already explained, the reason in that case is that at least some people have
direct evidence of the existence of such plants. So, considerations of empiri-
cal evidence provide another factor that can stabilize beliefs, even when they
are profoundly counter-intuitive. This is the case with scientific concepts. Of
course, within the broader culture, many scientific concepts have only been
partially accepted. Even so, most people in the modern world have come
to accept that all matter consists of atoms and that humans have common
ancestors with all other organisms – two concepts that are definitely counter-
intuitive but for which there is extensive empirical evidence.3
In effect we have a clear basis for distinguishing between concepts such as
that of the Venus flytrap and religious/magical concepts. In one case the sta-
bilizing factors are primarily external to the community – the actual existence
3. Of course, in so far as scientists can be said to have a culture of their own, these beliefs
enjoy universal acceptance within it.
56
the superempirical
of such plants that people come to be aware of – while in the other case they
are primarily internal. It has to be appreciated that this difference functions
on the level of the culture and not necessarily of the individual. In the case of
the Venus flytrap it may be that a significant percentage of people have seen
it, or photos of it. However, most people come to accept scientific beliefs for
reasons that are not necessarily all that different from those for which reli-
gious concepts come to be accepted – most people have very limited access
and understanding of scientific evidence so that they simply come to accept
generally held beliefs that happen to have a scientific basis. To claim that this
means that this is not a significant difference between scientific and religious/
magical concepts and beliefs, however, would require taking up a far more
individualist notion of either of those phenomena than can be justified these
days. What is more, we are interested in factors that stabilize a belief on the
level of a society.
To understand the relation between the internal (i.e. cognitive and cul-
tural) and external (i.e. empirical) factors that can stabilize beliefs it is instruc-
tive to compare them with factors that determine the make-up of people’s
diets. In that case, also, there are external and internal factors. The external
factor is the availability of various potential foodstuffs, which depends upon
geographical, historical and technological considerations. Thus, bananas and
citrus fruit had not been a large part of the northern European diet until the
development of the technology to transport them from the distant climes in
which they grow. The internal factors are physiological and cultural. All things
being equal, people are more likely to consume in significant amounts those
substances which they find appetizing and which are sustaining, rather than
those that are foul and toxic. Rancid whale blubber is not generally favoured
over chocolate when it comes time to dine. Also, every culture develops a set
of dietary preferences that get passed on to young members of that culture
and which are often arbitrary. So, tripe is not considered fit for human con-
sumption in the United States at the same time as it is considered a delicacy in
Poland (by some). Of course, the various factors are connected to each other
and influence each other over time – the example of the prevalence of lactose
tolerance in cultures with a history of herding cattle being perhaps the most
famous (Simoons 1969; Durham 1992). More importantly for our present
considerations, the degree to which the diet is determined by particular fac-
tors can differ. In the case of a community living in an area with very limited
dietary options it will be the external factors that will play the main role in
shaping the diet. Thus, the previously mentioned whale blubber came to play
a significant role in the diet of people living in the Arctic partly due to the
lack of alternatives (Diamond [2005] discusses the catastrophic effects of fail-
ing to alter the diet to fit external realities). On the other hand, where there
57
is easy access to a range of different foodstuffs, people’s diet will be shaped

for the most part by internal considerations of physiology and culture. Thus,
many modern societies face the problem that people reach for hamburgers
and other fatty foods far more often than it is good for us.
How is this situation analogous to considerations of what people believe?
Again, there is a similar relationship between internal and external factors.
Where external factors serve to strictly delimit what beliefs retain sufficient
plausibility for people to believe in them, the internal factors of human cogni-
tion and culture play a lesser role (although they never evaporate altogether,
of course). However, when the impact of the external factors can be mini-
mized, it is the internal factors that fully come into their own, determining
the content of the stable beliefs. This is precisely the case with religious and
magical beliefs. Steven Pinker says that music is “auditory cheesecake, an
exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of at least six of our
mental faculties” (Pinker 1997: 546). Analogously, our beliefs in the super-
natural may be said to be cognitive cheesecake, a confection that our mental
and cultural predilections find hard to resist when external conditions make
it readily available.
Superempirical beliefs
If we think of religious and magical beliefs as shaped by human cognitive and

cultural predilections and largely unconstrained by empirical considerations,
it must immediately be asked what determines whether empirical constraints
can influence concept stabilization and the preferential take-up of particular
beliefs. An attractive, but incorrect view would be that the degree to which
any belief can be subjected to investigation depends wholly on its content.
This was, of course, one of the basic assumptions made by logical positivists,
as well as their enfant terrible, Karl Popper. Both treated beliefs at a high level
of abstraction with consideration of human psychology and sociology being
thought to be extraneous and unwelcome – the reason as logic view criti-
cized in the previous chapter. Developments since their time have led most
to doubt the wisdom of this approach. This is clear when we consider the way
that modern philosophy of science, for example, has become engaged with
issues in sociology and cognitive science.
This is not to say that the content of beliefs, understood as a much less
clear-cut notion than might have been hoped for by the logical positiv-
ists, does not help to determine whether those beliefs can be investigated.
However, it is only one of the three basic kinds of considerations that need
to be taken into account:
58
the superempirical
• Content – whether a particular belief is readily investigable empirically

depends upon its content. Claims about the invisibility, remoteness or
ferocity of entities in question are among those that will make a claim
less susceptible to investigation.
• Social context – whether a particular belief is readily investigable empiri-
cally also depends upon the social context it exists in. A claim that could
not be investigated without breaking a social norm will be rendered
effectively uninvestigable if that norm is sufficiently powerful.
• Methodological context – whether a particular belief is readily investiga-
ble empirically also depends upon the methodological context it is in.
Where the required scientific methods necessary to investigate a particu-
lar claim are lacking, that claim is rendered effectively uninvestigable
until such time as they become available.4
We can see the relevance of all three of these categories using an example in
which all of the above-mentioned considerations serve to make the claim dif-
ficult to investigate. Consider the belief in the existence of dryads within a
holy forest that cannot be entered except on certain specified days. Dryads,
as is typical for the various imagined wood-folk, are usually presented as very
good at hiding from human eyes. Furthermore, since the wood they are said
to live in is considered to be holy, entering it to find the dryads would require
that the social norm be broken. Finally, the purported effects of the presence
of the dryads, such as faster growth of trees within the forest, might only
be capable of investigation using systematic scientific methodology that is
beyond members of the community that believes in the dryads. None of this
means that it is completely impossible to investigate whether dryads do live in
this forest. That is not at all necessary for belief in them to be stable. All that
is required is that sufficient impediments exist to make such investigations
rare enough not to seriously endanger the belief within that particular culture.
We can contrast the dryads example with beliefs that would be readily
investigable. The claim that a talking elephant is flying around the room does
sound magical but it is also highly unstable since everyone can immediately
see that, as it stands, the claim must be false. Likewise, if society requires that
its members hunt down and bring back unicorns, belief in unicorns is very
likely to rapidly reach a crisis point. Finally, the idea that ghosts leave heat
trails easily detected by an ultraviolet camera is also going to suffer a poten-
tial setback when a team armed with such equipment appears on the scene.
4. See Boudry (2011) for a detailed discussion of the mechanisms by which religious and
magical traditions protect their beliefs against counter-evidence.
59
In each case, of course, there is the potential for the claims to be modified
in order to defend them against such investigation, as we will discuss later. If
accepted, the results of such changes will uniformly render such claims less
subject to investigation. Importantly, the believers who react to problematic
evidence by altering their beliefs need not at all be seeking to render those
beliefs less capable of investigation. It is simply that when rendered less inves-
tigable, the beliefs will become less likely to change over time with the result
that such beliefs will be more common.
Claims that are rendered effectively uninvestigable by any mix of the
above three kinds of considerations can be called “superempirical”, a category
based on empirical status to be clearly differentiated from the ontologically
flavoured category of the supernatural. The degree to which beliefs are capable
of investigation will clearly alter over time and will differ between cultures. A
claim that is rendered uninvestigable by the social or methodological context
in one society may well be open to investigation in another due to differences
in that society’s attitude to that claim or due to differences in the available
scientific methods.
We can see how a number of earlier ideas about religion and magic feed
into this conception. The equating of religious and magical beliefs, or at the
very least religious beliefs, with those that lie beyond the ability of science to
investigate can be seen to work in a couple of different ways. It reflects the
truth that such beliefs, where successful, do tend to be effectively uninvestiga-
ble but overstates the case by assuming that they are uninvestigable by defini-
tion whereas their protected status merely functions to render them stable.
In addition, it usually fails to take into account the role played by the social
and the methodological contexts in rendering such beliefs incapable of being
investigated. In effect, it makes invisible those comparatively pliant aspects of
why religious and magical beliefs tend towards the superempirical end of the
spectrum and, thereby, assists in making them more difficult to investigate by
discouraging investigation. Deeming supernatural beliefs beyond the scope of
scientific investigations helps to make them stable.
An alternative definition of religion/magic that did not make reference to
the concept of the supernatural was put forward by Émile Durkheim ([1912]
2001), who proposed that religion and magic can be distinguished from other
spheres of human activity in that they both deal with the sacred, other human
activities taking place in the profane sphere. He defined both as unified sys-
tems “of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things
set apart and surrounded by prohibitions” with religion being differentiated
from magic by having “beliefs and practices that unite its adherents in a single
moral community called a church” (Durkheim [1912] 2001: 46). Whether
something is held to be sacred in a particular society can be seen to work in a
60
the superempirical
variety of ways. For example, special kinds of “respectful” behaviour may be

required in a sacred place such as a temple; only particular classes of people
may be allowed to handle a sacred object; or, even, only certain ways of speak-
ing about a sacred entity may be acceptable. Breaking such taboos is usually
connected to a variety of punishments, further ensuring that their special
status is universally respected within that society.
Unfortunately for Durkheim, his proposal came under attack from a
number of anthropologists (Malinowski [1925] 1992; Evans-Pritchard 1965).
One problem raised against Durkheim’s account that is particularly relevant
to the approach pursued here is that there are many entities held to be sacred
that do not appear connected to anything like what would normally be called
a religion or a magical practice. For example, nationalist ideologies often lead
to the national flag being held to be sacred and any violation of it being pun-
ishable by law, much like blasphemy. While this may well suffice to show that
the sacred cannot serve as a definition of religion/magic, it is not necessary
to give up on the concept altogether. In the context of the discussion of the
superempirical status of religion/magic, Durkheim’s work can be seen to be
delving into the role of the social context in rendering such beliefs not subject
to potentially destabilizing investigation. This is because by setting religion
and magic apart and surrounding them with prohibitions people make their
religious and magical beliefs much more likely to last. Thus, for example, the
Shroud of Turin for a long time could not be subjected to scientific testing
because of its special status as a relic, making carbon-dating it impossible
until attitudes changed sufficiently for such testing to be undertaken. Of
course, even though it has now been dated to the Middle Ages, a period dur-
ing which the production of religious relics was a minor industry, this poten-
tially destabilizing empirical result has not led to the total abandonment of
the claims that this was the shroud Jesus was buried in. However, it does now
constitute an additional destabilizing factor that would not exist if the shroud
was still deemed too holy to carbon-date.
Discussion of religious and magical beliefs as superempirical cognitive
cheesecake does not give us what might be considered a definition. Instead,
it aims to do much the same job that Boyer aimed to achieve with his talk of
minimally counter-intuitive concepts. In other words, it aims to explain the
basics of the mechanisms that underlie the beliefs that are normally consid-
ered to be religious and magical. As such, it should show to a certain degree
what these beliefs have in common, thereby helping us to understand why
they are typically categorized together. In Boyer’s account the focus was on
specific cognitive and cultural mechanisms that make certain beliefs stable.
The approach pursued here tries to generalize his position with regard to those
mechanisms while adding what might be called the epistemic dimension,
61
represented by the notion of the superempirical – the vital point being that
the epistemic dimension interacts with the cultural, technological and physi-
ological considerations.
The magic/religion distinction
Having put forward an account of what religious and magical beliefs have in
common it is time to consider in what way they differ from each other. This
will give us the opportunity to bring into the picture religious and magical
practices, which any account of religion and magic must deal with, but which
this account has ignored thus far. The fundamental difference between magic
and religion that I will ultimately argue for will be spelled out in evolution-
ary terms. While magic will be seen as a cognitive by-product, religion will
be presented as a pro-social exaptation of this cognitive by-product. For the
moment, however, this dual inheritance model is not going to be introduced
in order that a distinction between magic and religion can be drawn inde-
pendently of that model. This will later allow us to see how well the proposed
model explains the differences between magic and religion that have been
previously identified.
The basic distinction between magic and religion that I will use may be
seen as lying in the conceptual space between the distinction put forward by
Bronisław Malinowski and the one suggested by Ilkka Pyysiäinen. It is meant
to combine the strong facets of those distinctions while avoiding the relatively
obvious problems both have.5
Malinowski spells out his way of drawing the distinction as follows:
While in the magical act the underlying idea and aim is always
clear, straight-forward, and definite, in the religious ceremony
there is no purpose directed toward a subsequent event. It is only
possible for the sociologist to establish the function, the sociologi-
cal raison d’être of the act. The native can always state the end of
the magical rite, but he will say of a religious ceremony that it is
done because such is the usage, or because it has been ordained,
or he will narrate an explanatory myth.
(Malinowski [1925] 1992: 38)
5. Important work on the relationship between religious and magical beliefs has also been
recently carried out by Marjanna Lindeman (Lindeman & Aarnio 2007; Aarnio & Lindeman
2007; Lindeman & Svedholm 2012).
62
the superempirical
Looking at his examples, it is clear that the intended effects of the magical
practices Malinowski speaks about concern the world of the everyday, be they
the growth of a good harvest or the safe return of a fishing boat. While I agree
with Malinowski on this characterization of magical practices, I would like to
differ in the case of religious ones. I will argue that in their case there is still
an intended effect but that it belongs within the sphere of the supernatural/
superempirical.
Unlike Malinowski, Pyysiäinen thinks that the difference lies in the
direction of the causal connection that magic and religion assert: “Religion
and magic thus are distinguished by the direction the people in question
believe causality to operate. In magic, supernatural agents and forces bring
about specified effects in the known reality, while in religion natural actions
have effects in a supernatural reality” (Pyysiäinen 2004: 96–7). Contrary to
Malinowski, Pyysiäinen lists several examples of the aims that religious prac-
tices are intended to achieve: “Christians, for example, baptize children to
remove the “original sin” (a counter-intuitive concept), arrange funerals to
ensure that the dead properly reach their supernatural destination, or pray to
God that he/she might forgive their sins” (ibid.: 97).
At the same time, Pyysiäinen’s distinction is not without problems either. If
the view of magical causation as going from the supernatural to the natural is
seriously accepted, the logic behind magical practices becomes lost. After all,
such practices are as much a part of the natural world as religious practices.
The two distinctions, Pyysiäinen’s and Malinowski’s, can be brought
together but what is required is a more complex model than either of them
explicitly reaches for. Where both of them can be seen as considering differ-
ent causal connections and the cause and effect elements of these, what must
be also brought into the picture is an element which explains why the causal
connection purportedly exists. The result is a three-element model which is
still quite simplistic but complex enough to capture what appears to be the
relevant difference:
• Practice – be it communal prayer or the wearing of a lucky talisman,

this is basically a set of actions that all or some members of the society
are capable of engaging in. In the context of (a subset of ) religious and
magical beliefs this has the function of being the cause.
• Explanation – the element that serves to bring together the cause/
practice and the effect/goal. In the case of both magical and religious
practices there is no known mundane explanation for why the practice
should bring about the goal. In its stead is put forward a supernatu-
ral/superempirical explanation that involves the actions of religious or
63
magical entities or forces. These may be gods, pixies or even just luck
conceived of as a force rather than as happenstance.
• Goal – both religious and magical practices generally have explicit goals.
The degree to which these goals are clearly stated may vary and differ-
ent people may assign different goals to a single practice. Crucially, a
practice will be viewed as fundamentally religious or magical depend-
ing upon what kind of effect is meant to occur. If the goal is to obtain
a mundane end, the practice is magical. If the aim to be achieved is
supernatural/superempirical, the practice is religious.
A couple of examples can help to see how the elements combine. First, an
interesting traditional belief present in the UK is that if someone puts their
shoes on the table, this will lead to any of a number of unfortunate out-
comes, such as strife within the household (Roud 2003: 404). Given that the
outcomes are solidly in the mundane world, this is a magical belief, on our
definition. The relevant practice can be understood in a couple of ways here.
It may be seen as the, perhaps unintentional, placing of shoes on the table.
It may also be seen in negative terms as avoiding placing shoes on the table.
Or, even, we might focus on the means for avoiding the bad outcomes once
the shoes are on the table – in some cases spitting on the shoes is seen as
efficacious in this way. The most difficult element to identify is the explana-
tion. However, this is not so unusual when it comes to magical beliefs and
modern superstitions in particular. Ultimately the explanation most com-
monly given appears to be simple ill luck, conceived of in substantive terms.
We can compare the shoes example to that of baptism. Here, the practice is
very clear-cut. It is the pouring of blessed water upon a child’s head while
appropriate words are spoken by the priest. The intended effect is superem-
pirical (making this a religious practice) – Eve’s original sin, which had been
passed on to the child, is washed away. The explanation is also superempiri-
cal – the effect is achieved thanks to Christ’s salvation of humanity through
his self-sacrifice.
Armed with this model we can see how the other two suggestions under
consideration fit into it. The problem with Malinowski’s suggestion is that
he did not explicitly distinguish between the spheres in which the effects can
take place but only considered the mundane sphere, which left the religious
practices seemingly without a goal. Pyysiäinen’s account did draw this distinc-
tion but failed to differentiate between the cause and the explanation and, as
a result, confounded the mundane cause in religious beliefs with the super-
empirical explanation in magical beliefs.
It is important to note that the present distinction is not meant to neces-
sarily cover all religious and magical beliefs. Instead, it focuses the discussion
64
the superempirical
on religious/magical practices and the beliefs directly connected to them. This

is because the distinction between magic and religion appears to be clearest at
this conceptual locale. This is particularly significant since, as has already been
pointed out, real traditions are magico-religious complexes in that they com-
bine both kinds of beliefs and practices. Making a clear distinction between
these kinds of beliefs and practices will make it possible for us to later inves-
tigate the different ways in which real religions rely upon the two kinds of
beliefs and practices to maintain stability. For now, however, we should look
in detail at the three elements our model proposes – practice, explanation and
goal – and what we can already conclude about them.
The concept of a practice in the proposed model is meant to be a very
broad category. It is meant to include everything from a Catholic Midnight
Mass, through the magical practices of the Trobriand Islanders documented
by Malinowski, all the way to students wearing red underwear during exams
for luck (a practice popular in Poland). There are many differences between
these practices that have been explored by generations of researchers. In par-
ticular, there are numerous differences between the practices that get clas-
sified as religious and those usually classed as magical. Some of them will
be looked at later. What is important at this juncture is what they have
in common (i.e. that they are actions that can be undertaken by people
and that are understood within the context of either religious or magical
beliefs). Their precise relationship to such beliefs needs to be left somewhat
open. While it might be tempting to talk about such practices as straightfor-
wardly motivated by the relevant beliefs, even a passing acquaintance with
human psychology should make one wary of jumping to that conclusion.
For one thing, self-perception theory suggests that in certain cases people
infer their own beliefs from observing their own actions (Bem 1972). This
does not undermine the idea that the actions were caused by mental states
but simply acknowledges that many of our mental states are opaque to us
and we are forced to arrive at overt judgements concerning them on the basis
of our behaviour. This necessarily complicates argumentation concerning
the relationship between supernatural beliefs and practices. The situation is
even more complex when we consider ritualization (for a similar cognitive
approach see Sørensen 2006).
The discussion of the epistemic aspect of supernatural practices allows us
to understand a very important point concerning the ritualization of such
practices. Boyer and Liénard talk about ritualization in terms of five proper-
ties that ritualized behaviours tend to share: compulsion; rigidity, adherence
to script; goal demotion; internal repetition and redundancy; and a restricted
range of themes (Boyer & Liénard 2007: 598). They explain ritualization in
terms of it being due to the functioning of a mental system designed to deal
65
with threats that are not manifest but inferred. This explanation is deeply in
tune with my own focus on the superempirical status of religious and magical
claims. This can be seen by looking at just two of the properties they consider:
rigidity and goal demotion.
Boyer and Liénard explain rigidity in the following terms:
People feel that they should perform a ritual in the precise way
it was performed before. They strive to achieve a performance
that matches their representation of past performances and attach
negative emotion to any deviation from that remembered pattern.
This is familiar in childhood rituals and OCD but also in the “tra-
ditionalistic” flavor of most cultural rituals. Deviation from the
established pattern is intuitively construed as dangerous, although
in most cases the participants have or require no explanation of
why that is the case. (Ibid.)
Such rigidity of the practice is to be expected, however, where there is no

reliable agent-detectable measure of the success of that procedure. Without
external cues that the procedure is being performed correctly the only strat-
egy available is to try to perform the ritual as closely to how it was performed
previously with the hope that this will be enough to ensure success – much
in the same way that a blind man might try to retrace the exact path that
previously led to his goal. Of course, this is precisely the situation in which
the agents are going to find themselves when attempting to influence enti-
ties or forces that are superempirical and, even more so, when the very goals
of the practice are, themselves, superempirical. Taking Pyysiäinen’s example
of funereal rites, there is no way for the participants in the rite to check if
they have been successful in speeding the dead to heaven. Given that a rite
is seen as necessary to achieve this, variations in the rite may make it inef-
fectual and have to be avoided given the lack of the option of checking their
effectiveness.
A similar explanation can be given for goal demotion within rituals:
Rituals generally include action-sequences selected from ordinary

goal-directed behavior. But the context in which they are per-
formed, or the manner of performance, results in “goal-demotion,”
in performance divorced from observable goals. For instance, peo-
ple tie shoe-laces that were tied already; they touch a specific piece
of furniture without trying to move it or use it as support; they wash
hands many more times than hygiene would require; and so on.
(Ibid.)
66
the superempirical
Since the participants in the ritual are trying to interact with superempiri-
cal entities and forces, normal considerations of whether a particular action
sequence has manifestly achieved its aim are irrelevant. A piece of furniture
that has been touched may be understood to have changed in superempirical
ways without having been moved. Hands that have been washed only once
may be believed to retain a superempirical contagion (Rozin & Nemeroff
1990). Dealing with supernatural agents entails that one’s action sequences
become radically causally opaque (Lyons et al. 2007; Whiten et al. 2009;
McGuigan et al. 2011).
The other properties of ritualized behaviour provided by Boyer and Liénard
are open to similar explanations. While, as previously stated, this is much the
same line as is taken by the authors, bringing to the fore the superempirical
status of religious/magical beliefs helps to see clearly why religious/magical
practices have such a strong tendency to become ritualized.
Turning to the second element of our model, religious/magical explana-
tions, it is useful to consider in more detail why normal explanations are not
offered. The case with religious practices is fairly easy to see. Given that the
desired effects belong within the supernatural sphere, special means for affect-
ing it are required. The need for supernatural explanations is less immediately
obvious in the case of magical practices, however. In that case we are, after
all, dealing with mundane actions achieving mundane ends. The problem is
that without special intervention it is normally hard to see why the particular
practices should achieve the ends they are aimed at. It is hard to find a folk
psychological or folk physical explanation for why crossing a black cat’s path
should bring bad luck or why performing a dance will bring the rains. For that
matter it is typically impossible to find a scientific explanation for such causal
connections. This means that, once such causal connections are believed to
obtain, explanations that are not of the mundane variety must be turned to.
This leaves the question of why such causal connections are believed to exist
in the first place – which will be examined in the next chapter.
While considering the role of explanations within supernatural beliefs it
is important to say a bit more about the notion of causal connection in play.
The term “causal connection” is not altogether a happy one in this context.
The reason is that it suggests a scientific approach where this is very much
missing. The notion that religious and magical beliefs seem to work with is a
much more vague one, the best term for it being, perhaps, “influence”. The
difficulty may be seen using the interesting example of first footing, a Scottish
superstition connected to the coming of the New Year:
The basic tenet of the custom is that the first person who enters
the house in the New Year brings either good or bad luck for the
67
next twelve months, depending on whether or not s/he conforms

to the local idea of being “lucky”, and whether s/he performs the
expected tasks. (Roud 2003: 190)
The belief appears to trace back to the general idea that what one’s day
(journey, etc.) will be like can be predicted on the basis of the first person
met during it. The interesting point is that the earlier belief appeared to be
treated as divination, much like reading tea-leaves, but that first footing has
come to include the belief that the first guest brings about the good or ill
fortune, rather than being merely a portent of it. This shift appears to have
everything to do with the possibility of controlling who comes to your door
(there is even a tradition of “lucky” people hiring themselves out for the
occasion) rather than with any understanding of the purported underlying
causal connections.
Finally, we should consider the element that distinguishes religion from
magic – the purported goals of the practices. As previously stated, magi-
cal practices are understood to have as their goals effects that can be at least
potentially investigated, while the purported effects of religious practices are
far more unambiguously superempirical. The different goals entail that the
religious and the magical beliefs stand in significantly different epistemic posi-
tions. The magical beliefs are held in the face of potential counter-evidence
and because of this they are not completely and securely superempirical. The
claim that particular behaviour will lead to particular mundane outcomes
is potentially falsifiable given the right social and methodological contexts.
Indeed, many are the stories of magical claims failing in, sometimes, the most
evident fashion. Yet there are also many ways in which magical beliefs can be
protected or reinterpreted in the face of such destabilizing experiences, some
of which turn the beliefs into religious ones by reinterpreting the effects of
the practices in supernatural terms that are far less open to potential inves-
tigation. This does not mean that religious beliefs do not face challenges of
their own. This is because by postulating superempirical effects they have to
be maintained without any direct evidence. This is far from impossible but it
does have a destabilizing effect of its own that we will fully explore when we
turn to our discussion of religion.
In effect, it is possible to think of the difference between magic and reli-
gion in terms of a dilemma. On the one hand, by being open to potential
counter-evidence in the form of the failure of their purported effects to even-
tuate, magical beliefs are potentially less stable than religious ones. On the
other hand, however, in so far as people come to believe that those effects
have occurred, magical beliefs are provided with a kind of psychologically
convincing evidence that religious beliefs cannot be directly supported by.
68
the superempirical
Other ways religion and magic differ

As previously noted, the proposed characterization of religious and magical
beliefs is not meant to function primarily as a definition. Instead, it is prima-
rily intended to help explain these phenomena by bringing to light the kinds
of cognitive, cultural and epistemic considerations that determine the con-
tent of these beliefs. Thus far, only part of this has been achieved by focuss-
ing upon the significance of the superempirical status of religion and magic.
The rest of the story will require that the significance of this status for how
such beliefs stabilize within various cultures be fully explored. Even before
then, however, we can see something of the utility of this way of drawing
the religion/magic distinction by comparing it to other differences between
these kinds of beliefs that have been suggested. If the difference in the degree
to which the purported effects of magical and religious practices are open to
investigation is as central as has been claimed, it should be able to cast light
on many of the other ways in which magic and religion differ.
Pyysiäinen (2004: 93–4), after Goode (1951), lists the following differ-
ences (numbering not in original):
1. Magic involves a more concretely specific goal, while religion
aims at general welfare.
2. Magic involves a manipulative attitude, while religion involves
a supplicative attitude.
3. In magic there is a professional–client relationship, whereas
religion is characterized by the shepherd–flock relationship.
4. Magic focuses on individual ends, religion on group ends.
5. Magical practitioners and their customers act as private indi-
viduals, whereas religious practitioners and their flock act as
members of a larger whole.
6. Magicians take recourse to substitution or introduction of
other techniques in cases of failure, religious leaders do not
find it necessary to do this because of the noninstrumental
nature of religion.
7. Magic is characterized by a lesser degree of emotion, religion
by a greater degree.
8. In magic the magician decides when the process is to start and
whether the process is to start at all, in religion all rituals are
predetermined and obligatory.
9. Magic is at least potentially directed against the society, reli-
gious rituals are not.
10. Magic is only used instrumentally, in religion the practices are
ends in themselves.
69
The point of bringing up this list is not to provide a definite inventory of

all such differences. Indeed, the list repeats very similar criteria, such as (1)
and (4), while also containing items that seem to contradict each other – is
religion non-instrumental, as (6) states, or does it focus on group ends, as
stated by (4)? The aim here is, rather, to show that many of the commonly
noted criteria can be explained in terms of the different epistemic status of
the purported aims.
Half of the criteria listed above – (1), (3), (4), (5) and (9) – refer to the
difference between magic and religion that was already noted by Durkheim,
that is the way in which religion appears to be much more connected with
social considerations. While this may appear to have very little to do with
whether the purported effects of religious practices are superempirical, it will
be shown in Chapter 5 that it is the superempirical status of those effects that
enhances the potential for religion to have a pro-social function. So, not only
can the distinction that has been put forward explain this difference, but it
will be quite central to the account that is being developed.
Several of the criteria – (1), (6) and (10) – draw the distinction between
magic and religion in much the same way as Malinowski does. We have
already seen the problems this approach results in. Still, criterion (6) does
bring up an interesting difference. This difference is not due to religious prac-
tices not having any goals, however, but due to it being impossible to tell if
those goals have or have not been achieved. As previously noted, there is no
way to tell if a baby has been successfully washed clean of original sin so there
is no possibility of finding out that a baptism ceremony has failed to work
as desired.
Similar reasoning can be used to understand criterion (8). Since magical
practices have mundane, investigable goals, they will be performed if and
when the need to achieve those goals becomes apparent. A love potion is
brewed when the love of another is desired but not yet possessed and the rain
dance is performed when it has been dry. No similar external stimulus can
exist for religious practices. The closest that religious practices come to such a
situation is in being tied to particular stages in life such as birth, marriage or
death. But even there, in so far as the ritual has a religious purpose, it is one
that is inferred and not directly experienced. This lack of external stimulus is
why such practices must be predetermined and obligatory.
Criterion (2) is interesting in another way. It seems to be connected to the
often-made claim that agents play a more significant role in religion than in
magic, since supplication assumes an agent to be petitioned. This applies sim-
ilarly for criterion (7), since emotions are mostly tied to dealing with agents.
The significance of agents for religion can also be understood to be connected
to the superempirical status of religious goals in a couple of ways. Dealings
70
the superempirical
with agents are much more unpredictable, making it easier to explain why a
particular ritual failed to bring about the desired effect. Yet, in so far as the
goal of the practice is open to investigation, continued evident failure will still
undermine the practice, potentially leading to the abandonment of the deity.
Superempirical agents who are thought to act mainly within the superempiri-
cal sphere will avoid this problem. More importantly, however, for the social
dimension to enter explicitly into superempirical practices it is very useful to
understand them as relating to moral superempirical agents – the moral high
gods that Shariff et al. (2009) speak of. Both supplication and high emotion
make sense when dealing with such entities.
71
4
Magic as cognitive by-product
The main point of the previous chapter was that magical and religious beliefs
can be identified as that subset of beliefs that is largely shaped by the idi-
osyncratic nature of our cognitive mechanisms and the specific details of our
cultures. This is the case as these beliefs are superempirical – protected against
empirical considerations by dint of their contents, as well as their social and
methodological contexts. In this respect, these beliefs were contrasted against
scientific beliefs, whose context acts to force them into contact with empiri-
cal evidence. The religious beliefs, when compared with magical beliefs, were
found to be even more divorced from evidence as the purported effects of
religious practices were superempirical in themselves – unlike those of magi-
cal practices. The degree to which superempirical beliefs are removed from
mundane considerations led to the question of what it is that renders them
relevant enough to be considered by people. To understand that, it is neces-
sary to look at magical beliefs and practices and to consider the concrete
mechanisms responsible for their appearance and stabilization.
One of the earliest things noticed about magical beliefs, already stressed
by Malinowski, was that magical beliefs have a tendency to appear in sit-
uations where people feel threatened. Malinowski interpreted this correla-
tion as showing that the function of magical beliefs is to reduce our anxiety
by making us think we are in control when, actually, we have no control.
This interpretation has been followed up by a line of research into a motiva-
tional account of magical beliefs that has provided a lot of interesting results.
Unfortunately, however, from an evolutionary point of view, Malinowski’s
thesis is at best incomplete. Mental mechanisms do not evolve for the purpose
of helping us have a tranquil life. At worst, a mechanism which made us relax
in threatening circumstances would be maladaptive because it could cause us
to fail to act when action would be helpful. Of course, it may be claimed that
the magical belief mechanism only kicks in when we have no control anyway.
73
But it must be realized that our assessment of whether we have any control
in a situation may well be faulty and that – given this uncertainty – it may be
best to err on the side of action.
The kind of motivational story that gets told can only serve as an element
in a cognitive account – a particular emotion may be conducive to good deci-
sion making in a given context. This is hardly an original thought, the cog-
nitive role of emotions having been explored by a variety of researchers over
the last twenty years, as we have seen. On this interpretation, even emotional
responses are cognitive in that they serve to better modulate our interactions
with our environment, both underpinning and working closely with the more
obviously cognitive mental mechanisms.
There could hardly be a bigger contrast than that between the loss-of-control
research and the Skinnerian behaviourist approach that interpreted super-
stitious behaviour in terms of adventitious reinforcement.1 While Skinner’s
interpretations came to be questioned, a line of research that was much influ-
enced by his approach has continued and obtained interesting results that do
welcome cognitive interpretations. An example of this research is provided
by the work of Stuart Vyse on how people perceive patterns. This line of
research sees false causal beliefs as central to magic – a view reflected in many
commonly accepted definitions of superstition. The problem is, of course,
trying to explain how magical beliefs differ from other false causal beliefs.
The functional explanation of the existence of the false causal beliefs pur-
sued by Vyse and others is that, while these beliefs are not themselves func-
tional, it is often better to make a number of type I (false positive) errors than
to make even one or two type II (false negative) errors. This idea is devel-
oped by error management theory. This theory is lacking in several features,
however. First, this way of putting things makes it sound like there is an all-
purpose pattern-spotting device in our heads. Second, it only suits magical
beliefs that people form spontaneously – there is no attempt to explain how
the beliefs come to be accepted by other members of the community. Third,
there is no discussion of the distinctly supernatural element of magical beliefs
(i.e. the explanatory element).
There is an obvious need to tie the general idea of a functional bias, which
is sound, to specific cognitive mechanisms. An important step in doing that is
coming to understand how perceived threat levels interact with these mecha-
nisms. At the same time, it is important not to make the general approach
reliant upon one or two proposed mechanisms – such mechanisms serve to
provide examples of how the general idea comes to work in practice. This
1. For a discussion of the differences and connections between Malinowski’s and Skinner’s
significance for the study of religion see Talmont-Kaminski (2013c).
74
magic as cognitive by-product
sometimes requires remaining agnostic about some of the mechanisms that

have been proposed. An example of the kind of mental mechanism that has
been put forward by cognitive scientists of religion is the hyperactive agency
detection device. Justin Barrett (2004), in particular, makes extensive use of
it, but expands its scope to a point that is hard to justify empirically. The con-
tagion heuristic proposed by Paul Rozin provides a much better documented
example (Rozin & Nemeroff 1990, 2002). The point that there are different
mechanisms that are responsible for illusory causal connections is ultimately
highly significant since it bears out the points made by bounded rationality.
This leaves the second and third of the problems with the error manage-
ment theory account of magical beliefs. To deal with them it is necessary to
consider the role of explanations. There is a two-way relation between evi-
dence and explanation. Following on from the work of Heintz and Mercier,
detailed by Christophe Heintz in a talk given in May 2010 to the Religion,
Cognition and Culture Research Unit at Aarhus University, I will be talking
about inference to the convincing explanation. Of course, in this case it is
not scientific explanation but only psychologically satisfactory explanation
that is discussed. The basic claim is that magical explanations are put forward
when natural explanations are not capable of explaining the perceived causal
connections. Often, whatever explanations are given are clearly post hoc in
character and only produced when questioned. This fits in very well with the
inference to a convincing explanation account. The explanations must con-
tain magical elements in order to be capable of explaining seeming connec-
tions that are often impossible. The flip side of this is that the perceived causal
connections are understood to provide evidence for the existence of the magi-
cal entities that people come to believe in. Such magical explanations make
extensive use of minimally counter-intuitive concepts that might already exist
within the culture, but which might otherwise be considered fictional.
This leaves the question of the significance of social learning. Illusory causal
connections for which the existence of magical entities is a satisfactory expla-
nation provide direct evidence for the existence of those entities. However,
social learning can provide indirect evidence for such beliefs. In particular,
Henrich’s (2009) credibility-enhancing display account can provide an answer
to how magical beliefs come to be passed on within society. This is necessary
if the beliefs are to survive in the long term. On Henrich’s account, magical
practices, when observed by other members of a culture may provide sufficient
indirect evidence to stabilize the connected magical beliefs within that culture.
This kind of indirect evidence is also likely to be more effective in threatening
situations for much the same reasons as those which affected direct evidence.
The final section of this chapter deals with the important question of what
occurs when empirical counter-evidence does start to affect magical beliefs.
75
Festinger’s work on the failure of prophecy is considered and is rejected

in favour of more recent work which proposes several different potential
responses, the most interesting of which Melton calls spiritualization. In the
terms that have been put forward, this amounts to a reinterpretation of a
magical belief in religious terms. This is achieved by altering claims regard-
ing the purported effects of the connected practice in such a way as to render
them immune from empirical examination. This reinterpretation of magical
beliefs provides another example of the way that supernatural beliefs tend to
react to the superempirical dilemma outlined previously.
Magic and misfortune
One of the most influential and significant conclusions that Malinowski

reached on the basis of his anthropological studies was that perception of
threat leads to magical beliefs. The claim is made in his famous comparison
between different kinds of fishing:
While in the villages on the inner lagoon fishing is done in an

easy and absolutely reliable manner by the method of poisoning,
yielding abundant results without danger and uncertainty, there
are on the shores of the open sea dangerous modes of fishing and
also certain types in which the yield greatly varies according to
whether shoals of fish appear beforehand or not. It is most signifi-
cant that in the lagoon fishing, where man can rely completely
on his knowledge and skill, magic does not exist, while in the
open-sea fishing, full of danger and uncertainty, there is extensive
magical ritual to secure safety and good results.
(Malinowski [1925] 1992: 30–31)
Malinowski’s claim stands in stark contrast to the traditional Enlightenment

view that it is superstition that is the cause of misfortune. Of course, it is
not necessarily the case that Voltaire and Malinowski contradict each other
– misfortune may lead to magical beliefs which may then lead to further mis-
fortune. The different focus is highly significant, nonetheless, as it shows that
correlations between magic and misfortune need not necessarily require that
the blame be put on the magic.
Subsequent work has provided a wealth of evidence for Malinowski’s claim
concerning the causal connection between perceived threat and belief in magic
(Gmelch 1971; Felson & Gmelch 1979; Keinan 1994; Whitson & Galinsky
2008), as well as religious beliefs (Norenzayan & Hansen 2006; Kay et al. 2008;
76
Laurin et al. 2008; Paul 2009; Rees 2009). One study particularly relevant
to our purposes was carried out by Padgett and Jorgenson (1982). Interested
in seeing if there is any connection between economic disorder and magical
beliefs, they decided to look at Germany between the two world wars, a period
that included violent economic upheavals, as well as some much more eco-
nomically stable times. They found that interest in magic – as measured by the
number of indexed articles on astrology, mysticism and cults – was correlated
with measures of economic threat such as unemployment and inflation. Most
interestingly, they found that the correlation was stronger when a one-year
time-lag was introduced. In other words, articles on magic were more likely
to appear in the year following one in which unemployment was high and the
wages as well as production were low. Taken together with the fact that the
economic causes of the problems Germany was facing are relatively well under-
stood, this counted as solid evidence against belief in magic being the cause of
the economic threat and as evidence for this belief primarily being the effect.
The reality of the causal connection Malinowski identified is inarguable
given the wealth of evidence that has been gathered since his time. Yet the
explanation he provided has to be approached more critically. Interpreting
the connection in motivational terms, Malinowski argued that magic was an
attempt to alleviate the anxiety that loss of control causes:
Whether he be savage or civilized, whether in possession of magic

or entirely ignorant of its existence, passive inaction, the only
thing dictated by reason, is the last thing in which he can acqui-
esce. His nervous system and his whole organism drive him to
some substitute activity. (Malinowski [1925] 1992: 79)
According to Malinowski’s motivational account of magic, the function of

magical beliefs or practices is simply to make people feel less anxious about not
being able to affect their circumstances. This implies that the practices should
not be understood as attempts to exert real control over those circumstances.
The motivational account is not, however, the only interpretation of the
connection Malinowski identified between magic and misfortune. The alter-
native, cognitive, interpretation holds that magical practices are attempts to
gain control. A recent study by Case et al. attempts to adjudicate between the
two interpretations (Case et al. 2004). While Case et al. feel that they man-
age to show that the motivational interpretation is better supported by the
evidence, their methodology and results do not bear out this conclusion. The
basic problem with the argumentation put forward by Case and colleagues is
that the motivational and the cognitive interpretations need not necessarily
offer two irreconcilably different alternatives. To think that they do would
77
require assuming that emotions do not play a cognitive role, an assumption

that while traditionally accepted is no longer plausible given recent research
into how emotions are very much a part of the human cognitive system (de
Sousa 1990; Damasio 1995; Evans & Cruse 2004; Brun et al. 2008). In par-
ticular, it is highly plausible to claim that people’s need to reduce anxiety may
well have the function of motivating real attempts to gain effective control
– the fact that people settle for magical practices being merely a cognitive by-
product of these efforts.
Case et al. argue as follows:
it is unclear whether superstitious strategies are used in a mistaken

attempt to instrumentally affect uncertain or chance-determined
outcomes, or simply in an attempt to obtain a feeling of control.
If the latter is the case … then use of such strategies should be
independent of belief in the efficacy of such strategies.
(Case et al. 2004: 851)
Case et al. think that this is precisely what they manage to show with their
studies. It has to be appreciated that it would be a very significant result were
it vindicated, as it would seem to imply that belief in the efficacy of magical
practices does not significantly motivate their use. The methodology used
by Case et al. is to first measure how willing the participants are to trust the
authority of a “psychic” when choosing cards. This is done by offering the
participants a choice between picking a card in a game themselves or accept-
ing the card which, they are informed, was chosen by a psychic. To obtain a
comparison, some of the participants are offered cards supposedly chosen by
students or academics. After picking the cards the participants are asked ques-
tions concerning the effectiveness of those three groups in choosing cards.
The authors find that people tend to rely more upon the psychic (as well as
the student and academic alternatives) when the subjective probability of suc-
cess is low. They explain this phenomenon in terms of people avoiding direct
responsibility for what is likely to be failure. Whatever the mental mechanism
directly responsible for this phenomenon, however, it seems more insightful
to ultimately explain it in terms of the relative adaptive value of imitation over
innovation in circumstances where failure is likely (McElreath et al. 2005).
Vitally, however, neither of these theories accounts for the fact that, when the
subjective probability of success is low, people have a much greater tendency
to turn to the psychic than to either of the other two potential authori-
ties. The authors interpret this as merely indicating anxiety alleviation, even
though this behaviour could be predicted by people believing the psychic to
be more likely to know the correct answer when it comes to picking cards.
78
What is worse, there does not seem any good reason for the participants to
prefer the psychic over the alternatives unless the psychic is considered to
be a better authority in these circumstances. This means, however, that the
results Case et al. obtain run counter to their own theory. Apparently unaware
of this, the authors seek to undermine the claim that people’s belief in the
efficacy of psychics plays a role here by showing that there is apparently no
correlation between people relying on the psychic’s answer and them indicat-
ing belief in the efficacy of psychics within the questionnaire. The conclu-
sion concerning the lack of a connection between belief and behaviour is
not adequately motivated by this result, however. In the threesome of belief,
espousal and behaviour it is most often espousal that is the odd one out, after
all. That people’s espousal of magical beliefs does not necessarily give a true
measure of their willingness to engage in magical practices is well known
(Vyse 1997: 17–18). This is usually explained, however, not in terms of a
mismatch between belief and practice, but in terms of a mismatch between
espousal and belief, with respondents’ ideas concerning what is the socially
acceptable response playing a very large role in determining how they answer
questionnaires. Indeed, willingness to engage in magical practices is usually
seen as a much better means of determining belief than espousal.2 Case et
al. do nothing to undermine that interpretation of the mismatch, in effect.
Therefore, even if their data were consistent with their overall theory, the
interpretation of their results would be very much in the air and would not
have proved the truth of this conclusion.
There is a further problem. Even if Case et al. had managed to show that
there is a real disconnect between people’s beliefs and their magical behav-
iour, they would not have shown that the motivational rather than the cogni-
tive explanation of magical behaviour is correct. By taking people’s espoused
beliefs as normative, Case et al. appear to be implicitly accepting the view
that the function of behaviour is determined by the agent’s intentions. This
view, however, is inappropriate for comparing the motivational and the cog-
nitive accounts of magic. People’s intentions are just as much a product of
evolved mental mechanisms as our feelings and inferences and, therefore, fail
to provide an even playing field upon which the significance of those can be
compared. In order to properly compare the merits of the motivational and
the cognitive accounts of magic it is necessary to do so on the level of evo-
lutionary processes. Viewed on this level, the cognitive explanation of magic
amounts to the claim that magical beliefs and practices are not functional, but
are the by-products of evolved mental mechanisms – mechanisms that may
2. Some, including Steadman and Palmer (2008), argue that the concept of a belief should
be given up on altogether.
79
well include the affective states that the motivational account focuses upon.
What about the motivational account, however? The claim there is that magi-
cal behaviour has the function of merely helping to calm the agent. The basic
problem with this theory, when viewed from an evolutionary perspective, is
that evolution does not care about our peace of mind. This explanation could
only be given an evolutionary basis if it could be shown that the calming
effect of magical behaviour in some way positively affects performance. Even
if that turns out to be correct, however, the cognitive by-product account
is not fundamentally affected as it seems likely that any such function for
magical behaviour will have been the result of the exaptation of an existing
by-product. What is more, there remains a second profound problem with
any version of the motivational account. Engaging in behaviour that does not
have as a function the attempt to obtain real control will be maladaptive in
circumstances where control could have been obtained had it been sought.
This would not be a problem if we could identify with certainty those cases
where we cannot obtain control. That, however, is impossible. Given this, it
turns out to be adaptive to try to gain control even when our chances appear
slim. This principle, which runs directly counter to the motivational account,
lies at the heart of error management theory, which will be discussed in the
next section.
Managing errors
The most famous study of superstitions carried out during the twentieth
century was probably Skinner’s research into “superstition” in the pigeon
(Skinner 1948). What Skinner found was that if pigeons were offered food
for regular but brief periods of time, they often engaged in repeated stere-
otyped behaviour that he interpreted as having been caused by accidental
operant conditioning:
The conditioning process is usually obvious. The bird happens

to be executing some response as the hopper appears; as a result
it tends to repeat this response. If the interval before the next
presentation is not so great that extinction takes place, a second
“contingency” is probable. This strengthens the response still fur-
ther and subsequent reinforcement becomes more probable. It
is true that some responses go unreinforced and some reinforce-
ments appear when the response has not just been made, but the
net result is the development of a considerable state of strength.
(Ibid.: 168–9)
80
If we use belief-language that Skinner would not have used, the pigeons
behaved as if they thought that their behaviour was causing the food to be
made available, which was the case in Skinner’s experiments on non-acci-
dental operant conditioning but not in this experiment. In statistics terms,
the pigeons could be seen as making type I errors or obtaining false positives
concerning the hypothesis that their actions and the appearance of food were
causally connected – type II errors being false negatives (i.e. failures to recog-
nize a real causal connection).3
The lack of any consideration of supernatural beliefs might seem to make
this kind of example too simplistic to be of relevance to magical beliefs and
practices. Clearly, we are not dealing here with magical beliefs and practices
as defined in the previous chapter. One does not have to be a Skinnerian
behaviourist to agree that pigeons do not have any beliefs about supernatural
entities. At best, the behaviour of the pigeons exhibits illusory causal connec-
tions. Far from being a problem, however, the simplicity of these kinds of
examples will turn out to be quite enlightening.
Skinner’s interpretation of his results has been criticized (Staddon &
Simmelhag 1971; Timberlake & Lucas 1985). In particular, it has been sug-
gested that the behaviour did not represent misguided efforts to obtain the
food but, rather, was time-wasting behaviour – the similarity between this
interpretation and the motivational interpretation put forward by Case et
al. is striking. Arguing in support of Skinner’s views, Peter Killeen (1978)
was able to show, however, that pigeons responded adaptively to changes in
the costs of misidentifying real and illusory causal connections, suggesting
that they were not simply wasting time. Furthermore, a number of research-
ers have developed computer models showing that adaptive learning strate-
gies reliably produce superstition-like behaviour as a by-product (Beck &
Forstmeier 2007; Foster & Kokko 2009; Abbott & Sherratt 2011).
Indeed, there are now experiments similar to Skinner’s but carried out
on humans that seem not to be open to this kind of interpretation (Ono
1987). “Operant conditioning is not just for rats and pigeons”, as Stuart
Vyse has drily observed (Vyse 1997). In a computer-based study, Vyse (1991)
presented participants with the task of guiding a cursor from the top-left to
the bottom-right of a 4×4-element matrix using a pair of buttons: one that
moved the cursor down and another that moved it right (see also Heltzer &
Vyse 1994). The participants were told that on some occasions they would
receive a point upon completing this task and that they should try to gain as
many points as possible. When the points were reliably awarded on the basis
3. Type I and II errors do not necessarily concern beliefs about causes. However, in this
discussion, it will be only errors about causal beliefs that will be discussed.
81
of the choice of path taken, the participants were able to obtain points on
most attempts and to indicate at least a subset of the paths that led to points
being granted. A very different picture emerged, however, when the points
were awarded randomly half of the time the task was completed. Many of
the participants came to formulate complex theories as to what the required
paths were. This tendency to develop byzantine explanations did not disap-
pear even when the participants were told not to focus on getting the maxi-
mum number of points but asked to simply work out how the game worked.
It seems that people are just as willing to postulate non-existent causal con-
nections between their actions and independent events as Skinner’s pigeons
appeared to be – the human participants clearly making type I errors regard-
ing connections between the particular paths taken and the points obtained.
Indeed, people are much more capable of defending their causal theories
against counter-evidence thanks to our ability to formulate complex theories
regarding the purported causal connections.
The focus on the type I (false positive) errors that Vyse and Skinner discuss
finds a coherent explanation in error management theory (EMT), which gen-
eralizes the approach taken by Killeen (see also Nesse 2001), and which was
put forward by Martie Haselton and Daniel Nettle:
EMT predicts that if judgments are made under uncertainty,

and the costs of false positive and false negative errors have been
asymmetric over evolutionary history, selection should have
favored a bias toward making the least costly error. This perspec-
tive integrates a diverse array of effects under a single explanatory
umbrella, and it yields new content-specific predictions.
(Haselton & Nettle 2006: 47)
Haselton and Nettle are claiming, in effect, that while the errors that are
made are not functional, they (or rather their distribution) result from the
adoption of a strategy that attempts to minimize the overall cost of the errors
that end up being made. This result is achieved by making it more likely that
it will be the less costly errors that are made (see also McKay & Dennett
2009). We can now see why in the kinds of cases that we have been looking
at it is type I errors that are being favoured. The relevant alternatives, in these
cases, are that we can or cannot influence an outcome by our choice of action.
If we can influence the outcome and search for the means to do so we have an
opportunity to find a reliable response to our circumstances, an opportunity
that we would have lost if we had assumed that the situation is beyond our
control. If we cannot influence the outcome but attempt to do so, success
will be just as common as if we had not tried. In situations such as this, so
82
long as the cost of trying to influence the outcome is not high compared to
the potential benefits, it is better to be biased towards an optimistic attitude.
We can see how this works in the case of the Vyse study. By trying to find the
connection between the path chosen and the reward, the participants leave
open the possibility that they will benefit from finding that link if it exists.
Giving up and accepting the null hypothesis, however, will only lead to the
saving of the negligible intellectual effort necessary to consider the possible
connections.
Haselton and Nettle specifically consider the kinds of examples that
Skinner and Vyse discuss,4 and conclude:
In the ancestral environment, accurate information about the true

contingencies between people’s behavior and events around them,
such as the movements of game animals, would have been scarce.
As long as the cost of performing the superstitious behaviors was
low relative to the benefit of actually controlling events, EMT
would predict cognitive mechanisms biased toward superstition
and the illusion of control to evolve.
(Haselton & Nettle 2006: 59)
While error management theory does help to bring together what might oth-
erwise seem like disparate phenomena and shows why the errors produced
by human cognitive biases may be considered to be by-products, it does not
by any stretch of the imagination provide us with a complete explanation of
magical beliefs and practices. Three issues, in particular, need to be considered
before we can have anything like a sketch of an explanation. The first issue is
that there is a danger that error management theory might be misunderstood
as entailing that human capability to spot potentially useful patterns in our
environment is provided by a single all-purpose pattern-seeking mechanism
whose output is modulated to allow for error management. Second, what has
been said regarding error management theory only helps us to understand
how individuals can come to form spontaneous superstitions. In other words,
the prevalence of type I errors in particular types of circumstances shows why
people interpret their experiences as providing psychologically satisfactory
“evidence” for causal connections which they subsequently explain by pos-
tulating supernatural entities or forces. Vitally, however, there is the further
question of how such individual magical beliefs come to spread and stabilize
within a culture – most people who believe that black cats bring bad luck
4. While Haselton and Nettle argue that the illusion of control is psychologically healthy,
it is clear that their basic approach is cognitive.
83
have come to believe this on the basis of interactions with other people, and
not with black cats. Finally, error management theory has nothing to say on
the topic of supernatural explanations, which looms so large when consider-
ing magical beliefs and practices. I will come to argue that this is a strong-
point of this theory that allows us to subsequently show how supernatural
elements come to be introduced into the picture. Yet until we introduce those
elements, we will not have begun considering magic proper. While the first
of these issues will be dealt with straight away, the other two I will discuss
later in the chapter.
The idea that humans rely upon something like an all-purpose pattern-
seeking mechanism is both psychologically and philosophically suspect. From
the psychological perspective, the problem with this idea is that research
into the structure of the mind, while far from univocal, does strongly sup-
port the idea that the mind must be understood as a complex arrangement
of a number of mechanisms whose functions are limited and very much
context-dependent. This does not necessarily entail immediately buying into
the strongest versions of massive modularity. It does, however, make less than
plausible the idea of an all-purpose mental mechanism whose function would
be to search for patterns in inputs provided by all the senses as well as in the
data that had been previously generated in other areas of the mind. Indeed,
the context-dependence of mental mechanisms was already revealed when
behaviourist research into conditioning quickly showed that certain kinds of
stimuli/response pairings become conditioned much more readily.
From the philosophical perspective, such an all-purpose pattern-seeking
mechanism, however it was instantiated, would run face-first into Hume’s
problem of induction. The reason is that the existence of such a mechanism
would entail that a solution to this problem exists. The modus tollens response
to this proposal appears to be apt, however. As has already been argued in
Chapter 2, given that philosophers have failed to provide such a solution
despite two and a half centuries of trying, it seems more reasonable to accept
that there is no general solution and that, therefore, there is no general mech-
anism that can spot patterns. What is more, the type I errors that error man-
agement theory explains as the best of the available alternatives are exactly
what you would expect if there was no solution to Hume’s problem. Post hoc,
ergo propter hoc often is not so much a fallacy as the most reasonable assump-
tion to make. The Humean condition is indeed the human condition, as
Quine (1969) quipped.
At this point, it is useful to consider how some of the cognitive explana-
tions of supernatural beliefs fit into the general picture proposed by error
management theory. On one hand this provides us with examples of just the
kind of context-dependent mechanisms that I think we should expect. On the
84
other hand it allows us to understand how those mechanisms fit into a larger
picture that is often not considered.
A potential cognitive mechanism that has been discussed by many research-
ers working within cognitive science of religion is the hyperactive agent
detection device (HADD). First proposed by Stewart Guthrie, the HADD
is supposed to search for signs of agency in what our senses tell us about the
world (Guthrie 1993). One often-used example is of the snapping branch
which is interpreted as indicating the proximity of a potential predator. Justin
Barrett, who coined the term HADD, explains it as follows:
When hearing a bump in the night, our first impulse is to won-

der who caused the noise and not what caused the noise. As other
agents (such as humans and animals) present both our most
important resources for survival and reproduction and our greatest
threats, Guthrie argues that such a perceptual bias would bestow
survival advantages and thus, from an evolutionary perspective,
would be expected. We constantly scan our environment for the
presence of other people and nonhuman agents. If you bet that
something is an agent and it isn’t, not much is lost. But if you bet
that something is not an agent and it turns out to be one, you
could be lunch. (Barrett 2004: 31)
The point made by Barrett is, of course, the very one that is made by error
management theory. Agents such as predators or other humans can be quite
dangerous to us, making it important that we do not commit the type II
error of not spotting “the tiger lurking in the grass”. The related type I errors,
however, are usually not very costly, involving only a momentary jump in
blood pressure. Barrett has argued that the HADD can be applied in a very
broad range of circumstances including explaining why people find creation-
ist theories more attractive than evolutionary ones (ibid.: 36ff.). This kind of
“mission creep” is quite dangerous in that the broader the proposed scope of
the mental mechanism’s application, the less well-defined how it functions.
While Barrett is happy to accept the massive modularity hypothesis and to
understand the HADD in this theoretical framework, most researchers seem
to argue that evidence for this kind of modularity is limited to processing
that is closely connected to our senses. In other words, the more that Barrett
is willing to extend the reach of the HADD into ever more abstract spheres,
the less plausible his account of it becomes. This does not necessarily imply
anything for the thesis except that there exist one or more mental devices that
are closely connected to sensory data and have spotting agents as their func-
tion. That claim is particularly well justified when it comes to the example
85
that Guthrie begins with – that of a face recognition mechanism – for whose
existence there is ample evidence.
Another mechanism, that is quite different from the HADD, is the conta-
gion heuristic that has been explored by Paul Rozin through a long series of
experiments. Rozin suggests that people are in possession of a cognitive heu-
ristic which acts to help us avoid possible sources of contamination but which
generates a number of what are clearly type I errors. According to Rozin,
contagion “holds that ‘once in contact, always in contact’; when objects make
physical contact, essences may be permanently transferred. Thus, fingernail
parings contain the ‘essence’ of the person to whom they were previously
attached, and foods carry the ‘essence’ of those who prepared them” (Rozin
& Nemeroff 2002: 201).
This may not sound particularly adaptive until we consider that the food
prepared by people suffering from any of a number of real diseases could
well carry the germs responsible for those illnesses and, therefore, constitute
a very real threat to anyone who did not avoid the potential source of conta-
gion. When Rozin comes to spell out the characteristics of how people reason
about contagion, the adaptiveness of the heuristic becomes all the more pro-
nounced. For example, according to how the contagion heuristic is applied,
physical contact is critical – as is the case when it comes to the transfer of
diseases passed on by contact. Similarly for dose insensitivity – for many dis-
eases even a small amount of infected matter is sufficient to create a significant
risk of catching the disease. At the same time, not all of the properties of the
heuristic can be accounted for in such terms – backwards action, exemplified
by the idea that one can harm another by burning their hair after it had been
cut off, is one concept that is apparently attractive but has no justification in
reality. Having said that, this kind of error concerning causal connections fits
very well with the loose causal thinking exhibited by people in the previously
discussed case of first footing.
The contagion heuristic fits right into the error management model. While
generally adaptive due to its ability to protect humans from contact with con-
tagious diseases, the mechanism shows a definite tendency to produce type I
errors such as when it treats moral qualities as transmissible or when it fails
to account for the effects of sterilization – much as the error management
model predicts.
Evidence and explanations
As discussed in the previous section, the biased errors predicted by error man-
agement theory are by no means all connected to magical beliefs. This is
86
perhaps best indicated by the range of examples that Haselton and Nettle
consider, including positive illusions, the fundamental attribution error and
food aversions. This leads to the question of under what circumstances magi-
cal beliefs come to be associated with the errors that Haselton and Nettle
discuss. Clearly, it must be type I errors, rather than type II errors, that lead
to magical beliefs. When a person makes a type II error, they come to believe
there is no causal connection between events that are connected. Thinking
there is no causal story to tell, however, entails that there is no need for any
kind of causal explanation to be given and, in particular, no supernatural
explanation to be given. Even so, not all type I errors lead to magical beliefs.
None of the participants in Vyse’s computer-based study seemed to employ
supernatural entities or forces to explain the connection they believed to exist
between their actions and whether points were obtained. In fact, such expla-
nations seem to be completely irrelevant in the case of what was, in effect, a
computer game. It is quite simple to think of many other cases where peo-
ple make type I errors yet do not claim that magical forces are involved. A
malfunctioning switch may be enough to elicit complex and quite fallacious
theories about how it should be operated in order for it to work – as I found
out to my chagrin, but without for a moment suspecting anything other than
a physical phenomenon was at hand. In general, the main environmental fac-
tor that seems to be required for type I errors to be made is that people try to
influence a causally opaque, partially stochastic system. Something more is
required for the appearance of magical beliefs.
What, then, is the connection between magical beliefs and type I errors
such as Vyse examines? The vital consideration appears to be that, in some of
the cases where type I errors are made, psychologically satisfying mundane
explanations are not available. While a computer game or a temperamental
light switch allow for mundane explanations, the same often cannot be said
for cases of “miraculous” healing, for example. The point is not that there is
no mundane explanation for what occurs but that this explanation is either
unavailable or, for some reason, psychologically unconvincing. An example
may help to clarify what is meant here. It is a common experience for peo-
ple to be called by someone they had just recently thought of. The perfectly
adequate mundane explanation of this phenomenon is that the co-occurrence
of these two events is merely a coincidence (i.e. that there is no causal connec-
tion between the two events). Indeed, once the odds of such an event occur-
ring are properly analysed it is found that it would be highly surprising if such
events did not occur all the time. Yet the “it’s just a coincidence” explanation
is most often highly unsatisfactory psychologically (possibly because it does
not provide any guidance as to the best course of action to take) – so much
so that the supernatural alternative that we mentally caused the person to call
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us has gained a sufficient amount of currency to be the subject of “research”

by parapsychologists (Sheldrake & Smart 2006). In effect, it appears that two
things occur. First, people make a type I error that makes them think their
thoughts somehow caused their friend to call. Then, unable to find a mun-
dane explanation for how their thoughts could have caused the phone call,
they do not reject this possibility but, instead, come to conjecture that their
thoughts possess a supernatural power to affect the world. In general, the idea
is that when people seek to explain causal connections that are illusory and
are unable to come up with plausible mundane explanations they settle for
supernatural explanations, instead.
A number of points can be made regarding this form of reasoning. The
first is that it is interesting that people are willing to put forward something
other than a mundane explanation. This might seem to be surprising, yet it
does not add up to much more than a willingness to accept that certain pre-
suppositions may be wrong. One can think of this as a willingness to accept
that the world does contain counter-intuitive entities. Given that this is most
definitely the case, as we have seen with the case of the Venus flytrap, this
willingness is far from something to be disparaged. Without this willingness,
science – with the plethora of counter-intuitive entities it proposes – could
not get off the ground. The second point to consider is what kind of expla-
nations people find psychologically satisfying. That explanations in terms of
coincidental co-occurrence are most often unattractive is seemingly an aspect
of error management. Yet there is much more that could be said here con-
cerning psychologically satisfying explanations – one major point to be made
is the attractiveness of explanations in terms of intentional action, a point
explored at length by Robert McCauley (2000, 2011).
To better understand the implications of this way of understanding the
relationship between type I errors and magical explanations it is useful to
think of the relationship in terms of the inference to best explanation and,
in particular, the form suggested by Heintz and Mercier as the inference to
convincing explanation. At the heart of this form of inference is the two-way
relationship between the explanans and the explanandum. On one hand,
the explanans that comes to be accepted provides the best explanation of the
explanandum. At the same time, the fact that the explanans does provide
the best explanation of the explanandum is sufficient for the explanans to be
accepted as true. In our case, while the supernatural explanans, such as the
telepathic power of thoughts, provides an explanation of the co-occurrence
of the thoughts and the phone call, the co-occurrence of the thoughts and
the phone call is taken as evidence for the telepathic power of the thoughts.
This way of applying the inference to best explanation would not fit with
how inference to best explanation was originally understood. The reason was
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that it had been originally thought of merely in normative terms, while we

have already accepted that in the case we are looking at the best explanation is
that it is a coincidence that the friend calls us after we have thought of them,
and that supernatural explanations are merely psychologically convincing.
This is where Heintz and Mercier’s proposal becomes vital. They spell out the
vague term “best explanation” in social and cognitive terms as the explana-
tion that is sufficient to convince others. The cases they are interested in are
those of scientific argumentation, where the relevant community is that of
one’s scientific peers. There, the required explanation is one that is capable of
convincing a community of experts who have access to detailed knowledge
of the discipline and a lifetime’s worth of training in the methods and cogni-
tive habits necessary to evaluate proposed explanations. Yet, the same basic
idea can be applied to any community since Heintz and Mercier are happy
to allow that the standards of what is convincing will be community-relative
– something that is essential if we are to understand, for example, the differ-
ences between science and religion as they are practiced, rather than between
their idealized versions. In the cases we are interested in, the community is
that of people relying upon folk conceptions of what constitutes adequate
explanation. That conception, however, is going to be largely dependent upon
shared cognitive biases, such as that for intentional explanations, as well as
upon culture-specific factors such as what supernatural entities are already
“present” within the culture.
We are now in the position to portray the relationship between type I
errors and magical explanations in its full form. The type I errors present
us with illusory causal connections. These illusory causal connections serve
as explananda in inferences to convincing explanations. What explanations
are convincing depends upon cognitive and cultural factors. In most cir-
cumstances, mundane explanations are convincing enough. In some cases,
however, these factors – such as unwillingness to accept coincidence as an
explanation – entail that the only convincing explanations are supernatural
ones. As a result, the illusory causal connections come to be seen in such cases
as providing evidence for the inferred supernatural explanans.
The proposed relationship between type I errors and magical explanations
helps to understand why magical explanations often appear to be largely post
hoc in character. The illusory causal connections are cognitively prior to the
supernatural explanations and, given the social character of explanation, often
remain unexplained. This is primarily the case with spontaneous superstitions
but is even the case where the causal connections come to be believed in by
a large number of the members of a society. The willingness to accept such
causal connections even though no explanation may have been put forward
for them is very significant. Given how complex and often causally opaque
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the world we function within is, it is vital that we be willing to accept as real
causal connections even when we have no explanation for their existence
(Gergely & Csibra 2006). Yet a hypothesized causal connection that cannot
be readily explained in mundane terms presents a potential challenge when
belief in it happens to be questioned. Under such circumstances, an attempt
is made to try to arrive at a convincing explanation. That explanation, how-
ever, is very much post hoc.
Cultural learning
The explanation of the development of magical beliefs that has been offered
thus far has a very serious shortcoming. Typically, most people who hold par-
ticular magical beliefs have never experienced the illusory causal connections
we have been discussing. This raises the questions of why it is that they have
come to hold those magical beliefs, and why they exhibit the related magical
behaviours. The obvious but vague answer is that they learn the beliefs and
behaviours from other members within their society – cultural learning must
play a central role in the stabilization of any belief in a given culture, clearly.
The problem with this answer is succinctly expressed by Joseph Henrich:
with the evolution of substantial communicative capacities in

the human lineage, cultural learners are potentially exploitable
by manipulators who can convey one mental representation but
actually believe something else, or at least misrepresent their depth
of commitment to a particular belief. (Henrich 2009: 244)
The solution Henrich proposes is that of credibility-enhancing displays

(CREDs). Unlike the mere espousal of belief, these displays involve behav-
iour that is costly unless the espoused beliefs are correct. By paying attention
to the presence or absence of this behaviour cultural learners come to be able
to judge whether the espousal was genuine. An example that Henrich uses
is that of a cultural learner who is told that blue mushrooms are delicious
and nutritious. If this learner then observes that whoever told them this goes
and eats the grey mushrooms they will have good reason to suspect foul play,
whereas if it is the blue mushrooms that get eaten by that person, there is
a good chance that what was said is an accurate description of the person’s
beliefs and potentially worth copying. In effect, the CRED approach ties
beliefs and practices together very closely. In the context of magic this works
out in terms of costly rituals that serve to show that whoever is engaged in
the ritual sincerely believes in the existence of the particular supernatural
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claims that the ritual is connected to. Even in cases as trivial as modern-day
superstitions, beliefs such as that crossing the path of a black cat brings bad
luck are much more likely to be accepted if their espousal is accompanied by
avoidance of black cats.
Henrich’s account of how the cultural context helps to determine a person’s
beliefs is only one of many that have been put forward – one particularly
relevant alternative take on this process being the idea of costly signalling
(Zahavi 1977). However, Henrich’s account is particularly fitting for combin-
ing with the approach I have been developing for a couple of reasons. The first
of them is that it ties beliefs and practices very closely in a mutually support-
ing process. On the one hand, the magical beliefs motivate magical behav-
iour – thinking that a particular ritual will lead to a certain desirable effect
causes people to engage in that ritual. On the other hand, however, seeing
people perform that particular ritual leads others (as well as the participants,
themselves) to treat more seriously the belief behind that ritual. This means
that the belief and practice can potentially end up motivating each other in
a positive feedback. This fits well with the approach pursued here since I had
already earlier sought to distance myself from the somewhat simplistic idea
that it is invariably beliefs that motivate practices. Indeed, the mechanism of
self-perception theory I had considered earlier probably works in the case of
CREDs by serving to strengthen the belief of the participants in the light of
their memories of having gone to the trouble of participating in the ritual –
the more costly the ritual, the stronger the effect.
The second consideration that makes CREDs suitable for considering
along with illusory causal connections is that both can be understood in
terms of psychologically satisfactory evidence for magical beliefs. There are a
couple of differences, however. In the case of illusory causal connections, the
nature of that evidence is not inherently social – the purported effect of the
illusory causal connection may be social but that plays no role in explaining
why the connection supposedly exists. In the case of CREDs the evidence
for the beliefs is indirect – someone whom we consider to be a good model
for our own beliefs behaves in a way that shows that they hold the magical
beliefs in question. An example will help to see what is meant. There is a long
history of love divinations, such as that if a girl puts an ivy leaf in her pocket
and goes out of the house then the first man she comes upon will be her
future husband (Roud 2003: 266). The purported effect in this case is social
– knowledge about one’s supposed future husband – but the explanation is
supernatural. The effect could have just as well been something non-social
such as that the first cemetery that one comes upon while carrying an ivy
leaf will be one’s future place of rest. Both predictions, incidentally, probably
have a high chance of being correct in a small, relatively stable community.
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The CRED that could lead one to treat either of these beliefs seriously will
necessarily be social, however. In either case the evidence will be in the form
of the observed behaviour of other members of one’s culture, such as of other
young women who seek to foretell their future in this way. The second point,
concerning the indirect nature of the evidence provided by CREDs, is tied
to the first. In the case of illusory causal connections, it is the illusory con-
nection that serves as the evidence for the magical explanation. In the case of
CREDs, however, the evidence is in the form of behaviour that only makes
sense if the magical beliefs in question are held by the observed individu-
als. So, returning to our example, the direct evidence for the ivy leaf belief
is provided by the previous instances on which the predictions turned out
to be correct – the alternative but often unavailable mundane explanations
involving selective memory, self-fulfilling prophesies and coincidence aided
by the limited number of nearby members of the opposite gender. The indi-
rect evidence, however, is provided by the willingness of others to engage in
the magical practices.
It might seem unnecessary to go into so much detail concerning the
relationship between the direct and indirect evidence for magical beliefs.
However, the difference between these two avenues for stabilizing supernatu-
ral beliefs will play a crucial role when we turn to religious beliefs and prac-
tices in the next chapter.
When magic fails
Before turning to religious beliefs and practices it is necessary to consider

what happens when magical beliefs come to be contradicted by experience.
Just as it is capable of providing evidence for magical beliefs, experience can
provide counter-evidence that will tend to destabilize them. What occurs in
the face of such counter-evidence, however, is often far from a straightforward
rejection of the belief.
The most influential work that is relevant to this discussion is by Festinger
et al. (1956). The focus of their book is on millennial religious movements
(i.e. religious movements in which a prediction of a looming catastrophe
plays a major role). Given the definition of a magical belief that we have
accepted, millennial movements have what constitutes a magical prediction
as a major belief. The failure of such beliefs, therefore, is a prime example of
what happens when experience comes to provide counter-evidence to magi-
cal beliefs. According to Festinger et al. the most common response is for the
group that shares the magical belief to retain it and to attempt to deal with
the resultant cognitive dissonance by trying to convince the greatest possible
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number of outsiders of the truth of their beliefs. This claim has come under
criticism from later authors, the often made suggestion being that Festinger
et al. misinterpreted the data to fit cognitive dissonance theory. Abstracting
away from that particular discussion it is useful to note alternative responses
that have been suggested as typical of faith communities facing the failure of
their prophecies.
Zygmunt (1972) suggests three basic forms of response. The first of them
is to acknowledge that an error had been made but that it was a relatively
minor one, such as the wrong date being given for the coming catastrophe.
This allows the group to return to their previous state of awaiting the com-
ing Armageddon. The second is to argue that, while the prediction had been
accurate, something had intervened to stop the event from occurring. Finally,
the third and most interesting response, from our point of view, is that of
reinterpreting the belief in such a way as to turn what had been an empirically
testable claim into one that is free of such impediments. Given the terminol-
ogy we have been using, this means reinterpreting a magical belief – under
pressure of empirical counter-evidence – as a religious belief that is compara-
tively free of such pressure.
This alternative is explored at length by Melton, who describes the process
as follows:
While a group may, temporarily, assume an error in timing, the

ultimate and more permanent reconceptualization is most fre-
quently accomplished through a process of “spiritualization.” The
prophesied event is reinterpreted in such a way that what was
supposed to have been a visible, verifiable occurrence is seen to
have been in reality an invisible, spiritual occurrence. The event
occurred as predicted but on a spiritual level. (Melton 1985: 21)
Melton makes the significant point that Christianity had its beginning as a
millennial religious movement, Christ’s imminent return being a common
belief among the early Christians, and that it managed to overcome the failure
of that seemingly empirical prediction. His main examples, however, concern
more recent cases of failed millennial prophesies, including those made dur-
ing the early stages of the development of what has come to be known as
Seventh-day Adventism. The movement has its root in the Millerites, a group
of followers of William Miller who predicted the world would end, first in
October 1843 and then, when that failed to happen, in 1844. Following
these failures, the original prophecy of Christ’s return to Earth came to be
reinterpreted by the Adventists as concerning his entry into a different part
of heaven before his eventual return to Earth. Simon Dein (2001) uses the
93
same theoretical tools to consider the case of the seventh Lubavitcher Rebbe,
who was believed by many of his followers to be the Messiah. After his death
in 1994, the “empirically testable belief that the Rebbe is the messiah has
changed into a supernatural unfalsifiable belief that he is more powerful in
the spiritual world” (ibid.: 399).
Of course, reinterpretation in the form of religious claims is most often
only going to be open to magical beliefs that already function as part of a
larger magico-religious complex. Magical beliefs that are largely free-standing,
such as superstitions, are going to be more limited in the options open to
them. The post hoc route of claiming that, since the performed ritual is nor-
mally efficacious, its failure on this occasion must be indicative of interference
by some opposing force is one that is almost invariably used by participants
in James Randi’s Million Dollar Challenge – a potentially valuable source of
examples of reactions to failed magical predictions. The additional effect of
such post hoc pleading is the potential extension in the variety of supernatural
claims that are treated seriously due to the need to complicate the postulated
ontology to include “opposed supernatural forces”, as opposed to the reduc-
tion in that ontology which would have resulted from the rejection of the
original supernatural explanation.
If we consider the three forms of response that Zygmunt lists we find that
each of them leads to the purported effects in question becoming less subject
to investigation. In the case of the post hoc claim that a minor error has been
made, it might not be immediately obvious why the result is that the belief
becomes less subject to investigation. After all, it may seem like the end result
of the “error” being fixed is a claim much like the original one. However, in
so far as the post hoc alteration is accepted, a precedent is set that such post
hoc rationalizations of the failure of the prediction are going to be considered
acceptable. Once such alterations are considered kosher, however, the main
claim becomes much easier to defend against seeming counter-evidence. A
similar process can be seen to be working in the case of the second form of
response that Zygmunt considers. If accepted, the claim that some, most
probably supernatural, force has intervened to stop the predicted event from
occurring, will open up an avenue for similar post hoc explanations in the
future. Given a complex enough supernatural ontology it seems like failures
of not just millenarian prophecies but of any magical ritual may be explained
away. Yet both the forms of response thus far considered have a certain limita-
tion. Even the most ardent of believers will find their patience stretched if all
that they see are post hoc explanations of failure. The third form of response
that Zygmunt considers and which Melton focuses upon does not have this
shortcoming. Once the purported effects have been rendered superempirical
there is no longer any need for explaining away apparent failure since any
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failure will no longer be apparent. If we consider Pyysiäinen’s (2004) example

of baptism as a ritual with a superempirical effect we can see that there is no
threat that someone might find that the child had not been cleansed of origi-
nal sin even though the ritual had been performed properly.
Of course, as defined in the previous chapter, the ritual and the associated
beliefs become religious once the purported effects of the ritual are reinter-
preted as being superempirical. What they gain by this is that they are no
longer open to the kind of counter-evidence that destabilizes magical beliefs.
The price, however, is that they can no longer obtain direct support from
their effects being observed – this being the superempirical dilemma that was
already explained in the previous chapter.
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5
Religion as magical ideology
We have now seen in outline what it takes to provide a general explanation

of magical beliefs and practices in terms of cognitive by-products and their
interactions with cultural processes. The first element of that explanation
was an account of reason that allowed us to understand why people’s cogni-
tive systems are subject to by-products in the first place. Subsequently, we
examined the epistemic conditions necessary to allow the content of super-
natural beliefs to be determined by those by-products rather than by empiri-
cal considerations. This required spelling out the various ways in which
beliefs can be protected against potentially destabilizing counter-evidence.
With those preliminaries behind us, we were in the position to sketch out
how magical beliefs and practices are formed and stabilized. The postulated
starting point of the process was illusory causal connections produced by
a cognitive system that is biased to identify potentially useful regularities.
These are married with psychologically convincing supernatural explana-
tions and are maintained in a culture, at least in part, thanks to the indirect
evidence provided by CREDs (i.e. the magical practices those beliefs are
connected to).
The difference between religion and magic has thus far been drawn in
terms of the epistemic status of the purported effects of religious versus magi-
cal practices. While this works well with the cognitive by-product explanation
of religion, it ignores the work done by David Sloan Wilson and Richard
Sosis, among others, which attempts to explain religion in terms of pro-social
function. The aim in this chapter is to bring these two approaches together
by developing a dual inheritance model of religion similar to that put for-
ward by Shariff et al. (2009), Atran and Henrich (2010) and Pyysiäinen and
Hauser (2010), among others. In effect, this entails showing the connection
between the purported superempirical effects of religious practices and their
pro-social function.
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Central to this chapter is the idea that religion should be understood as

supernatural ideology, enabling the two different accounts of religion to com-
plement each other. As David Sloan Wilson allows, his account of religion
has nothing substantive to say about the presence of supernatural entities
and forces within religious belief systems – the very characteristic that the
cognitive by-product account focuses upon. In effect, Wilson provides an
account of all belief systems whose function is pro-social (i.e. all ideologies,
be they religious, nationalist or anything else). What Wilson fails to pay suf-
ficient attention to is that the functionality of ideologies is not connected to
their truth, unlike that of other beliefs (he goes some way in this direction
when distinguishing practical realism from factual realism). The reason is
that, while other beliefs have to reflect actual states of affairs in order to allow
us to interact effectively with our environment, ideologies simply have to
motivate people to act pro-socially in order to avoid the free rider problem.
In fact, in so far as they need to mislead people about what their own interests
are, ideologies have to be false. Given this non-alethic function, it is actually
useful for ideologies to be protected against counter-evidence as this allows
their function rather than their truth-value to determine whether they are
stable within a given culture. At the same time, the non-alethic function of
ideologies is parasitic upon the alethic function of other beliefs as ideologies
must generally be believed to be literally true in order to motivate behaviour.
Religious beliefs are perfectly well placed to function as ideologies because
they are superempirical and attractive cognitively thanks to the quirks of the
cognitive system discussed in Chapter 4. Magical beliefs are less suitable since
their purported effects are not superempirical, thereby making it possible that
functional magical beliefs will come to be destabilized by counter-evidence.
In other words, the fact that the effects they purport are superempirical is
what allows religious beliefs to function well as ideologies.
At this point it becomes possible to provide an explanation for why real
religions combine magical and religious beliefs. The religious beliefs are the
element that allows the religions to have a pro-social function as they prima-
rily serve to motivate pro-social behaviour. The magical beliefs, however, are
essential to motivate belief in superempirical entities and forces, as can be
seen in the relative lack of popularity of deist religions that eschew all magi-
cal elements. Even so, the most successful religions tend to have a somewhat
ambiguous attitude to the magical elements contained within them for the
reason that they are a potentially destabilizing element, even though they are
necessary. This becomes particularly significant in cultures that value rational
criticism.
Having presented the account of religions as magico-religious complexes
whose physiology is shaped by the need to simultaneously maintain relevance
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and plausibility it is possible to turn back to look at Wilson’s account of reli-

gion. With the benefit of hindsight it is possible to see that some of the ideas
that are developed here appear in an embryonic form within his account of
religion. More importantly, it also becomes possible to see some of the poten-
tial reasons why they did not develop there. Much of this discussion requires
focusing on Wilson’s distinction between practical and factual realism. The
essential problem with it is that it is an ambiguous and misleading way of
putting the issues at hand. This makes it very hard to think clearly about the
connection between questions of function and questions of accuracy – those
lying at the heart of what makes religious ideologies so successful.
Competition or cooperation
David Sloan Wilson (2002) considers five basic evolutionary hypotheses

that could explain religion, three of which claim that religion is adaptive
while the other two hold that it is not adaptive. The first hypothesis he
considers is that religion is a group-level adaptation. This is his own view,
and he thinks it requires group-level selection to account for. He juxtaposes
this hypothesis with the idea that religion may be adaptive for individuals.
In particular, he mentions the possibility that religion might serve religious
leaders at the cost of others, an example of within-group selection. Finally,
Wilson considers what he sees as the third option – that religions are mental
parasites – made popular in the work of Blackmore (2000) and Dawkins
(1976). The really big difference, however, is between these three adapta-
tion hypotheses and the two non-adaptation options that do not claim that
religion has any function. The first of these is the view that religion is an
ancestral trait. In other words, it had once been adaptive but due to changes
in the environment has lost its functionality. The second is that religion is
not adaptive in itself but is merely a by-product of traits that are adaptive.
This last hypothesis is, of course, the one that was pursued (regarding magic
rather than religion) in the previous chapter. It might seem, therefore, that
David Sloan Wilson’s group-selection account must be in competition with
the cognitive by-product account that has been developed within the context
of cognitive science of religion.
Wilson does not see it as an either/or scenario, however. He is much more
inclined to allow that religion is a complex phenomenon that may call for
more than a single one of these theories: “These hypotheses are not mutu-
ally exclusive. Evolution is a multifactorial process, and traits usually reflect
a variety of selection pressures and constraints on natural selection” (Wilson
2005: 383).
99
Even so, he claims that religions are largely group-level adaptations. In

effect, while he does not see the different hypotheses as deadly enemies, he
does think of them as competing for a slice of the explanatory pie – rather
than as complementary parts of the recipe.
Wilson’s argument for the group-level adaptation option is that, upon
examining a random sample of religious traditions, he finds that “In their
explicit behavioral prescriptions, theological beliefs, and social practices, most
religions are impressively designed to provide a set of instructions for how to
behave, to promote cooperation among group members, and to prevent pas-
sive freeloading and active exploitation within the group” (ibid.: 385).
Strictly speaking, this kind of evidence is not enough to show Wilson’s
conclusion is correct. The ways in which it falls short can be explored by con-
sidering the different alternatives to group-level adaptation.
The first problem with Wilson’s view is that he somewhat misrepresents the
individual-level adaptation hypothesis, in effect suggesting that it can explain
competitive but not cooperative behaviour. Giving the example that he does
makes it sounds like individual-level adaptation must necessarily work in
terms of some members of a group benefiting at the cost of others. This sug-
gests, in turn, that any interactions that are not zero-sum require a group-
level analysis – a highly implausible claim that I doubt Wilson would make
explicitly. What, then, about situations in which all of the members of a
group benefit from religion? Wilson would account for that situation in terms
of group-level selection but others, such as Stuart West (West et al. 2007),
argue stridently against taking this route. Luckily, there is no need for me to
take sides in that discussion (for a discussion of the issues see Okasha 2006).
Similarly to Richard Sosis (Sosis & Alcorta 2003; Sosis & Bressler 2003; Sosis
& Ruffle 2004), who also works on religion as an adaptation, I should like
to avoid the issue. For this reason I will generally talk in terms of religion
promoting pro-social behaviour, the benefits of which spread to many within
the society. How this phenomenon should be accounted for in terms of the
calculus of adaptation I leave for others to determine. What does need to be
said is that pro-social behaviour does not mean behaviour that is consider-
ate towards all other humans. Rather, it means behaviour that benefits other
members of one’s own ingroup. This may well mean cooperating with them
in attacks upon members of other groups. One of the ways in which a group
can compete against others is by uniting together to fight against them, an
aspect of pro-sociality that David Sloan Wilson pays some attention to but
which is totally ignored by most populist proponents of the pro-social adap-
tation hypothesis.
Given this agnosticism regarding the individual versus group selection
debate, the hypothesis that religions benefit cultural traits requires some
100
separate discussion, which further motivates speaking in terms of pro-social

behaviour. This hypothesis has most often been put in its most striking form
– religion as a cultural parasite, an idea that thrives in human minds at the
cost of the wellbeing of those humans. However, cultural adaptations by no
means have to be parasitic. One of the ways in which an idea may spread is by
making those who hold it more successful. Indeed, this is precisely how many
useful cultural innovations have spread. What further complicates this pic-
ture is the realization that religious groups are cultural groups, membership
in them being determined by beliefs and practices, not necessarily by genet-
ics. This means that Wilson is, in effect, putting forward a cultural group-
selection account. Wilson appears to be aware of this to a certain degree, as he
is usually careful to talk about both cultural and genetic evolution and refers
approvingly to the work of Richerson and Boyd, who have pioneered work on
gene-culture coevolution. Yet, as we will see, Wilson does not fully appreciate
the significance of thinking of religion within the context of what is in effect
a dual genetic/cultural inheritance account.
Having seen that it is far from easy to disentangle the various adaptive
hypotheses concerning religion (and certainly too difficult for the evidence
offered by Wilson to suffice), we can turn to the problem with eliminating the
non-adaptive hypotheses. We can first consider the hypothesis that religion is
an ancestral trait. Wilson, himself, provides ammunition for those who would
see religion’s place in the modern world in those terms when he writes:
Framers of the constitution such as Benjamin Franklin and

Thomas Jefferson realized that religions are good at organizing
social life among their own members but became part of the prob-
lem with respect to the larger scale of social organization that they
were trying to achieve. (Wilson 2005: 391–2)
It does not help Wilson that most of his randomly chosen sample of reli-
gious traditions pre-dates the twentieth century, with only a couple coming
from a modern, pluralist society. To differentiate between the hypothesis that
religion has become an ancestral trait in modern societies and Wilson’s own
claim that it remains adaptive on the group level, he would have to limit
his sample to modern examples, however. Yet, even had this been done and
Wilson was able to show that religions retain the features they possessed ear-
lier, this kind of evidence would not suffice to show that religion is adaptive
in such societies. An analogous example may help to see why this is the case.
Modern humans are incapable of producing vitamin C, unlike other mam-
mals. This is not because humans do not require this vitamin but due to it
being reliably present in our diets. At some point in the past, humans lost
101
the capacity to make vitamin C. This capacity had become an ancestral trait,
however, before they had lost it. The reason was that those proto-humans
no longer had any need to produce vitamin C as it was present in sufficient
quantities in the fruit that their diet had come to include. Much the same
situation could well be the case with religion (as will be argued in detail in
Chapter 6). Where it had been previously necessary to maintain social sta-
bility, modern, secular and largely atheist societies such as Denmark and the
Czech Republic appear to be quite capable of remaining stable without the
need for religion. The fact that even modern religions may be “designed” to
motivate pro-social behaviour does not entail that modern societies require
such religious motivation. Religions that exist in the modern world may fit
a function that is actually better served by other elements of such societies,
rendering religion otiose.
This leaves the very last option that Wilson considers – the by-product
hypothesis. It is the competing hypothesis that Wilson considers at greatest
length – which is not surprising, since it is this hypothesis that has led in the
field for the last decade or so. Regrettably, Wilson’s treatment of this approach
is too dismissive:
The practical benefits of religion might seem so obvious that they

don’t need to be pointed out, but then why have so many by-
product theories of religion been proposed over the decades, from
“animism” and “naturalism” in the nineteenth century to the eco-
nomic and evolutionary by-product theories of today. Somehow
these theorists have managed to interpret the practical benefits
of religion as “incidental,” in contrast to something more “fun-
damental” about religion that cannot be explained functionally.
(Ibid.: 391)
Wilson does not explore what it is that by-product theories do manage to

explain. It does not strike him as necessary given what he considers as the
overwhelming significance of religion’s secular utility. It is a pity that it does
not. Without comparing what can be explained by the different hypotheses
he is not in the position to justify his claim that the pro-social adaptation
story is indeed largely what religion is about. All he can claim is that pro-
social adaptation is an evidently significant element of the overall picture.
Had he explored the question of what can be explained by the by-product
hypothesis, his argument could have been made stronger by showing that
even in an analysis of religion that is truly multifactorial, the pro-social aspect
of it retains a central role. More importantly, such a multifactorial account is
necessary to effectively relate the pro-social and the by-products hypotheses,
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allowing us to get past the rather unenlightening question regarding which is

the more significant by asking how they work together.
So, what is it that cognitive by-product accounts of religion aim at explain-
ing? If the work mentioned in the previous chapter is anything to go by, it is
the ubiquitous presence of supernatural entities that is the focus of research
within that tradition. Not surprisingly, this is precisely the feature of religion
that lies beyond Wilson’s own account. Not only is it that Wilson is not
able to explain the reason why religions include a plethora of supernatural
claims but, what is more, he does not see this question as particularly signifi-
cant. Discussing the difference between religions and other belief systems he
states that “The presence or absence of supernatural agents … is just a detail”
(Wilson 2007: 269). One could well be tempted to write in reply that the
centrality of supernatural entities for religion might seem so obvious that it
does not need to be pointed out. Has Wilson managed to interpret super-
natural entities as incidental in contrast to the practical benefits of religion?
Not entirely.
As Wilson observes, “even massively fictitious beliefs can be adaptive, as
long as they motivate behaviours that are adaptive in the real world” (Wilson
2002: 41). In particular, supernatural beliefs “can provide blueprints for
action that far surpass factual accounts of the natural world in clarity and
motivating power” (ibid.: 42). Yet Wilson’s explanation does not go anywhere
near far enough to explain why gods are omnipresent within religion. After
all, why should the adaptive false beliefs be supernatural in character, rather
than just being false in some more mundane fashion.
While bringing in the by-product account allows us to explain this
characteristic of religion in terms of interaction with the structure of our
cognitive mechanisms, it still leaves something of an explanatory lacuna.
The problem exists on two levels. On the evolutionary level, the problem
is that the cognitive by-product and the pro-social adaptation accounts
appear to be contradictory – either religion is functional or it is not. On
the sociological level, the two explanations appear to be disconnected –
there is no apparent connection between religious beliefs being supernatu-
ral in character and the fact that religion motivates pro-social behaviour.
These two problems can be solved simultaneously. What is required is
careful consideration of the significance of the superempirical character of
religious claims for the potential functionality of those claims. To do that,
however, it is necessary to start by considering the relationship between
the truth and the function of beliefs that motivate pro-social behaviour
in general. This will show that superempirical beliefs, such as are charac-
teristic of magic, are highly suitable for recruitment to serve a pro-social
function.
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Ideology and non-alethic function
In so far as our beliefs guide how we act, it appears that for many beliefs, accu-
racy and even truth are closely connected to their function. This is because
our ability to act effectively in the world is dependent upon our ability to
represent it accurately. Regardless of whether we seek to impress an audience
or tie our shoelaces, we have to have some understanding of the particular
bit of the world we seek to interact with if the probability that our actions
succeed is to be better than chance. Ignoring for the sake of this argument
objections to metaphysical realism and correspondence accounts of truth, it
is still possible to ask how tight the connection between the accuracy and
utility of our beliefs is.
The model upon whose basis we act will never be complete since the world
is far too complex for boundedly rational beings such as ourselves to fully rep-
resent it. Yet the model we act upon does not have to be complete. If we seek
a petrol station, it is enough that we know how to get there; we do not have
to know the number of pumps. In general, what our model has to include
will depend upon the actions we seek to undertake. The map of the London
Underground provides exactly the information necessary to know which line
to take to get from Kings Cross to Paddington. It is close to useless, however,
if we wish to make the very same trip by foot. What is more, our model does
not need to be accurate in all respects. In our search for the petrol station
we might misremember it as belonging to a particular company but that
will not affect our ability to find it. Harry Beck – who invented the London
Underground map’s schematic look – realized that the map could be made
clearer by ignoring the precise physical locations of the stations. Those who
understand this convention will know not to judge distance between stations
on the basis of this map. Others might not know this, yet find it irrelevant
since all they have to do is simply to stay on the train until they reach their
destination.
The discussion thus far has been limited to accuracy – a notion that has
a pragmatic aspect to it. Perhaps it is not surprising, therefore, that it has
been possible to draw such a close connection between utility and accuracy.
Things become significantly more difficult, however, if we consider truth.
The Ptolemaic system worked on the basis of a complex ontology of inter-
connected epicycles that, we now know, do not exist. Nonetheless, it was
capable of relatively accurate prediction of future positions of planets in the
Earth’s sky. The utility of the Ptolemaic system was tied to its accuracy, clearly.
Yet Ptolemaic ontology was false. Still, it is possible to say something about
the significance of truth even in cases such as this. In so far as we under-
stand Ptolemaic astronomy as making claims about planets, its utility is tied
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to the truth of some of those claims (i.e. those concerning the positions of
those planets in the Earth’s sky). Obviously, this is a very minimal sense in
which Ptolemy’s system might be said to partake of truth, and not one that
everyone will find to their liking. The important point is not to argue about
truth, however, but to contrast the system of epicycles that achieved as much
as Ptolemy’s did compared to another that failed to even predict accurately.
Limiting ourselves to the less problematic notion of accuracy we can ask
whether there are models that guide our actions whose utility is not tied to
their accuracy. Obviously, none of the examples we have considered thus far
would fit in this category. What we require are examples in which utility and
accuracy come radically apart. At first it may seem highly implausible that
such examples should exist – it would be like using the map of the New York
Subway to successfully navigate the London Underground. Of course, there
might be coincidental cases where inaccurate information turns out to be
useful. In a recent discussion, McKay and Dennett (2009) use the example
of a person who misses a flight due to thinking it left later than it did and,
thanks to this error, does not die when that plane crashes. As they point out,
such chance events are not enough to make for interesting examples of use-
ful inaccurate beliefs. What we are seeking are beliefs that are systematically
incorrect, yet systematically useful. McKay and Dennett argue that positive
illusions – overly optimistic assessments of our abilities – may be the only
example of beliefs that have this sort of non-alethic function. I will argue,
however, that there is at least one other kind of belief of this sort, for which
I will use the term “ideologies”.
For the purpose of this argument I will be talking about ideologies as
beliefs or sets of beliefs whose function is to motivate pro-social behaviour.
This is a broad category in a couple of respects. First, ideologies may achieve
their pro-social function by any of a number of different, more or less indi-
rect, means. A number of different means by which religious beliefs achieve
this – and thereby fall under the general category – have been put forward
and will be discussed later in this chapter. Second, it may be that the benefits
of the pro-social behaviour are not distributed equally, with particular groups
or classes benefiting more than others. This is a possibility that is focused
upon by Marxist political theory, for example, but is of only secondary signifi-
cance to the quite limited discussion of ideologies attempted here. Certainly,
however, it seems compatible with the hypothesis that is being developed.
After the previous century’s many globe-spanning conflicts, two ideolo-
gies in particular come to mind, thanks to their infamy. Fascism and com-
munism made their pro-social aspect self-evident, “wearing on their sleeve”
the idea that individuals should serve the good of their ingroup. Thus, Marx
and Engels write in The Communist Manifesto regarding the creation of the
105
c ommunist state that “in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by
means of despotic inroads on the rights of property” (Marx & Engels [1848]
2010: 26) – the individual possession of property being seen as a major
impediment to the creation of a true communist state. In a similar vein, the
Short Course, which served as the paradigm of communist historiography,
nearly always talks in terms of the interests of various classes rather than the
interests of individual workers (Commission of the Central Committee of
the CPSU (B) 1939). For example, in §4.2 it states that “one must pursue an
uncompromising proletarian class policy, not a reformist policy of harmony
of the interests of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie”. Countless other exam-
ples of this sort could be found within communist and fascist writings. It is
worth noting at the same time that the ingroups that these different ideolo-
gies identified were very different in theory though not so different in prac-
tice. As we saw above, in the case of communism, the ingroup was identified
with a social class and was international in its reach. This was a radical depar-
ture from the nationalist ideologies of the nineteenth century and one that
did not altogether survive Hitler’s attack on Soviet Russia as Stalin found that
he needed to make use of traditional Russian nationalism to help motivate the
Russian people to make the kinds of sacrifices necessary to defeat the Nazis.
On the other hand, even though fascist theory had a corporatist bent, the
form in which fascism took hold in Germany was stridently nationalist from
the start, identifying the ingroup with the Volk and the Reich and subsuming
class interests to the interests of the German state.
Of course, fascism and communism are far from the only examples of
ideologies we could have looked at. They were chosen for a reason, however
– their extreme nature helps to make clear two vital points. The main point is
that the pro-social function of ideologies is, indeed, non-alethic. The capabil-
ity of communist ideology to lead to a workers’ utopia was irrelevant to its
ability to motivate people to act pro-socially. All that was required for them to
act according to communist precepts was, at most, that they should happen
to come to believe that communism had this capacity. Likewise, the fact that
it is impossible to non-arbitrarily identify any such entity as the German race
did not affect the ability of fascist ideology to induce Germans to make all
manner of sacrifices for the perceived good of the Volk. Very much the same
point could be made regarding the sundry nationalisms of the nineteenth
century.
The other important point to make at this juncture is that even when
ideologies do manage to motivate people to act in pro-social ways, the effect
is not necessarily one that we, as individuals, need to see as positive. The
morally reprehensible nature of both communism and fascism is inarguable,
their costs in terms of individual human lives without equal. Yet, because of
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their willingness to completely subordinate individual rights to the supposed

common good, those costs would have been incalculably greater had either of
those ideologies been allowed to continue for longer than they did.
Having seen that the pro-social function of ideology is non-alethic, it
remains for us to ask why this should be the case. As was discussed at the
beginning of the section, the utility of most beliefs that guide action is tied
closely to their accuracy. Yet ideologies may bear little resemblance to even
a very limited aspect of reality but nonetheless be very effective; their effec-
tiveness having no connection to the accuracy of the claims they make about
the world. The reason for this fundamental difference lies in the indirect way
that ideologies impact actions. In the case of examples such as we considered
earlier, the beliefs served to determine the precise actions taken. Thus, beliefs
about the location of the petrol station will determine whether one will turn
right or left at an intersection. Ideologies are quite different in that they only
affect actions indirectly, for example by shaping the goals which we act upon.
Being pro-socially inclined may determine whether one is willing to offer
assistance to someone stopped by the side of the road. The manner in which
that assistance is offered will be determined by other beliefs, such as whether
we think they have broken down or run out of petrol. Again, it is useful to
look at an example at length.
Rousseau considers the example of cooperation between hunters who must
work together in order to catch a stag, rather than individually catching much
less valuable hares. Brian Skyrms turns this example into an abstract game1
that he describes as follows:
Let us suppose that the hunters each have just the choice of hunt-
ing hare or hunting deer. The chances of getting a hare are inde-
pendent of what others do. There is no chance of bagging a deer
by oneself, but the chances of a successful deer hunt go up sharply
with the number of hunters. A deer is much more valuable than
a hare. Then we have the kind of interaction that is now generally
known as the Stag Hunt. (Skyrms 2001: 31)
The description of the game abstracts away from the need for the hunters to
coordinate their actions. In the case of actual hunters, it is not enough that
1. The use I make of the stag hunt example is quite non-standard. Yet I suspect that much
of what has been discussed here could be usefully modelled using the abstract game once a
distinction was made between the actual payoff matrix and the payoff matrices that the various
players thought were correct. Joseph Bulbulia’s use of the example (Bulbulia 2012) is different
again, though connected to the points I am making.
107
they all seek to catch the stag; they must work together in order for their
efforts to pay off. Vital to that will be that they share a representation of their
environment that is adequately accurate in particular respects, such as the
current locations of the stag and other hunters, the general lay of the land
as well as the ways in which the stag is likely to react to various courses of
action that might be undertaken by the hunters. The coordination that takes
place at that level only concerns the details of the actions to be taken, not the
basic decision to cooperate with each other. One concerns the coordination
of actions while the other concerns the coordination of goals. This makes it
easy for Skyrms, in discussing social coordination, to abstract away from the
details of how the hunting is carried out and focus on whether the hunters
are cooperating. The coordination of goals that the stag hunt game examines
can, of course, be obtained if the hunters all know accurately that the other
hunters are very likely to cooperate. In that situation there is no motivation
for any of the hunters to go off and hunt the hare. However, the case is exactly
the same even if the hunters are not generally inclined to cooperate with each
other but have the false belief that the other hunters will definitely cooper-
ate. Acting on that incorrect belief, they are still likely to choose to hunt the
stag. The accuracy or truth of the beliefs the hunters have concerning the
probable level of cooperation within the group is irrelevant to whether those
beliefs lead to cooperative behaviour. This is because it is the shared expecta-
tion that efforts to cooperate will be reciprocated that is, itself, causing the
hunters to cooperate. Of course, incorrect beliefs can ensure coordination
by means other than misrepresenting the probability of cooperation by the
other hunters. In the game, the hunters believe that the hare is a type of prey
that is worth pursuing, even though not as attractive as the stag. What if,
however, the hunters had false beliefs about the relative value of hunting the
hare. Perhaps, they might believe it to be harder to catch than it is, or less
nutritious. They might also believe that some outside entity will punish them
if they fail to work with the other hunters. All such beliefs will affect how the
hunters think about the relative payoffs of various courses of action. In effect
such beliefs may lead the hunters to choose cooperation quite independently
of their truth or accuracy.
In the short term it is not even important if the true or false, accurate or
inaccurate beliefs that lead the various hunters to cooperate are even consist-
ent with each other. Given a pair of hunters, one may be cooperating because
he thinks the other to be dependable while the other might be a scoundrel
who simply believes he would not be able to catch the hare. In the long term,
however, such a situation is not stable. One reason for this is that if the hunt-
ers are cooperating for significantly different reasons, there will be times when
some but not others will cooperate, depending on the relevant details of the
108
situation. This, of course, is quite normal. However, it is also likely to under-

mine their trust toward each other. It would be advantageous, therefore, if
the beliefs that cause the different hunters to cooperate were similar enough
to cause them to cooperate in similar circumstances. In effect, it appears that
it is more important for the beliefs that underpin social cooperation to be
shared than it is for them to be true. Even so, the degree to which the goal-
coordinating beliefs fail to be accurate can become a problem in the long
term, as we will see in the next section.
The boy who cried wolf
In their careful discussion of the potential utility of false beliefs, McKay and
Dennett raise an important objection to the idea that the utility and accuracy
of beliefs such as ideologies can be as radically disconnected as is suggested here:
Theoretical considerations converging from several different

research traditions suggest that any such systematic falsehood must
be unstable, yielding ephemeral instances, at best, of misbelief.
Recognition of the problem is as old as Aesop’s fable of the boy who
cried wolf. Human communication between agents with memo-
ries and the capacity to check on the reliability of information
creates a dynamical situation in which systematic lying eventually
exposes and discredits itself. (McKay & Dennett 2009: 498–9)
McKay and Dennett talk about systematic lying, such as that committed by
the boy who keeps trying to mislead the other villagers by saying that a wolf
has come for the sheep he’s guarding. However, it is fairly clear that the same
problem would affect any false belief, not just one brought about by lying. If
they are correct then it should be impossible for beliefs to have a non-alethic
function since for any belief to have a function it must be stable enough to
support that function. We can think back to the example of the stag hunt and
consider that the prior belief that the other hunters would be likely to coop-
erate is not going to survive more than a couple of disappointing counter-
instances. How the original belief in the dependability of the other hunters
came about would be largely irrelevant.
Yet the example that McKay and Dennett put forward should not be
seen as showing that beliefs with non-alethic function are impossible or even
unlikely. The first step to realizing this comes when we consider that there
have been plenty of false beliefs that have managed to retain long-term sta-
bility. One does not even need to look to the history of science, with its
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rocession of now-falsified but once-dominant theories, including luminif-

p
erous aether, spontaneous generation and epicycles. It is enough to consider
common, everyday beliefs. Every person can think of examples of such beliefs
from their own life. In my own case, for a long time I believed that the ends
of bananas should not be eaten as “green” snakes would sometimes bite them,
making it possible that the ends contain poison. This urban myth had been
told to me by my grandmother when I was a child and it managed to hang
about the back of my mind until well into my adulthood – long past the stage
one would expect it to have been rejected due to its sheer implausibility. So,
it cannot be the case that false beliefs may not have function simply because
they cannot be stable. Yet this does not mean that McKay and Dennett’s
point is not an important one. Rather than being an objection to non-alethic
functions, however, it should be seen as directing us to a highly significant
feature of beliefs that have such functions (Talmont-Kaminski 2009b).
The assumption that McKay and Dennett appear to be making is that
falsehood is not going to be stable as it is going to be discovered relatively
quickly. This will obviously happen in the case of the boy who cried wolf.
After the first few times, the villagers will know to ignore his cries or, even, to
interpret them as showing that everything is fine since the boy is playing his
old game again. But that’s only because they will have had the opportunity to
check whether any wolf was coming for the sheep those first few times. We
have already seen in Chapter 3, however, this need not be the case. Beliefs
can be largely protected against counter-evidence by dint of their content
or their social and methodological contexts. When that happens it becomes
far less likely that even systematic falsehoods will be destabilized by counter-
evidence. Thus, the boy’s lies would have a much better chance of remaining
undiscovered if the wolf was believed to be particularly adept at slipping away
unseen, if it was considered wrong for others to visit the meadow on which
the sheep graze and if heat-sensing cameras that might detect the wolf were
not available. In effect, what McKay and Dennett point to is the need for
beliefs with non-alethic function to be protected against evidence.
Even though non-alethic function is not related to the truth of such
claims, it does not follow that evidence for or against such beliefs becomes
inconsequential. Indeed, just as the availability of evidence for beliefs whose
function is tied to their truth (or accuracy) is of paramount importance, so, in
the case of beliefs with non-alethic function it is vital that potential counter-
evidence be protected against by the various means that have previously been
outlined. This important claim can be put yet differently. If the function of
particular beliefs is not related to their truth, having such beliefs be accepted
or rejected on the basis of the evidence for their truth will mean accepting
or rejecting them on a basis that has nothing to do with their function. To
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make it possible for them to be chosen on a basis that is connected to their

functionality, it is essential to make sure their (most probably negative) truth-
value does not interfere with the process.
In arguing against the likelihood of non-alethic function, McKay and
Dennett write that “without a prevailing background of truth-telling, com-
munication will erode, a practice that cannot pay for itself ” (McKay &
Dennett 2009: 499). However, this does not show that systematic falsehood
must be unstable. Rather, it shows that non-alethic function must, in a sense,
be parasitic upon the normal function of beliefs. In psychological terms, peo-
ple must generally believe that the claims that have non-alethic function are
actually true if those claims are to be capable of motivating people to act (i.e.
if they are to maintain their non-alethic function). This does not even mean
that such claims must be rare but is the reason why they must be protected
against identification. The result is that beliefs that do have non-alethic func-
tion are at a distinct disadvantage as compared to beliefs whose function is
tied to their truth, as we will see in the next chapter.
At this stage, however, we should ask to what degree it is the case that ide-
ologies are protected against potential counter-evidence. To do that it is best
if we return to the example of communism and consider the three aspects of
what makes any claim superempirical. The most important aspect, in the case
of communism, was that of the social context in which the ideology flour-
ished. It would be beyond the scope of this book to give a proper analysis of
the various social means by which communist ideology was protected at dif-
ferent times and in different countries. Yet it is possible to consider a simple
point that held throughout much of the Communist Bloc throughout its
whole history. To be considered dangerous to the state it was not necessary
to have engaged in anything other than candid discussion of views contrary
to the reigning ideology. Any such perceived challenge to that ideology could
result in repression of the individuals involved as well as censorship of the
discussions themselves. If we consider Durkheim’s definition of the sacred, it
is definitely the case that communist dogma, as well as its physical symbols,
were very much “set apart and forbidden”. This repressive reaction to intel-
lectual dissidents ultimately turned out to have been justified in the sense that
these dissidents played a significant role in bringing down communism. As
Robert Horvath explains:
The importance of the dissident legacy was that it shifted the ideo-
logical centre of gravity … After two decades of dissident protest
and samizdat, non-Bolshevik conceptions of democracy, human
rights, the rule of law, and glasnost were widely understood in the
intelligentsia. At the same time, the premises of official ideology
111
had been seriously undermined by revelations about mass repres-

sions and by attempts to explain them. The October Revolution,
and even the figure of Lenin, were no longer sacrosanct.
(Horvath 2005: 5)
Communism’s relationship to scientific methodology was far more complex.

Communism definitely presented itself as scientific, its view of history as
leading to the ultimate success of communism both a bastard child of the
Enlightenment view and purportedly “proved” scientifically. Yet it is not
how an ideology presents itself that determines whether it is protecting itself
against potential counter-evidence produced by novel scientific work. The
reality within communist systems was that the social sciences that were the
most likely to produce results that ran counter to communist ideology were
also among the most constrained. This provides a good example of the way
in which the social and the methodological contexts of ideologies were often
interconnected, with the social context limiting access to scientific work that
could undermine the belief system.
Finally, it is possible to consider the very content of the claims that com-
munism made. According to Marx’s theory of history the creation of the
proletarian utopia was to be the result of the inevitable working of historical
processes of which capitalism was the penultimate stage. In all respects, this
claim was presented as scientific and potentially open to empirical investiga-
tion. However, what stabilized Marxist beliefs was not their continued ability
to deal with accumulating evidence but, rather, the degree of social protec-
tion they received from that evidence. It is well-known that the creation of a
communist state in Russia presented something of a theoretical problem for
Marxists. Russia had not yet reached the capitalist stage of the progressivist
model of history they were working with, having been a mostly feudal soci-
ety prior to the Revolution, so Marxist theory would have predicted that it
should become capitalist before the proletariat could take over control.
However, attempts were made to reconcile a recalcitrant reality with the
ideal. These mostly involved the kinds of fixes observed in the case of failed
prophecies that we discussed earlier, resulting in the estimated date of arrival
at utopia becoming ever less well-defined. More generally, communism often
made use of a strategy that helped to render the content of its claims harder
to evaluate at the same time as it enforced the sacred status of those claims:
This nominally materialistic system put a surprising importance

on those factors which it itself classified as belonging to the “super-
structure”: occurrences taking place in the realm of consciousness,
that is, something that according to Marxist thought should be
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determined by the “base”, that is, by occurrences taking place in

the realm of the material. In communism, consciousness was eve-
rything. If the economy functioned poorly, it was not due to struc-
tural obstacles, and certainly not to obstacles resulting from the
prescribed social model, but because the weather had been inclem-
ent (“impediments of an objective nature”) and/or because “subjec-
tive mistakes” had been made. In the most extreme version, these
were explained as being due to deficiencies in the decision makers’
political consciousness. Even the failures of athletes representing
the country would be explained as the results of political flaws.
(Kula 2005: 374)
In effect, failures to achieve the ends predicted by the ideology were explained
away in terms of the failure to believe hard enough in the ideology – a failure
that, lying in the sphere of the mental, was conveniently difficult to investi-
gate independently.
Similarly to what we saw in the case of magical beliefs and practices,
however, such measures were only effective up to a point, with the available
counter-evidence ultimately destabilizing the ideology. Predicted economic
progress did not take place and the true history of the horrors that commu-
nism visited upon the nations of the Warsaw Bloc slowly seeped into public
consciousness. By the 1980s, communist thought in Poland and other coun-
tries was effectively dead, with hardly anyone believing in the ideology and
with the political system maintained by the use of violence or its threat.
Magical ideology
Having discussed ideologies and how they rely upon being protected against
potential counter-evidence, it is time to return to the main focus of this chap-
ter: religion. The immediate aim is to show how the superempirical status of
magical beliefs and the non-alethic function of ideologies fit together within
religious traditions.
Assuming that the arguments put forward by Wilson, Sosis and other pro-
ponents of the pro-social function of religion are correct, religions turn out
to be ideologies. What is more, this function appears to be non-alethic in
their case also. Indeed, the non-alethic status of the pro-social function is par-
ticularly striking when we consider religion. The existence or non-existence
of Vishnu, Osiris, Zeus or Yahweh plays no role in the explanations given
by Wilson or Sosis for why those and other religions have been capable of
motivating pro-social behaviour. If the truth of a religion was of relevance to
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its function one would assume that, at best, all but one religion would lack
pro-social function – a fact that would not have escaped the attention of
researchers studying religions.
This fundamental similarity between ideologies such as communism and
religions has been noted on many previous occasions. It has, however, typi-
cally been understood in terms of ideologies being pseudo-religious in nature
(or, as Wilson himself puts it, “stealth-religions”). Wilson indeed considers
nationalism a prime example of such stealth-religion: “Patriotic histories of
nations have the same distorted and purpose-driven quality as religions, a fact
that becomes obvious as soon as we consider the histories of nations other
than our own” (Wilson 2007: 268).
Within the history of politics, this insight takes the form of the discussion
of “political religions” (Gentile 2006), with communism being often used as
an example (Zuo 1991; McFarland 1998; Kula 2005). Regardless of whether
it is “religion” or “ideology” that is deemed to be the more basic category,
having established the similarity between them it is necessary to try to under-
stand what the differences are. Focussing on these will help us to see how
religions are ideologies that recruit the magical beliefs and practices that we
discussed in Chapter 4 – an arrangement that serves to explain their stability
and popularity.
Staying with the terminology that has been developed here, a highly sig-
nificant difference between religions and non-religious ideologies is that it
is solely religions that provide examples of the longest lasting ideologies.
Christianity, in its various incarnations, has been around for over two thou-
sand years. The Vedic tradition that Hinduism traces its roots to is almost
twice as old. It is striking to consider that it took communism less than a
century to become one of the most powerful ideologies on the planet and,
then, to largely disappear again. To say that it was a relative flash in the pan
would, perhaps, be unfair to gunpowder. Even various examples of national-
ism are relative newcomers, only going back as far as the eighteenth century.
This situation could have come about for two reasons. The first is that
non-religious ideologies have not really come into their own until recently.
The second is that such ideologies are relatively unstable, only lasting at most
in the tens or hundreds of years where religious ideologies can potentially
last for thousands of years. I think both these reasons have played a role. If
one considers pre-modern examples of patriotism, they were typically tied up
with religious beliefs. For example, the patriotism of the Ancient Athenians
had its religious aspect in the worship of Athena. At the same time, modern
non-religious ideologies have not shown any tendency to longevity. Indeed,
the various nationalisms that shook Europe during the nineteenth and twen-
tieth centuries appear to have lost much of their fervour within the context of
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the European Union. Yet, even if all this is true, it does not provide us with
anything more than additional questions. Why have non-religious ideologies
only appeared recently? Why do they seem to be so much more short-lived
than religions? To answer these questions it is necessary to return to consid-
erations of the cognitive as well as epistemic issues that were discussed in the
context of magic within the previous chapter.
In Chapter 4, religious beliefs were characterized as claims whose status was
close to maximally superempirical. According to these beliefs certain actions,
which may be readily experienced and thus are empirical, lead through some
superempirical agency to superempirical effects. In the case of non-religious
ideologies, all three parts (the action, the explanation and the effect) tend to
belong in the sphere of the empirical in so far as their content is concerned.
Thus, for example, the revolution was supposed to bring about the proletar-
ian state through perfectly mundane processes, as has already been stressed.
Similarly, the thousand-year Reich was to be created thanks to the suppos-
edly objective and evident superiority of the German race. Such a focus on
apparently empirical claims is a serious problem for beliefs with non-alethic
functions. Already in the case of magical beliefs, we saw that even simply
purporting to have empirical effects leaves them open to counter-evidence.
Non-religious ideologies, however, are in an even worse position since the
mechanisms by which they supposedly effect their purported outcomes are at
least theoretically open to investigation. The only thing that can protect them
against potential counter-evidence is the context, social and methodological,
in which they find themselves. However, as we saw in the case of magic, such
measures are only partially and temporarily effective. Religions, being super-
empirical ideologies, are in a much better position in this respect. If, for exam-
ple, the prospect of heaven can be as effective in motivating behaviour as the
prospect of heaven on Earth, the former is likely to remain plausible for much
longer given that its arrival is not expected to occur during anyone’s lifetime.
In addition, it should be stressed that, being superempirical, the content of
religious ideologies is free to take on cognitively optimal forms (Whitehouse
2004), such as make recall and communication most likely. While Barrett
thinks of cognitive optimality in terms of minimal counter-intuitiveness,
there is no need to assume that it is only minimal counter-intuitiveness that
determines whether a particular concept is going to be particularly effective
at spreading and remaining stable within a culture. As Jesper Sørensen (2007)
points out, it is not only the content of a belief that determines its success; the
cultural context it finds itself in is just as important, if not more so (Gervais
& Henrich 2010). Even so, non-religious ideologies are severely constrained
in so far as the claims they make have to be not just plausible and memorable
but also not in excessive conflict with available empirical evidence.
115
In short, superempirical beliefs are particularly suitable to function as ide-

ologies because their content as well as their context serves to render their
truth powerless to determine their stability within a culture, thereby allowing
such factors as their functionality to come to the fore. The suggestion is that
successful cultural traditions have made use of this property of superempiri-
cal beliefs, either through recruitment of existing magical beliefs or the inno-
vation of novel superempirical beliefs most suitable to perform pro-social
functions. The process can be explained in terms of the interaction between
genetic and cultural evolution. As we saw in Chapter 4, the genetic evolution
of human cognitive abilities led to the appearance of a number of cognitive
by-products including the robust propensity to find superempirical beliefs
plausible enough to motivate related behaviours. Given their superempirical
status, the content of these beliefs was determined by cognitive and cultural
factors. While originally non-functional, some of these beliefs then came to
be recruited through processes of cultural evolution. Due to their superem-
pirical status, these beliefs were particularly suitable to be recruited for non-
alethic function and, in particular, for pro-social function. The result has
been beliefs of particularly impressive stability, as has already been noted in
comparison with non-religious ideologies. Much the same comparison, how-
ever, could be made with, for example, common superstitions that are the
form that non-functional superempirical beliefs take on in modern societies.
Looking at these we, again, find their longevity to be nothing like that of
their close cousins, the religious beliefs. As Roud (2003: xiv) observes, most
modern superstitions can only be traced back less than a couple of hundred
years, with many being only decades old. Such a difference, however, should
be hardly surprising given that, being non-functional, magical beliefs such as
superstitions ought to be much more subject to random change through the
cultural equivalent of genetic drift (Bentley et al. 2004).
Magico-religious complexes
Two important questions remain if we are to provide something like a com-
plete picture of the significance of their superempirical status for religious
beliefs and the traditions they exist within. In Chapter 3 a distinction was
made between religious beliefs and magical beliefs on the basis of the kind of
effects that purportedly result from engagement in their connected practices.
It remains to be explained how this difference is tied to the different func-
tional status of the two kinds of beliefs. Answering that question will lead
us back to the question of why religious traditions actually include magical
beliefs and practices as well as religious beliefs and practices (i.e. why religious
traditions are magico-religious complexes).
116
As previously noted, some superempirical beliefs leave themselves a lit-

tle more open to empirical critique due to claiming that particular practices
are effective at bringing about results that are, themselves, empirical. If the
account presented here is correct, the property of claiming superempirical
effects will be correlated with a pro-social function. This is because it is the
religious practices that are purported to have superempirical effects and it is
the religious practices that actually have a pro-social function. Why should
this be the case, if religion is the result of the recruitment of magic for pro-
social functions? The explanation might be obvious given the significance of
the superempirical status of religious beliefs for their suitability to be recruited
to serve a non-alethic function. Thanks to being even less subject to desta-
bilization by empirical factors, religious beliefs are even more suitable for
non-alethic function than magical ones. If that is so, however, why is it that
non-functional superempirical beliefs tend to make claims about effects that
are, in their content, relatively open to empirical investigation. After all, it
would seem that even non-functional superempirical claims could be ren-
dered more stable by absolutely minimizing the contact they come into with
empirical factors. The answer to this question was already provided back in
Chapter 3. As was noted there, magical and religious beliefs sit on two sides of
a dilemma. While magical beliefs are more open to destabilization by empiri-
cal factors, religious beliefs can only be thought of as relevant by those who
already believe to some degree in the supernatural. Upon being told of a new
supernatural entity which requires some particular ritual to be performed for
it, it is perfectly normal for people to wonder why they should believe in this
entity. As previously noted, one form of evidence that could suffice here is the
CREDs engaged in by accepted social models. A powerful form of evidence,
however, is if that entity can be seen as acting upon the mundane world
thanks to illusory causal connections that require that the purported effects
of the connected practices be open to empirical investigation.
This dilemma leads straight into an explanation for the fact that normal
religious traditions are just as full of magical beliefs and practices as they are of
religious ones. The phenomenon can be witnessed in a number of examples.
Perhaps the most obvious ones are to be witnessed at the Roman Catholic
pilgrimage sites that are visited by millions of pilgrims each year. One of
the most popular of these in recent years has been the town of Medjugorje
in what is now Bosnia-Herzegovina. Medjugorje first became a pilgrimage
site thanks to claims of miraculous visions of the Virgin Mary made by sev-
eral inhabitants. To these initial claims have been added numerous claims of
miraculous healing and of other interactions with the supernatural. A regular
event witnessed by groups of people outside the church in Medjugorje is the
so-called miracle of the spinning sun:
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On August 2, 1981, the Feast of Our Lady Queen of the Angels,

in the late afternoon, before the sun had set, the sun was seen
to spin in its orbit, then descend toward the watching people
of approximately 150, then retreat – a “dance of the sun” that
reminded the people of the miraculous phenomenon at Fatima.
When the people were able to look at the sun without hurting
their eyes, they saw figures around the sun, as it seemed to circle,
in the shape of a cross. The strange phenomena caused many to
cry, or pray, or even run away. Then six small hearts appeared in
the sky, centered around a large heart. Then a white cloud covered
the hill and the site of the first apparition, and the sun returned
to its normal place. The people interpreted this unusual happen-
ing as the sun’s witnessing to its Creator. All of this happened over
approximately fifteen minutes. (Kraljević 1984: 59)
This group illusion and other similar “signs” have a powerful emotional effect
upon those who witness them, with many saying afterwards that these “signs”
helped them to renew and strengthen their faith. At the same time, it is an
almost stereotypical example of what has been defined in this book as a magi-
cal belief in that a supernatural entity is claimed to act upon the mundane
world in an observable way.
It is worthwhile to consider that even though one of the motivating fac-
tors of the Reformation was to free Christianity of such magical beliefs and
practices, examples of them can be found in many modern-day Protestant
churches. Be it faith-healing evangelists like Benny Hinn or religiously moti-
vated studies into whether prayer is effective in healing those prayed for, it is
easy to find magical beliefs and practices within even the religious denomi-
nations that come down hardest on “superstition”. Truly deist religions that
reject the possibility that supernatural entities act upon the world and, there-
fore, reject all magical claims have been very rare and unsuccessful except
within small and highly intellectual groups – although, of course, it is possible
to find something approaching such deist beliefs among the most intellectu-
ally inclined members of even such faiths as Roman Catholicism. The reason
for this is that without magical beliefs and practices, religious traditions have
to maintain themselves purely on the basis of CREDs. This is particularly dif-
ficult to achieve, however, especially given other religious traditions that avail
themselves of magic and, thereby, attract new adherents as well as maintain-
ing the religiosity of existing ones. Furthermore, the maintenance of religious
traditions through the observation and imitation of CREDs is going to be
affected by the perceived level of safety, just as the likelihood of error manage-
ment will lead to belief in an illusory causal connection. The reason is that it
118
is significantly more advantageous to imitate the behaviour of accepted mod-

els in dangerous conditions, as has already previously been noted. After all,
in such conditions innovation is more likely to lead to critical failure whereas
the behaviour of the models must have been such as to allow survival given
that the models are available for imitation.
Yet religious traditions that do include magical beliefs and practices are
faced with the problem of potential counter-evidence destabilizing those
beliefs and practices and perhaps even affecting the stability of the tradition
as a whole. In this context, it is highly instructive to consider how the Roman
Catholic tradition has dealt with this problem in the case of Medjugorje and
other similar pilgrimage centres. The current status of the purported mira-
cles at Medjugorje is that the Roman Catholic authorities have not officially
confirmed the events at Medjugorje as supernatural in origin. Instead, they
have provisionally authorized devotion at the site and decided to continue
monitoring what occurs there. This is very much the standard way in which
the Church treats such cases, with official approval only being given once
the events have come to an end. The effect is that the purportedly magical
effects are kept at arm’s length. This allows the magical beliefs and practices
to help motivate religious faith – to act as “signs” from God, as the Church
puts it – without opening the religious tradition to the threat of being too
closely attached to the events if they should happen to be seen as fake in some
way. Of course, once the purported miracles are safely in the past and inves-
tigations of them have not revealed any problems deemed significant, they
may be given official approval without any real threat of empirical counter-
evidence coming to light later.
Wilson’s cathedral
Some aspects of the account I have presented can be seen as having been
already suggested, though not explored, by Wilson. Thus, for example, he
states that “Immunity from disproof might seem like a weakness from a nar-
row scientific perspective, but it can be a strength for a social system designed
to regulate human behavior” (Wilson 2002: 24). It is important, therefore,
that the problems with Wilson’s treatment of the non-alethic function of reli-
gion be explored at length.2
The closest Wilson gets to a consideration of the epistemic issues that I
have been discussing is in his distinction between pragmatic and factual real-
ism: “It is true that many religious beliefs are false as literal descriptions of
2. Some of this discussion follows Talmont-Kaminski (2009a).
119
the real world, but this merely forces us to recognize two forms of realism; a
factual realism based on literal correspondence and a practical realism based
on behavioral adaptedness” (ibid.: 228).
Clearly, Wilson is here making the basic point that in the case of some
beliefs truth and function do not run hand in hand – the point which lies at
the bottom of the idea of non-alethic function that is central to the account
of religion presented by myself. Likewise, the similarity between Wilson’s
concept of a stealth-religion and the view I present of ideologies has already
been noted. Despite this fundamental similarity, there is much in Wilson’s
account that I disagree with.
The problems begin with Wilson’s distinction between factual and practi-
cal realism. The way Wilson puts it, it sounds like two different versions of
much the same thing: realism. Yet the two senses in which Wilson uses the
term are very different, as we can see on the basis of the analysis that has
been provided. In the case of factual realism we are dealing with beliefs that
are accurate or even truthful. In the case of practical realism the beliefs are
merely functional. The vital point is that where the two measures of accu-
racy and functionality come apart radically, the beliefs have to be protected
against the kinds of epistemic factors that are normally meant to ensure their
accuracy. This shows how dangerously misleading is Wilson’s claim that there
are two kinds of knowledge, factual and practical. In the case of beliefs with
non-alethic function, an effective focus on their truth and justification is
very much undesirable since it would interfere with their functionality. In
the sense that it is possible to talk about “knowledge” in the case of practical
realism, it is a form of “knowledge” that is disconnected from the content
of the beliefs – it has more to do with a paramecium knowing how to locate
dissolved sugar than with knowing that Darwin lived in the nineteenth cen-
tury. The difference between factual and pragmatic realism could, perhaps,
be spelled out in terms of the distinction between declarative and procedural
knowledge, therefore.
Simply claiming that adaptiveness of beliefs is more important than their
truth – without explaining how the two are connected and how they can
come apart – leads straight to a naturalist but antirealist argument of the sort
put forward by Stephen Stich, among others (or, alternatively, to the realist
but anti-naturalist position put forward by Plantinga 1993). Stich (1990)
claimed that since pragmatic considerations are the only ones that deter-
mine which beliefs come to be accepted and since truth and functionality of
beliefs can come apart, there is no reason to think that our beliefs are actually
true, rather than merely adaptive – an argument that is self-defeating since
it would undermine the plausibility of its own premises. Of course, once it
is recognized that the functionality of most beliefs is alethic (i.e. tied to their
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truth, or at least their accuracy), the situation changes drastically, and beliefs
with non-alethic function can be investigated as a special case. Lacking an
understanding of the special conditions required for non-alethic function
leads Wilson to make a tu quoque objection when he states that “disparaging
the otherworldly nature of religion presumes that non-religious belief systems
are more factually realistic” (Wilson 2002: 228). Religious belief systems,
being ideologies, will diverge radically from accurate descriptions of the state
of affairs while non-religious belief systems will do so only in so far as some
of those are ideologies also. It is perfectly possible to disparage both kinds of
ideology without falling into hypocrisy – not that being shown to be a hypo-
crite would affect the truth or otherwise of one’s claims.
An additional problem with the way Wilson talks about this issue is a basic
ambiguity in how he uses the term “practical realism”. The problem presents
itself already in how Wilson illustrates the meaning of the term when he
introduces it. Having defined practical realism as “behavioural adaptedness”,
Wilson gives the following example: “An atheist historian who understood
the real life of Jesus but whose life was a mess as a result of his beliefs would
be factually attached to and practically detached from reality” (ibid.: 228).
While it is far from clear what could be meant by having a life that was a
mess, it seems fair to claim that Caligula, to use an extreme example, had a
particularly messy life. His whole existence was devoted to debauchery that
landed him in an early grave. Yet how should we judge Caligula’s behavioural
adaptedness? It is most likely, after all, that in his short but dissolute life he
begat many more children than the average pious Roman – Caligula’s “repro-
ductive strategy” being comparable to that of alpha male lions, who can only
control a pride for a short time but during that time can beget many progeny.
At the same time, the behavioural adaptedness of Wilson’s atheist historian
is probably not all that different from that of any of his psychologically more
well-adjusted departmental colleagues, none of whom are likely to have more
than a couple of children. This ambiguity between what is functional from
an evolutionary point of view as opposed to a psychological point of view is
to be found throughout Wilson’s discussion of the value of religion. It is what
allows him to claim that the effects of religion are on the whole desirable, a
claim that does not follow from religions being group-level adaptations. After
all, a society that is highly cohesive and cooperative need not necessarily be
one that we would wish to live in – for all its evident strengths, Chinese soci-
ety is not one that I would choose to join. Indeed, the societies that offer what
is generally agreed to be the best quality of life to their members – such as
those in Scandinavia – have systemic negative population growth.
To understand the advantages of having a proper picture of the relation-
ship between the epistemic status of a belief and its non-alethic function it
121
is useful to consider an example out of Wilson’s book. Early on, he brings

up the Chewong tribe and their concept of punen, which he describes as “a
calamity or misfortune, owing to not having satisfied an urgent desire” (ibid.:
22). Wilson explains how belief in punen leads to the practice of food sharing
due to people’s wish to avoid the punen that would result from people going
hungry while others ate. Most interesting is the conception of the misfortune
that might strike due to punen:
The calamity that awaits someone who has been placed in a state
of punen takes the form of an attack by a tiger, a snake, or a poi-
sonous millipede. Moreover, these animals have spirit forms that
can inflict other misfortunes such as disease or physical injury.
Thus, virtually any misfortune can be used as “evidence” of a pre-
vious transgression. (Ibid.: 24)
In terms of the analysis that has been proposed, punen appears to be a magi-
cal belief that is in the process of becoming a religious one. The purported
effects, while not superempirical, are so vague and general as to make desta-
bilization by counter-evidence very unlikely, thereby allowing the belief to
better serve its non-alethic, pro-social function. Indeed, Wilson makes much
the same point when he states that “Immunity from disproof … can be a
strength for a social system designed to regulate human behavior” (ibid.: 24).
Unfortunately, this is the only point in the book where he mentions this vital
connection between function and epistemic status. Had he developed this
side of the account, he would have been able to understand why it is that
religious traditions are full of beliefs about supernatural entities, instead of
simply writing off this central feature of religion as “a detail”. In the case of
punen, it would have allowed him to explain why it is that spirit forms are a
more effective entity to call upon in such a context than just a range of natural
causes, no matter how broad – the point being that with only natural causes
functioning it would be difficult to tie the eventual misfortune back to the
original unfulfilled desire.
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6
Religion as ancestral trait
The starting point for the argument presented in this book was the conflict
between reason and superstition that the Enlightenment thinkers perceived
as the central aspect of the intellectual history of humanity. In the preceding
chapters an account has been developed that combines traditional epistemic
considerations with recent work on the cognitive and cultural basis of magic
and religion, as well as, to a lesser degree, science. The foundation stone for
this account was provided by the view that human reasoning has to be under-
stood in terms of bounded rationality theory.
The dual inheritance account that has been offered to explain aspects of
religious beliefs and practices suggests that religions owe their longevity to
the successful amalgamation of two different independently occurring phe-
nomena. On the one hand, religions involve beliefs that are both attractive
due to cognitive by-products and well protected against potentially desta-
bilizing counter-evidence, as is the case with all supernatural beliefs. In this
respect religions are to be understood in the context of the biological evolu-
tion of human cognitive abilities. On the other hand, religions motivate pro-
social behaviour, which helps to maintain the cohesion of human groups.
This aspect of religions is adaptive, and either to be explained in terms of
the impact it has on the fitness of the individual members of such groups or
in terms of the fitness of the cultural groups, themselves. In effect, the dual
inheritance account combines together the cognitive by-product account and
the pro-social adaptation account, presenting each as focused upon only one
aspect of the overall picture. Going beyond those two theories, an explanation
has been developed of the role played by the epistemic aspects of religious
belief and practice in shaping their function. In particular, the non-alethic
function of religious beliefs has been shown to require that such beliefs be
protected against potential counter-evidence.
123
This account, similarly to any account of religious behaviour that presents

religions as playing a significant role in maintaining social stability runs into
a basic objection arising out of the work of Norris and Inglehart (2004).
Thankfully, the dual inheritance account provides the theoretical tools nec-
essary to propose a plausible response to this objection. As has already been
noted, there are a number of countries in which religion no longer plays a
major social role. What is more, these countries include examples such as
Denmark, Sweden and the Czech Republic, all of which are examples of the
most stable societies upon the face of the planet. However, if religion was
important to maintain social stability and cohesion, it would seem secularized
countries should be relatively unstable. One reply that has been put forward
to this objection is that the stability of these societies is due to the previously
high levels of religiosity in those societies, the implication being that Sweden
and Denmark are about to fall into anarchy. Such a response totally fails to
take into consideration the fact that secular countries are not just equal in
stability to relatively religious ones but, as Norris and Inglehart showed, con-
sistently appear at the forefront in terms of various measures of social stability
and wellbeing. Furthermore, this response also fails to account for historical
growth in stability being correlated with increasing secularization. A more
sophisticated response is required.
One characteristic of all adaptations that has been discussed on several
occasions is that the adaptive value of any trait depends upon the context in
which that trait appears. Thus, for example, the ability to run fast is highly
adaptive for the cheetah in the environment in which the gazelle is its main
prey, but it is maladaptive where fast-moving prey are missing as the high
metabolic cost of developing the necessary musculature is not offset by selec-
tive advantage while hunting. In the case of the pro-social function of reli-
gions, it can be argued that some societies have found ways of maintaining
their stability without support from religious institutions. This is the insight
necessary to construct an explanation of secularization in the context of a
pro-social account of religion.
To evaluate the ability of the theory presented here to deal with the pat-
terns of secularization witnessed in modern democracies it is necessary to
examine what is known about these patterns. This is done by looking at the
work of David Voas and Steve Bruce. Voas’s work in particular, reveals that
the process of secularization appears to have followed a very similar trajec-
tory throughout a number of the European countries, even though it began
in each country at a different time (Voas 2008). Central to this trajectory is
the temporary appearance of a large group whose religious commitment is
relatively weak yet significant when compared to the thoroughly secularized
individuals. Explaining the data obtained by Voas requires looking at religion
124
religion as ancestral trait
on two different levels: as an ancestral trait and as reliant upon cognitive

by-products.
The existence of secularization can be explained in terms of the claim that
modern democracies have found a way to maintain social stability without
recourse to religious ideologies. Once religions are no longer necessary they
can atrophy away in much the same manner as organs that are no longer
functional. Indeed, because they will no longer be under selection pressure,
religious beliefs will be free to become a lot more heterogeneous within a
society – exactly the pattern one finds in secularizing countries.
This does not explain, however, why religious belief remains relatively
common though much weaker than in previous times. To explain that it is
necessary to consider both sides of the dual inheritance account of religion. In
particular, it is necessary to contrast the loss of function with the continued
existence of the cognitive basis for supernatural beliefs. Given that magical
and religious beliefs are caused by cognitive by-products and these are pro-
duced by the idiosyncratic makeup of the human mind, the development of
welfare states is not going to undermine their foundations. All it can do is
weaken their influence due to increased personal safety.
Having dealt with the issue of secularization and shown that, far from
being a problem for the theory, it is actually well explained by it, it is nec-
essary to return to the conception of the relationship between reason and
supernatural beliefs and practices with which we started. With the benefit
of the fully developed dual inheritance account of religion it becomes pos-
sible to evaluate each aspect of the Enlightenment view of reason in order
that we should see what were its shortcomings and why it was so attractive.
The overall conclusion to draw regarding it is that, while it fundamentally
misapprehended the relationship between reason and the supernatural, it did
contain a number of significant insights that need to be included in any more
sophisticated understanding of this relationship.
Patterns of secularization
To find evidence for religions becoming an ancestral trait in the case of certain
societies, it is necessary to consider the patterns of secularization. This con-
cerns both the question of where secularization has occurred and the particular
ways in which the process has impacted religion. The first of these issues will
be considered quickly before turning to the second issue in order to examine it
at length. Their significance will be explored in the section following this one.
Worldwide, it is the European countries that have gone the furthest down
the path of secularization, as Norris and Inglehart (2004) have shown. This
125
already suggests that there is a connection between secularization and the

society possessing democratic political institutions as well as strong social
support. Indeed, that is the very conclusion which is drawn by Norris and
Inglehart, who support their theory of secularization and existential security
with a detailed analysis of data obtained as part of the World Values Survey
(www.worldvaluessurvey.org) – the analysis provided here being very much in
line with that theory. This thesis that secularization results from strong social
support provisions finds further support if differences in religiosity between
the European societies are considered. The Eurobarometer 2005 (http://
ec.europa.eu/public_opinion/index_en.htm) finds that the lowest levels of
religiosity are to be found in the Scandinavian countries, which are charac-
terized by low levels of inequality and strong social welfare provisions, with
the highest levels to be found in some of Europe’s poorest and simultaneously
most unequal societies. Yet the significance of any such comparison between
current social conditions and current level of secularization must be treated
with restraint – the level of religiosity within any society is not subject to the
rapid changes that might allow it to closely track other social and economic
changes. Instead, as we will see, the process is generational in nature and
significantly independent of the details of local history once it has begun.
Appreciating these features of secularization will require that we consider sev-
eral aspects of it in the context of a recent analysis carried out by David Voas.
As was noted in Chapter 2, secularization has been a hotly contested topic
within sociology in recent years, with a number of writers arguing that it is
not as significant as it has been thought or that it does not even exist (Blond
1998). Out of these discussions has come the recognition that secularization
typically consists of several different kinds of social change. What has been
foremost for many researchers is the progressive decline in the social signifi-
cance of religious institutions. This decline in institutionalized religion has
taken a variety of forms in various countries. While some countries (includ-
ing France) have expressly secular constitutions, others (such as the United
Kingdom) retain national churches that, nonetheless, have little or no influ-
ence upon policy. Indeed, throughout the majority of European countries,
there appears to exist a public understanding that it would be inappropriate
for political representatives to make policy on the basis of any religious con-
victions they might happen to possess, even when those politicians belong to
parties that are expressly labelled as Christian. Along with the decline in the
significance of religious institutions there has been a progressive tendency for
the functions of those institutions to be taken over by wholly secular insti-
tutions. Foremost among those functions have been the provision of social
welfare and education, but secular institutions have also tended to take over
the documentation and witnessing of significant life events such as births,
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deaths and marriages that were traditionally within the purview of religious
institutions. The process has not been all one way, with the Blair government
in the United Kingdom, for example, making some efforts in the first decade
of the twenty-first century to increase the role played by religious institutions
in the provision of education and welfare support.
A number of writers have chosen to juxtapose against this decline the pur-
ported growing significance of what has been called privatized religion. Grace
Davie does this by talk of “believing without belonging”:
Membership figures for religious institutions and statistics relat-

ing to patterns of religious belief provide us with distinct, though
related, indicators of religiosity. Each poses some problems for
the social investigator, but taken together they can point us to
some crucial questions. Indeed, the precise combination between
these two variables is, surely, what characterises British religion in
the late 20th century. Believing, it seems, persists while belonging
continues to decline – or, to be more accurate, believing is declin-
ing (has declined) at a slower rate than belonging – resulting in
a marked imbalance between the two variables; this imbalance
pervades a very great deal of our religious life. (Davie 1990: 455)
Crucially, the apparent growth of privatized religion is compatible with two

different hypotheses. The first is that while religious institutions have with-
ered away, individual people are finding religious beliefs of increased signifi-
cance and are becoming more religious in their worldview. This hypothesis
must be acknowledged as prima facie implausible as it would seem to sug-
gest that strong religious institutions at best play a relatively minor role in
encouraging and supporting belief, the possibility being that they actually
inhibit it (this last claim sounding a lot like Stark’s supply-side account; Stark
& Bainbridge 1985; Stark & Iannaccone 1994). The second hypothesis that
would explain the appearance of privatized religion as a significant pattern in
European societies is that this is simply what is left of religion once the insti-
tutionalized element has declined, the hypothesis Davie appears to favour. To
identify to what degree each of these hypotheses is correct it is necessary to
examine the evidence for changes in the aspects of religiosity typically con-
nected to privatized religion, such as self-rated religiosity, frequency of private
prayer and how important people think religion is in their lives.
Voas (2008) considers data regarding these aspects from a range of European
countries, as well as data more relevant to institutionalized aspects of religi-
osity (i.e. frequency of attendance at religious services and self-identification
with a religion). Were it the case that the decline in religious institutions
127
went hand-in-hand with the growth of private religious commitment there

would have to be an anti-correlation between changes in indicators of pri-
vatized religiosity and those of institutionalized religiosity. In that situation
it would not make sense to talk about religiosity as a single property. This is
not, however, what Voas found:
We might find, of course, that these variables seem to be measur-

ing different things; perhaps, for example, there is a “private com-
mitment” dimension and a “public participation” dimension. In
fact, careful analysis shows that these variables do meet the key
criteria for combination into a scale. In particular, they are highly
correlated with each other and with the index of religiosity derived
from them. (Voas 2008: 157)
Two further findings made by Voas are highly relevant to the analysis pursued
here. The first is that for each cohort (such as, for example, Britons born dur-
ing the 1970s) their overall level of religiosity changes little as they age. This,
in effect, means that religiosity appears to be largely determined by upbring-
ing and does not change with age. The commonly held opinion that people
become more religious as they age finds no support in empirical evidence
and appears to be an illusion due to cohorts born earlier having a higher
level of religiosity than those born later. As Voas states, “The evidence we
possess points unambiguously to the generational nature of religious decline,
and gives no support to the conjecture that most Europeans enter adulthood
relatively unreligious and gradually become devout as they go through life”
(ibid.: 161).
Therefore, the social and cognitive mechanisms that determine religiosity
must primarily impact individual belief systems at the developmental stage.
This does not mean individual religiosity cannot change later in life but that
there are no overall patterns in such changes to be identified at the popula-
tion level.
Voas’s second finding helps to understand the cause for the idea that pri-
vatized religion is growing in strength. He analyses European populations is
terms of three different groups. Apart from the clearly religious and the clearly
irreligious, Voas identifies a group which he characterizes as exemplifying
“fuzzy fidelity”. This is a disparate group of people who in some way do not fit
the criteria he uses to identify the religious and the irreligious. The relevance
of this group to the question of privatized religion is made clear by Voas:
The crucial issue concerns the large subpopulation that is nei-

ther obviously religious nor entirely secular. The major debates
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over religious change in the modern world concern precisely this

group. They can be seen as a sign of secularization, or conversely
as a religious market waiting for the right product to come along.
European sociologists of the “third way” might see them as con-
sumers of individuated religion or non-institutional spirituality, or
again as a group that believes without belonging. (Ibid.: 165)
As Voas shows, however, the intermediate group appears to be a transitory

phenomenon. He reaches this conclusion by combining data from the vari-
ous European countries and showing that throughout Europe secularization
appears to follow the same basic trajectory. The initial drop in the numbers of
religiously committed is due to a growth in those exemplifying fuzzy fidelity,
with growth in the irreligious being much slower. However, once the numbers
of the religious drop to a relatively low level, the intermediate category peaks
and then begins to fall, with all the subsequent increase being in the number
of the irreligious.
This result is extremely interesting for several reasons. Most importantly
in the context of the discussion of privatized religion it provides further evi-
dence for the claim that this is not a new form of religion but rather just what
remains once religious institutions lose their power. Furthermore, it shows
that privatized religion is not sustainable in the long term. The overall secu-
larization process Voas identifies takes about two hundred years, requiring as
it does a number of generations to be born and then to die out. However,
where the process runs its course, the decline of strong religiosity is followed
by the decline in fuzzy fidelity – secularization of institutions is naturally fol-
lowed by the secularization of private beliefs.
There is one more, very significant, insight that can be obtained by con-
sidering the methodology used by Voas. The fact that he is able to fit on a
single coherent graph the data showing secularization in a number of differ-
ent countries suggests that the process of secularization, once it starts, is to a
significant degree independent of the details of local conditions. His results
bring to mind falling leaves that turn and twist on the air but, sooner or later,
all find their way to the bottom of the tree. As Voas makes clear, the speed
of the process is not exactly the same across all of the countries he examines
the data for. In those where the process has gone the furthest, it is proceeding
less rapidly than the average, with changes that are faster than average occur-
ring in the countries where the process has only begun. However, throughout
Europe, the interaction between the sizes of the three subgroups Voas iden-
tifies remains much the same. This means, however, that whatever mecha-
nism for secularization is proposed it must be one that is relatively simple.
In particular, the kind of characterization that is offered by, for example,
129
Bruce (2011), who identifies twenty-seven different factors connected to sec-

ularization, is almost definitely needlessly complex. Religious revivals, state
repression and economic crises do not appear to have long-term effects that
fundamentally alter the trajectory of secularization. Were it the case that secu-
larization depended upon such a number of factors as Bruce proposes it would
be miraculous to find its progress in various countries and at various times all
mapping onto a single graph. It would be far more likely that any such com-
parison would reveal a patchwork of results with little common theme. As it
is, however, working back from the available data by fitting it with the com-
mon trajectory, Voas’s approach opens the way to obtaining a rough estimate
of the decade in which secularization began in each of the countries Voas
examines – much the same way that the fall of each individual leaf can be
roughly traced back to the moment it broke away from the tree. Comparing
the conditions within the various countries at around the time secularization
began may reveal commonalities. Prima facie, these should point to the mech-
anism by which secularization begins – an issue that is particularly significant
given the largely independent trajectory this process subsequently follows.
Apart from the decline in institutionalization and the short-term growth of
privatized religion, secularization has also been characterized as including the
appearance of a variety of novel religions, either taken from other cultures or
developed in the context of the religions existing within the particular culture
undergoing secularization. A plausible mechanism for this process ties it to
the phenomenon of privatized religion. In so far as people develop their reli-
gious views outside a single dominant institutionalized religion, those views
are much more likely to develop in any of a number of heterogeneous ways,
influenced more by the particular cultural influences they have been exposed
to and by their, perhaps momentary, psychological needs and inclinations.
What would have been called heresy in earlier days and stamped out by cen-
tral religious authorities is now considered a sign of the continued vigour of
religion in modern society.
Secularization as a cultural evolutionary process
Bruce compares the increasing variety of religious beliefs and traditions that
appear in a society undergoing secularization to a garden that has been aban-
doned: “Without constant pruning, selective breeding, and weeding, the gar-
den loses its distinctive character, as it is overtaken by the greater variety of
plant species in the surrounding wilderness” (Bruce 2011: 19).
The metaphor used by Bruce assumes the existence of a “gardener”. In the
case of the Roman Catholic Church it would be easy to point to the church
130
representatives and organizations who have played this role in previous times
and who attempt to play it even now. The same is not necessarily the case for
other religions, however. Even where it is correct, such an agent-based expla-
nation is liable to miss much of the picture that is revealed from an analysis
that is informed by an evolutionary outlook in general and the dual inherit-
ance account of religion that has been developed in the previous chapters in
particular. Taking the evolutionary perspective will show that the weakness
of religion in modern, Western democracies does not constitute a counter-
argument to the pro-social account of religion, but merely shows that in these
environments religion is no longer functional, its role having been taken over
by other social institutions that are for the most part much more successful
in fulfilling it.
The significance of Tinbergen’s (1963) four questions for evolutionary
explanations of human behaviours has already been pointed out in this book.
It is useful to consider how they apply to the issue of secularization, and,
in particular, what they imply for the relationship between the sociological
accounts pursued by Voas and Bruce among others and the explicitly evolu-
tionary account presented here. It seems that sociologists such as Norris and
Inglehart as well as Voas are focused upon three issues. The first of these is the
most basic issue of coming to formulate a clear understanding of just what
changes are occurring. Such an understanding is key to any further study
of secularization and, without it, attempts to deal with any of the questions
Tinbergen talks about are at best extremely difficult and error-prone, if not
just pointless. The lengths Voas goes to in order to obtain a clear picture of
secularization, as well as the level of disagreement among sociologists as to
whether the process is occurring at all, makes clear just how difficult this ini-
tial step is when dealing with patterns of human behaviour, even ones argu-
ably as pronounced as secularization. In so far as a picture of the situation at
hand can be obtained, sociological analysis seems to be primarily concerned
with just a couple of Tinbergen’s questions – the question of the mechanisms
that are responsible for the (change in) behaviour and, possibly, the question
of the historical events that lead to the point secularized societies find them-
selves at. Bruce’s argument that increased variability in religious practices and
beliefs is due to weakened religious institutions being incapable of ensuring
that members of the society espouse only views consistent with church dogma
is an example of just this kind of level of analysis. The analysis that I will offer
here will be initially concerned with the question of function, however. As
such, it will not be in competition with the kinds of explanations that Voas
and Bruce provide but should actually work with those explanations – the
answers to each of the questions are capable of informing efforts to answer
the others. It is because of a desire to make use of aspects of the sociologists’
131
analyses, as well as the need to stay true to the facts regarding secularization
they have been unearthed, that Voas’s work has been discussed at length in the
previous section. So, each of the aspects of secularization previously discussed
will be returned to, though in a somewhat different order.
The decay of institutionalized religion that many modern democracies have
witnessed is very much in line with the idea that religion’s pro-social function
is no longer important in these societies. The process might be compared to
the way that animal organs which are no longer functional tend to atrophy
away over evolutionary time, rather than either being retained or disappearing
rapidly. Thus, for example, modern whales reveal their land-dwelling past by
their mostly vestigial pelvis, which is much smaller than would be expected
for land-dwelling mammals of their size. A fully developed pelvis has not been
retained due to the evolutionary advantage of not investing in non-functional
organs but the pelvis has also not disappeared rapidly as for it to no longer be
formed requires a series of genetic changes to occur and spread throughout
the population – evolution takes time, even when merely removing traits.
Similarly, religious institutions that have long played a role in motivating pro-
social behaviour did not disappear the moment they were no longer needed.
Instead, the societies that have developed secular means of motivating such
behaviour have witnessed the slow decline in the, no longer necessary, reli-
gious institutions. This can, in part, be seen in the correlation between low
levels of religiosity and low levels of both white-collar and blue-collar crime
and other social dysfunctions (Paul 2009).
Were the decline in institutionalized religion the only change taking place
in patterns of religious involvement in modern democracies, the hypothesis
that loss of pro-social function is responsible for the change would be far from
justified. However, the other two changes outlined previously go a long way
towards suggesting that this is indeed the case.
The growth in the variety of religious groups present in societies undergo-
ing secularization need not be compared to an unkempt garden. After all,
when found in nature, a lack of variety is not necessarily evidence for any
intentional action, just as “design” is no evidence for a designer. Instead, the
lack of variety in any particular trait can be evidence for that trait being under
selection pressure, with the removal of such pressure leading to the appear-
ance of greater variety. One human trait that does not appear to be under
any strong selection pressure is eye colour. It is not surprising, therefore, that
human eyes can be blue, grey, green, brown or a number of combinations and
variations of those colours. The pigmentation appears to be limited by physi-
cal constraints rather than by selection pressure. It can be imagined, however,
that eyes of a particular colour might become preferred resulting in sexual
selection for that trait. In that event that colour will become predominant
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in the population and, given the right conditions, may even displace all the
other alternatives, leading to its fixation. Darwin compared the working
of evolution to the selective breeding of pigeons by humans. Similarly, the
absent gardener that Bruce imagines might be an impersonal selection pres-
sure that has been lifted. In particular, the growth in the variety of religions
in secularized societies could be explained by the loss of pro-social function.
What about the relatively high levels of privatized religion that are still
found in many secularized societies? Rather than considering the pro-social
function of religious ideologies, this phenomenon needs to be investigated in
terms of the other side of the dual inheritance account that has been devel-
oped here (i.e. the idea that supernatural beliefs should be understood, at least
in part, as cognitive by-products).
Back in Chapter 2 the point was made, with reference to the work done
by Roud (2003), that while magical beliefs are still common in modern soci-
eties, they are far less powerful than used to be the case. Voas makes much
the same point:
Opinion polls in Europe show high levels of belief, not merely in

religious or quasi-religious ideas (such as reincarnation), but also
in folk superstition: horoscopes, clairvoyance, ghosts, and so on. It
is far from clear that these beliefs make any difference to the peo-
ple claiming them. Studies on polling show that people are pre-
pared to express opinions about almost anything, whether or not
they have any knowledge of or interest in the topic. Such “beliefs”
may be uninformed, held superficially, seldom acted upon, and
relatively volatile. Feeling required to hold and even to express
opinions is one thing; finding those issues important is another.
(Voas 2008: 161)
As Voas quips, “While economists claim that there is no such thing as a free
lunch, survey responses come very close” (ibid.).
That supernatural beliefs persist is not at all surprising once it is taken into
account that the minds of modern humans are much the same as those of the
people of the Middle Ages. In particular, we are just as capable of producing
the same cognitive by-products. Therefore, in so far as supernatural beliefs are
cognitive by-products, given the right circumstances we are just as likely to
formulate and communicate them as our ancestors.
Of course, in general, the circumstances of people in modern democra-
cies are quite different from those the inhabitants of these very same coun-
tries would have experienced several centuries ago. In particular, the kinds of
threats we face are different and of a different intensity. We no longer have to
133
seriously wonder whether our children will survive through the next winter,
for one thing. Given the basic connection – discussed in Chapter 4 – between
perceived threat and the likelihood that supernatural beliefs will come into
play, this overall fundamental change in the threat level that people have to
cope with cannot but affect the degree to which supernatural beliefs exercise
the minds of people living in secularized societies.
Taken together, these two considerations – our unchanging susceptibil-
ity to cognitive by-products and the decreased opportunities for them to
be produced due to changing conditions – go a long way to explaining the
pattern of weaker but relatively common private religious belief found in
secularized societies. However, the picture is complicated by religions being
magico-religious complexes. The problem becomes clear when we consider
the question of what it is that is believed when people no longer belong, to
use Davie’s phrase. Davie’s own take on this question is not particularly help-
ful. Concerned with the decline in the levels of even private religion among
the younger generations, she makes the following suggestion:
There is, however, another way of looking at things. If we widen

the definition of religion to include questions about the mean-
ing of life, the purpose of mankind’s existence, the future of the
planet and man’s responsibilities to his fellow man and to the
Earth itself, we may find a very different pattern of “religious”
behaviour among the young. (Davie 1990: 462)
While I am sure that a different pattern of “religious” behaviour would

result from such a redefinition, equating moral concern with religiosity does
not strike at the heart of the kinds of issues that have been discussed here.
However, rejecting redefinitions of the sort suggested by Davie still leaves the
question of what it is that religious people in secularized societies believe.
The need for religions to include both magical and religious beliefs and
practices was explained in terms of the superempirical dilemma in the previ-
ous chapter – while avoiding destabilization by counter-evidence, religious
beliefs also lose the opportunity to gain support from psychologically con-
vincing empirical evidence. By being magico-religious complexes religions
can hope to have their fairy cake and eat it. The question at hand is how
secularization impacts this cooperation between magical and religious beliefs
and whether this casts any light on the trajectory identified by Voas.
Unfortunately, the data he looks at are not particularly helpful in this
respect. None of the questions asked in the European Social Survey (www.
europeansocialsurvey.org) that he bases his analysis upon distinguish between
the beliefs that we have defined as magical and those defined as religious. For
134
example, the question regarding frequency of prayer would have to be split

up into two questions – one about intercessory prayer and the other about
communing prayer – in order for the data to help with the particular issue
at hand. Even if we had that data, however, we would at best only know the
relative frequency of these kinds of practices. We would still not know what
changes have occurred in how they interact.
Are there other sources which could provide us with information that
could cast light on the question of how the magico-religious mix is affected
by the process of secularization? We know that magical beliefs that are not
part of religious traditions have undergone something like the same process
of secularization in the countries where religions have been losing their social
power. There is extensive evidence for this and we have discussed it at length
already, the difference being that the popularity of superstitions appears to
be subject to more rapid fluctuation. The evidence for changes in the mix
of supernatural beliefs identified as constituting religious beliefs is far more
anecdotal. It does seem fair to say, however, that the major religions in the
secularizing countries have tended to de-emphasize magical elements. Even
the Catholic Church seems to no longer emphasize as much the miraculous
elements within its set of beliefs. A part of this tendency may be the way
in which Catholic saints are no longer as important to Catholic religion as
they were in the past. The plethora of new saints chosen by Pope John Paul
II appears not to have significantly affected this trend. Also, miracle sites
such as Medjugorje that were mentioned earlier are a fringe phenomenon
within the Church, a status that seems far from the one that was possessed
by the shrine at Santiago de Compostela in previous centuries. Finally, most
Catholics appear to be unaware of the dogma that the bread and wine used
in communion are held to be the flesh and blood of Christ, rather than just
symbols. It seems plausible to claim that Catholicism and other religions
that function within secularizing countries are undergoing something like
the spiritualizing process that Melton (1985) talked about in relation to failed
prophesies. A further piece of evidence that would support this claim comes
from outside of religion. Non-religious ideologies are a relatively recent phe-
nomenon. Their appearance in recent times suggests that, at least in some
societies, including supernatural elements within an ideology is no longer as
useful as it used to be.
The idea that secularization leads to the progressive elimination of magical
elements from religion might suggest an intellectualist account of seculari-
zation as driven by growing awareness and influence of science and logical
thinking upon people’s beliefs. Similarly to Norris and Inglehart (2004), Bruce
(2011) and others, however, I do not think that this hypothesis is plausible.
Nor do I think that it necessarily follows from there being a spiritualizing
135
tendency among religions in modern societies. I would rather come back to

the connection between supernatural beliefs and perceived threat.
Henrich’s (2009) account of religious traditions as CRED traditions is
one that we have returned to on several occasions throughout this book. It
is particularly useful in the current context. Henrich believes that it may be
possible for CRED traditions to be self-sustaining – successive generations
engaging in particular behaviour and believing in particular sets of claims
solely on the basis that the earlier generations did so, without any evidence
external to the tradition for the efficacy of those behaviours or for the truth of
the claims. As I pointed out, however, if this were the case it should be pos-
sible for deist religions to successfully maintain themselves, something that
has not been the case. Instead of Henrich’s simple picture, I have suggested
that successful religions should be thought of as CRED traditions that are
continuously reinforced thanks to the psychologically convincing empirical
support they obtain from magical elements. In sophisticated religions these
magical elements are kept at arm’s length from the core religious beliefs in
order that they do not destabilize them if and when counter-evidence for
the magical claims comes to light. A secure environment, such as is found in
countries undergoing secularization, undermines magically sustained CRED
traditions in two basic ways. The first is that the magical elements lose some
of their attractiveness, as has been discussed. Furthermore, however, new gen-
erations are also less likely to imitate the CREDs that form the core of the
tradition. The reason is that the relative value of imitation versus innovation
depends upon whether the environment is dangerous or not. In a dangerous
environment innovation may turn out to be very costly, whereas imitation at
least ensures that one is acting on the basis of models that have been success-
ful enough to survive long enough to be imitated. In a safe environment the
costs of innovation are likely to be less significant, making it a much more
attractive strategy to pursue. (In both cases, error management theory helps to
point us towards the mechanism by which security undermines supernatural
beliefs.) The comparison can be made using the mushroom example illustrat-
ing Henrich’s presentation of CREDs. When living in an area where there
are many highly toxic mushrooms, it makes sense to only eat those that are
consumed by others. However, when the local mushrooms might at worst
cause an upset stomach, it makes much more sense to try to identify varie-
ties that are not yet being eaten and which might, therefore, provide a new
source of sustenance.
Earlier on it was suggested that the original cause of secularization is the
development of secular institutions that are capable of maintaining social
cohesion without the involvement of religious institutions, rendering religion
an ancestral trait. Consideration of the effect of lower perceived threat levels
136
upon the stability of CRED traditions provides a more detailed way of under-
standing how secular institutions might undermine religion. While social
stability was maintained by religion, a feedback mechanism existed which
helped to stabilize that religious tradition. Should religious beliefs weaken,
the religion would be less capable of maintaining social cohesion leading to a
situation in which individuals would be likely to face increased threats. Once
the threats increased, however, both the need to imitate and the attractive-
ness of magical beliefs would also increase. This, in turn, would strengthen
the religious tradition. The overall effect would be for the tradition to be rein-
forced every time people’s faith weakened. With secular institutions rendering
the pro-social function of religion unnecessary, decreases in religious beliefs
no longer lead to social disorder so that the reinforcing effect of increased
perceived threat never comes into play. The result is that the religious beliefs
weaken without any counter-acting tendencies to stop that decay.
Considering the effect of a secure environment upon a religious CRED
tradition that is reinforced by magical beliefs allows us to understand two
characteristics of secularization revealed by Voas’s study that would otherwise
constitute significant problems for the model that is being put forward here.
The first issue arises due to the very different time scales examined by
Voas’s research and most of the research on the effect of perceived threat upon
supernatural beliefs. The research that ties perception of danger to increased
salience of supernatural beliefs appears to suggest that changes of this form
are highly volatile, dependent upon immediate conditions. Even taking into
account averaging over longer time periods and larger populations, this mis-
match creates something of a problem. The problem is that Voas find levels
of religiosity not changing for a given cohort as it ages, despite the overall
improvement in conditions that cohort would have experienced over its life-
time. This would suggest either of two things. Either that any correlation
between changes in the religiosity of adults and the conditions they find
themselves in currently must be relatively weak, or that conditions in Europe
have been stable enough in recent times not to significantly affect religiosity.
Furthermore, unless the trajectory of secularization Voas identifies can be
tied to an overall trajectory in the improvement in the conditions in socie-
ties undergoing secularization, it would seem that even the cohort to cohort
change in religiosity could not be traced to the differences in the conditions
those cohorts encountered during their development.
The relatively steady rate of decline in religiosity can be explained, how-
ever, if we think of religious traditions as CRED traditions. In that case,
secularization turns out to be caused in part by the removal of the support
provided by magical beliefs for CRED traditions. Without them, the effec-
tiveness of the CREDs is insufficient to maintain the tradition indefinitely
137
but it is enough to stop a precipitous decline, a slow steady decline being the
intermediate result.
The second question is what should be said about the fact that even priva-
tized religion appears to ultimately decline. Clearly, people’s continued sus-
ceptibility to supernatural beliefs is not necessarily enough for relatively high
levels of weak religious belief to be maintained indefinitely. The reason is that
the kind of supernatural beliefs that are primarily supported directly by the
cognitive by-products is much more likely to be the magical beliefs that con-
tend the existence of effects that people may believe they have evidence for.
Religious beliefs proper are too remote to be directly supported due to the
biased nature of the hyperactive agency detection device, for example. Any
belief in a supernatural being directly due to the functioning of the HADD
would concern a magical, rather than a religious, claim.
The explanation of the peculiarities of secularization presented here, which
has made use of the dual inheritance model of religion developed in this book
is undeniably speculative. Much further empirical work is necessary to deter-
mine to what degree the theory fits the facts. The aim in putting forward this
explanation has been twofold, therefore. The first was to show that thinking
of religions as magical ideologies gives us the theoretical tools necessary to
understand complex social phenomena such as secularization. The second was
to begin pinpointing the empirical issues that must be followed up in order
to test the hypothesis presented here.
Re-evaluating the Enlightenment
In Chapter 2 I presented a series of connected conceptions that for the sake of

brevity have been discussed here under the rubric of the Enlightenment view
of reason. These conceptions depicted reason as something like a fundamental
force that is in conflict with what the philosophes were wont to call “supersti-
tion” and which could perhaps be characterized as those supernatural beliefs
that they disapproved of.
The list was as follows:
• Reason and superstition are in conflict.

• Reason brings about human wellbeing, while superstition causes misery.
• Traditional religion is a form of superstition.
• Reason is an aspect of human nature that is separate from the physical.
• Reason and superstition are to be used to explain other entities or forces,
rather than to be explained in terms of other entities or forces.
• Reason is perfectible through the total elimination of superstition.
138
The view of reason and its relationship to supernatural beliefs and prac-
tices that has been developed in the preceding pages is radically different
in a number of respects. In others, however, there is substantial agreement
between this naturalist view and the view held by the philosophes. To make
clear the precise degree to which the two views differ, it is worthwhile revisit-
ing the list of conceptions that constitute the Enlightenment view of reason.
Doing so will reveal that in each case, the Enlightenment view managed to
capture one aspect of a more complex reality.
The first claim for us to consider is the claim that reason and superstition
are in conflict. This view finds its modern expression in the idea that religion
and science are incompatible – a view that finds both vehement supporters as
well as strident opponents. Richard Dawkins puts the incompatibilist posi-
tion as follows:
As a scientist, I am hostile to fundamentalist religion because it

actively debauches the scientific enterprise. It teaches us not to
change our minds, and not to want to know exciting things that
are available to be known. It subverts science and saps the intellect.
(Dawkins 2006: 284)
The compatibilist position is put forward by, among others, Francis Collins:
In this modern era of cosmology, evolution, and the human

genome, is there still the possibility of a richly satisfying harmony
between the scientific and spiritual worldviews? I answer with a
resounding yes! In my view, there is no conflict in being a rigorous
scientist and a person who believes in a God who takes a personal
interest in each one of us. Science’s domain is to explore nature.
God’s domain is in the spiritual world, a realm not possible to
explore with the tools and language of science. It must be exam-
ined with the heart, the mind, and the soul—and the mind must
find a way to embrace both realms. (Collins 2006: 5–6)
Quite typically, the two sides of the debate focus on quite distinct ways in
which science and religion might conflict, the incompatibilists being more
concerned with the normative issue and the compatibilists with the descrip-
tive question of whether humans can simultaneously hold religion and sci-
entific beliefs. In this, Dawkins and Collins are very much representative.
The account presented here suggests each of these views is partly right. The
overall picture to be drawn is hardly one that a compatibilist would find to
their liking, however. The compatibility of religion and science on the level of
139
individual beliefs is primarily due, it would seem, to the boundedly rational

nature of human cognition. Human minds can and do simultaneously con-
tain beliefs that are logically incompatible for the simple reason that we are
incapable of following through all of the logical implications of the things
we believe. Therefore, regardless of whether scientific and religious beliefs are
logically compatible, they are going to be psychologically compatible for at
least some people – which is clearly the case. Because humans are only bound-
edly rational, however, this compatibility does not really amount to much.
More importantly, however, thinking of science in terms of a set of beliefs is
naive. It is much more insightful to consider the relationship between science
and religion on the level of the attitudes each of them calls for, as well as on
the level of their social interaction. In both those cases the incompatibilist
argument is significantly stronger.
When it comes to the question of attitudes, the bone of contention can
be reduced to the issue of the relationship of science and religion to truth.
As was discussed, the function of religious beliefs is non-alethic, requiring
that religious beliefs be protected against potential counter-evidence in order
that they maintain their stability and functionality. In the case of science,
however, truth is the primary normative value. This does not mean someone
cannot be a good scientist and a good follower of a religion – thanks to the
limited rationality of human beings. But it does mean that their commit-
ments will conflict when brought into contact by circumstances and that the
conflict will not be merely one of differing ontologies but of contradictory
normative commitments concerning their attitude to truth. It may seem that
to some degree this conflict is assuaged by the need for the non-alethic func-
tion of religious beliefs to remain unnoticed. However, this only really means
that the conflict is all the more situated in the minds of the religious in that
they need to maintain the belief that there is adequate evidence for their
religious beliefs at the very same time as they also maintain practices ensur-
ing that these beliefs are held separate from any potential counter-evidence.
It is most likely, therefore, that these conflicting commitments will not be
revealed by what they say but how they act when the need to protect their
religious beliefs comes into conflict with the scientific commitment to unfet-
tered inquiry.
The discussion of secularization also casts light on the manner in which
science and religion may be understood as conflicting social practices. The
account proposed rejects the intellectualist view of secularization that religion
is being forced out by reason and science. However, since it is mainly thanks
to scientific progress that modern states are in the position to maintain long-
term high levels of security, it appears fair to claim that science undermines
religion through its effect upon the conditions in which people live.
140
Furthermore to these points it should be stressed that the relationship

between religion and rationality should not be merely thought of in terms of
opposition. While scientific and religious attitudes to truth are in profound
conflict, religious beliefs can be seen as rational from a pragmatic perspec-
tive – the only perspective that a properly naturalized, evolutionary account
can ultimately allow. If the view that religions had a pro-social function is
correct, it may well be necessary to acknowledge that repression of heretical
thought in earlier societies was necessary to maintain the stability of those
societies (which does not mean that we should view such practices with any
less abhorrence). Finally, despite what the oppositional account claims, super-
natural beliefs are not the negation of reasoning but, rather, a by-product of
the bounded reasoning capacities that we possess.
Many of the same kinds of considerations need to be brought to bear when
dealing with the question of whether reason brings about human wellbe-
ing, with supernatural beliefs being responsible for human misery. The most
basic point to make is that it definitely does seem to be the case that misery
causes supernatural beliefs. The effect of religion upon human wellbeing is
far less clear-cut, however. On the one hand, given its pro-social function,
religion must have greatly improved the lives of many people. On the other,
ingroup cooperation is all too often the flip side of sometimes bloody inter-
group conflict and competition, and this aspect of the social role of religion
deserves a lot more investigation than it has received here (see, for example,
Teehan 2010). Likewise, the effects of the application of what the philosophes
called reason have not been uniformly benign. Even so, it is thanks to sci-
entific advances that humans living in secularized societies get the benefit of
living life in largely secure and generally comfortable conditions, far beyond
the conditions that the pro-social function of religion was ever capable of
providing.
It is somewhat simpler to evaluate the idea that religion is a superstition.
To make the question tractable, we should think of the category in merely
descriptive rather than derogatory terms and understand the claim as hold-
ing that religious beliefs are closely connected to magical beliefs, including
superstitions. In that event, the idea is correct in so far as both religious and
magical beliefs are kinds of superempirical beliefs resulting from cognitive
biases and, since religions are magico-religious complexes, many of the beliefs
that constitute actual religions are magical in nature. This does not mean that
there is no distinction to be drawn between religious beliefs and superstitions,
however. In one case we are dealing with beliefs that have a pro-social func-
tion and which make claims that are largely incapable of investigation, in the
other we are dealing with non-functional claims that are significantly more
open to investigation, even if the mechanisms they postulate are not. The
141
c ognitive basis is much the same in both cases, the difference being that reli-
gious beliefs to a significant degree require magical beliefs to maintain their
stability and attractiveness while the opposite is not the case.
Vital to the analysis presented here has been the wholesale rejection of the
traditional view that reason must in some way be thought of as separate from
the physical world. Instead, human cognition, as well as the supernatural
beliefs and practices that are produced by it, have been examined as funda-
mentally biological phenomena. This has meant that evolutionary theory has
played a central role in our analysis and that all explanations that have been
offered have been in terms of physical mechanisms. These mechanisms have
been analysed at a variety of levels, of course. But science has long accepted
that an explanation does not need to be radically reductionist in order to be
naturalist. One aspect of a naturalist explanation of reason that has not really
been dealt with sufficiently is the normative side of the issue. To do it justice
would require a long analysis that would take us quite far from the main
issues that have been examined here. The position that has been assumed
throughout this book, however, is that the normative issues are just as sus-
ceptible to a naturalist account as the descriptive ones. What such an account
has to explain, at a minimum, is why people hold definite attitudes regard-
ing the normative questions. This is essentially no different than explaining
human attitudes in general – recent work on the argumentative account of
reason (Mercier & Sperber 2011) serving as one way to develop this topic.
Further to that, the account that I would seek to develop concerning the nor-
mative issue is one showing that normative epistemic claims can be explained
as hypothetical imperatives. The general relevance of the norms would be
shown by demonstrating that the aims that are presumed by the hypotheti-
cal imperatives are so general as to apply to all beings that have to maintain
their existence and that possess bounded rationality. The qualification in the
previous sentence has to be accepted independently as this is the only form
of reason that is possible given the argument regarding the nature of reason
presented in Chapter 2.
One of the more significant implications of approaching reason and reli-
gion from a wholly naturalist point of view is that neither can be treated as
a primitive explanatory category. A naturalist perspective does not allow that
level of independence to those kinds of phenomena. A weaker stance that
is compatible with a broadly naturalist perspective is that, even though not
primitive, these concepts are particularly useful when it comes to developing
detailed explanations. This, however, would require that religion and rea-
son be something like natural objects. Rather than engaging in discussing
this weaker but still controversial claim (Boyer 2010), a somewhat agnos-
tic stance was assumed in that the attempt was made to generally base the
142
a nalyses contained in this book at the level of the various mechanisms that
are involved in the spread as well as the retreat of traditions that have gener-
ally been referred to as religious. Part of the problem with talking of religion
in any theoretically deep way has been with making the sense of “supernatu-
ral” as anything more than an inadequate shorthand – as discussed when the
alternative term “superempirical” was introduced.
Having said that, it would seem to be too hasty to claim that the catego-
ries of religion and reason are of no theoretical interest. There is a world of
difference between how the Roman Catholic faith works as compared to any
tribal religion one could care to consider, of course. The analysis provided
here pointed to some of the relevant differences. However, the dual inherit-
ance account aimed to be of relevance to at least a significant subset of human
practices traditionally referred to as religions. If it is correct it manages to
explain the particular longevity of some religions and identifies a category of
human practices that is of some theoretical interest. While something less of
a focus has been placed upon questions regarding reason, a similar attitude
would be prima facie reasonable in that case.
The final question to consider is that of the perfectibility of reason and how
supernatural beliefs and practices would be affected by such a change. Given
that bounded rationality is the only game in town, as was argued back in
Chapter 2, perfect rationality is not achievable. At the same time, it is because
of the bounded nature of rationality that humans are unavoidably prone to
cognitive by-products, including supernatural beliefs. The Enlightenment
view need not be thought of in such all or nothing terms, however. It is pos-
sible to rephrase the question as one concerning the possibility of progress
rather than that of the possibility of achieving perfection.
The point that been made numerous times in this context is that the phi-
losophes were wrong to think that the development of scientific knowledge
and an increase in the level of education will eliminate supernatural beliefs.
Both on the individual and the social scale, the intellectualist thesis is in
poor shape. Secularization appears to have much more to do with general
conditions of life than with any intellectual considerations. Even so, science
and reason have acted to drive down belief; only the effect has been indirect
– with a lower level of perceived threat being the plausible intermediate vari-
able. The trajectory of secularization seems to suggest that institutionalized
religion might become eliminated. The same is less likely to be the case when
it comes to religious beliefs and supernatural beliefs in general. The changes
we have considered suggest such beliefs will become less common and less
strongly held. However, while the human cognitive system remains much as
it is today, it will still be subject to belief in the supernatural. The religious
beliefs might be in a somewhat weaker position than magical beliefs in that
143
for religious beliefs to hold much attraction an existing base of belief in magic
is probably necessary.
Having said this, when considering the future of secularization we are deal-
ing with the future of a process of cultural evolution and evolutionary proc-
esses are not predictable in anything but the short term. There is always the
possibility of new dynamics coming to the fore. One dynamic that is already
apparent and whose significance for the future is far from clear is the relative
fecundity of individuals living in religious rather than secular societies. This
may yet end up leading to a very different future, as would any worldwide
environmental disaster that would negatively impact the capacity for modern
societies to maintain the levels of security we have been enjoying – an out-
come that actually appears hard to avoid at this point.
The basic picture of the relationship between reason and the supernatural
that has been put forward here can be understood in terms of the metaphor
in Paul’s first letter to the Corinthians, quoted at the beginning of this book.
Rather than mirroring affairs that are somehow external to us, our super-
natural beliefs are a reflection of the particularities of the human cognitive
and cultural systems. Our view of the supernatural must therefore be only
indistinct, or we should easily recognize our own features in the religious and
magical beliefs and practices we find so compelling.
144
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152
Index
Aarnio, Kia 62 Bacon, Francis 16

Abbott, Kevin 81 Bainbridge, William 127
adaptation 6, 10–11, 16, 36–7, 99–103, Baraffe, Isabelle 49
121, 123–4 Barrett, Justin 55, 75, 85, 115
adaptedness 121 Beck, Jan 81, 104
adaptive 35, 78, 80–81, 86, 99, 101, 103, behaviour 7–15, 24–6, 32, 37, 40, 65–8,
120, 123–4 78–83, 90–92, 98–105, 113–24,
Aesop 109 131–6
agent 40, 42, 63, 66–7, 70–71, 79–80, 85 behavioural 19, 32–3, 100, 120–21
agnosticism 75, 100, 142 behaviourist 74, 81, 84
Alcorta, Candace 100 believers 2, 51, 60, 94
Alembert, Jean le Rond 17 Bem, Daryl 65
alembic 27 Bentley, Alex 116
alethic 2, 10, 98, 116–35 Berkeley, George 18
altruism 52 biology 25, 33, 38, 52, 123, 142
ancestral 25, 83, 99–102, 123–43 Blackmore, Sue 99
anchoring and adjustment 41 blasphemy 61
angels 17, 46, 118 blessed 64
animal 14, 17, 19, 25–8, 33, 53, 55, 83, blood 85, 135, 141
85, 122, 132 Bloom, Paul 19
animism 102 Bolshevik 111
anthropologists 3, 46, 61, 76 Boudry, Maarten 59
Anttonen, Veikko 5 bounded rationality 7, 25–6, 34–5, 37–40,
anxiety 9, 73, 77–8 42, 75, 104, 123, 140–43
apparition 118 Boyd, Richard 25, 101
arational 3–5 Boyer, Pascal 2, 8, 43–4, 47, 53–6, 61,
Armageddon 93 65–7, 142
Armstrong, Karen 52 Bressler, Eric 2, 100
astrology 77 Brown, Gillian 25
atheism 1, 17, 21, 102, 121 Brown, Harold 28, 30, 37
Athena 114 Bruce, Steve 124, 129–31, 133, 135
Atran, Scott 6, 54, 97 Brun, Georg 78
153
index
Bulbulia, Joseph 107 counter-intuitive 53–6, 63

byproduct 40, 55, 78, 102 Couvalis, George 29
CPSU 106
Callebaut, Werner 5 creationist 85
Campbell, Don 32 Creator 118
Candide 18 credence 22
capitalism 112 credibility-enhancing display 9, 75, 90–92,
Carnap, Rudolph 27 97, 117–18, 136–7
Case, Trevor 77–9, 81 Cruse, Pierre 78
Catholic 65, 117–29, 130, 135, 143 Csibra, Gergely 90
causal 67–8, 74–7, 81–3, 86–92, 97, cues 45, 66
117–18 cults 77
cemetery 91 Czech Republic 22, 102, 124
censorship 111
ceremony 62, 70 Damasio, Antonio 14, 78
Chewong 122 Dancy, Jonathan 51
Christ 52, 64, 93, 135 danger 9, 11, 66, 76, 83, 85, 111, 119–20,
Christian 17, 19, 52, 63, 93, 114, 118, 136–7
126 Darwin, Charles 20, 120, 133
Christmas 54 Darwinian 14, 20
church 11, 22, 60, 117–18, 126, 130–31 daughter 1
clairvoyance 133 Dawkins, Richard 99, 139
coevolution 101 de Sousa, Ronald 78
cognitive bias 7, 16, 27, 36–7, 40–42, 74, dead 24, 52, 63, 66, 113
82–6, 89, 97, 138, 141 death 1, 19, 52, 70, 94, 126
cognitive dissonance 92–3 Dein, Simon 93
coincidence 28, 87, 89, 92 deist 51, 98, 118, 136
Collins, Francis 139 deities 1, 5, 71
commitment 2–5, 39, 90, 124, 128, 140 democracy 11, 20, 22, 111, 124–6,
communication 109, 111, 115 131–3
communion 135 demon 31, 34, 36
communism 105–6, 111–14 Denmark 22, 102, 124
Communist Manifesto 105 Dennett, Dan 21, 82, 105, 109–11
community 53, 56, 60, 74, 89, 91 Descartes, Rene 17, 46
compatibilist 139 despotic 106
competition 99, 131, 141 destabilization 6–9, 45, 61, 68, 92–98,
Comte, Auguste 20, 24, 49–50 110, 113, 117–23, 134, 136
Condillac Étienne Bonnot 18 devotion 119, 128
conditioning 80–81, 84 Diamond, Jared 57
Condorcet, Nicholas 18 Diderot, Denis 17
constraints 7, 15–16, 33, 39, 44–5, 58, Dilthey, Wilhelm 15, 23–6
99, 132 disease 86, 122
contagion 9, 67, 75, 86 disproof 119, 122
cooperation 26, 99–100, 107–9, 121, 134, dissidents 111
141 divination 68, 91
coordination 107–8 divine 17
cosmology 139 dogma 111, 131, 135
counter-evidence 2, 110, 119 dryads 59
154
index
dualism 17–19 Felson, Richard 76

Durkheim, Émile 45, 60–61, 70, 111 Festinger, Leon 75, 92–3
feudal 112
economic 35, 42, 77, 102, 113, 126, 130, first-footing 67–8, 86
133 flag 61
Eden 52 flytrap 55–7, 88
education 16, 22–3, 39, 126–7, 143 folk 22, 56, 59, 67, 89, 133
efficacy 45, 64, 78–9, 94, 136 followers 93–4
Einstein, Albert 33 Forstmeier, Wolfgang 81
emotion 9, 13–14, 22, 66, 69–71, 74, 78, Foster, Kevin 81
118 France 126
empirical 2, 4–6, 8, 21–2, 32, 39, 44–61, Frederick, Shane 28, 41
73–6, 93–7, 112–19, 128, 134–8 freeloading 100
empiricist 17, 19, 30–31, 34 Freemasons 18
EMT 82–3 Frege, Gottlob 27
Engels, Friedrich 105–6 French
Enlightenment 1, 7–43, 47, 51, 76, 112, friend 88–9
123, 125, 138–9, 143 fundamentalist 139
epicycles 104–6, 110 funerals 63, 66
epistemic 6, 15, 29, 43, 45, 61–70, 97, fuzzy fidelity 128–9
115–23, 142
epistemology 5 Galef, Bennett 26
essence 86 Galinsky, Adam 76
ethology 26 Geertz, Armin 21
Eurobarometer 126 Geisteswissenschaften 23–4
Europe 14, 17, 22, 39, 57, 114–15, Genesis 52
124–9, 133–4, 137 genetic 2, 101, 116, 132
European social survey 134 genome 139
evangelists 118 Gentile 114
Evans, Dylan 78 Gergely, György 90
Evans, Jonathan 28 Germany 37, 77, 106, 115
Evans-Pritchard, Edward 61 germs 86
evil 21 Gervais, Will 115
evolve 6, 14, 25–6, 38, 73, 79, 83 ghost 46, 54, 59, 133
exaptation 62, 80 Gigerenzer, Gerd 28, 35, 37, 42
externalist 46 glasnost 111
Gmelch, George 76
fable 109 goal 26, 50, 63–6, 68–71, 107–9
factors 8, 10, 44–6, 56–8, 89, 112, God 11, 17–18, 63, 119, 139
116–18, 120, 130 gods 4, 64, 71, 103
faith 17, 93, 118–19, 137, 143 Goldstein, Daniel 35, 37
fallibilist 7 Goode, William 69
fallible 36, 38 Gould, Stephen Jay 51–2
falsehood 15, 109–11 government 127
falsifiable 68 group 8, 26, 46, 69–70, 78, 92–3,
fanaticism 16 99–108, 117–32
fascism 105–6 group level 100
Fatima 118 Guthrie, Stewart 2, 85–6
155
index
habit 7, 15, 30–31, 33, 89 inheritance 6, 10, 25, 62, 97, 101, 123–5,
HADD 85–6, 138 131, 133, 138, 143
Hansen, Ian 76 innovation 78, 101, 116, 119, 136
Haselton, Martie 82–3, 87 inquiry 30, 140
Hauser, Marc 97 institutionalized 126–8, 130, 132, 143
heaven 19, 66, 93, 115 institutions 11, 22, 56, 124–9, 143–4,
Heintz, Christophe 9, 75, 88–9 148–9
Heltzer, Ruth 81 intellectualist 20, 135, 140, 143
Hempel, Carl 48–9 intelligentsia 111
Henrich, Joe 6, 9, 75, 90–91, 97, 115, intercessory prayer 135
136 intergroup 141
heresy 130, 141 internalist 46
heuristic 7, 9, 15–16, 27–28, 34–42, 75, international 106
86 intuitions 54–5
Hinduism 114 intuitive 8, 19, 44, 47, 53–6, 61, 66, 75,
Hinn, Benny 118 88, 115
historiography 106 invisibility 54, 59–60, 93
history 14, 22, 24–5, 32, 49, 57, 82, 91, irrational 29
109, 111–14, 123, 126 irreligious 128–9
Hitler, Adolf 106
Holbach, Paul-Henri 17 Jahoda, Gustav 13
holy 59, 61 James, William 3
Homo economicus 27 Jensen, Jeppe 3
Hood, Bruce 13 Jesus 52, 61, 121
Hooker, Cliff 5 John Paul II 135
horoscopes 133 Jorgenson, Dale 77
Horvath, Robert 111–12
humanist 21 Kahneman, Daniel 27–8, 34, 40–42
Hume, David 1, 7, 15–16, 29–33, 35–9, Kant, Immanuel 23
43, 47, 84 Kay, Aaron 76
Humean 32, 84 Keinan, Giora 76
hyperactive agency detection device 9, 75, Killeen, Peter 81–2
85, 138 knowledge 1, 7, 30–37, 51, 54, 76, 78,
hypocrisy 121 89, 91, 104, 108, 110, 120, 133, 135,
hypothesis 81, 83, 85, 99–102, 105, 127, 139, 143
132, 135, 138 Kokko, Hanna 81
kosher 94
Iannaccone, Laurence 127 Kraljević, Svetozar 118
illusion 9, 21, 75, 81, 83, 87–92, 97, 105, Kuhn, Thomas 33
117–18, 128 Kuhnian 51
incarnations 114 Kula, Marcin 113–14
incompatibilist 139–40
induction 7, 15–16, 29–41, 84 lactose tolerance 57
inequality 126 Laland, Kevin 25–6
inference 9, 29–33, 38–9, 55, 66, 70, 75, Laplace, Pierre-Simon 31, 36
79, 88–9 LaPlacean 34–6
Inglehart, Ronald 124–6, 131, 135 Laurin, Kristin 76
ingroup 100, 105–6, 141 Leibniz, Gottfried 18
156
index
Lenin 112 minimally 8, 44, 53–5, 61, 75

Liénard, Pierre 65–7 miracle 29–30, 47, 87, 117–19, 130, 135
life 19–20, 24, 32, 34, 52, 70, 73, 101, misbelief 109
110, 121, 126–8, 134, 141, 143 misfortune 76–7, 122
lifeforms 25 modularity 84–5
lifespans 53 mundane 17, 45, 49, 63–73, 87–92, 103,
limit 6, 15, 44, 47–50, 52, 101 115, 117–18
Linda Problem 27 music 58
Lindeman, Marjaana 62 mysticism 77
literal 119–20 myth 35, 62, 110
London 104–5
Lubavitcher 94 national 22, 37, 39, 61, 113–14, 126
Lyons, Derek 67 nationalism 61, 98, 106, 114
naturalism 5–6, 11, 14–15, 19, 27–35,
magico-religious complex 48, 65, 94, 98, 39–40, 102, 120, 139–42
116, 134–5, 141 nature 17–20, 25, 29–41, 45, 52–3, 69,
magisterium 51–2 73, 91–2, 106, 113–14, 121, 126, 128,
maladaptive 9, 73, 80, 124 132, 138–43
Malinowski, Bronislaw 9, 61–5, 70, 73–4, Naturwissenschaften 24
76–7 Nazis 106
Manichean 18, 21 Nemeroff, Carol 67, 86
Marx 20, 105–6, 112 Nesse, Randolph 82
materialism 17, 19, 112 Nettle, Daniel 82–3, 87
maturationally natural 40–41 neurobiology 24
maximization 27–8, 42, 115 New Testament 52
McCauley, Robert 2, 40, 52, 55, 88 Newton, Isaac 33
McElreath, Richard 78 niches 26
McFarland, Sam 114 NOMA 51
McGuigan, Nicola 67 nonhuman 14, 85
McKay, Ryan 82, 105, 109–11 noninstrumental 69
mechanism 2–13, 24–5, 32, 41–5, 53–61, nonreligious 114–16, 121
73–86, 91, 103, 115, 128–43 nonsense 4
medium 33 Norenzayan, Ara 6, 76
Medjugorje 117, 119, 135 norm 5, 27, 39, 59, 142
Melton, Gordon 76, 93–4, 135 normative 14, 27–8, 40–41, 50–51, 79,
memories 30, 91–2, 109 89, 139–40, 142
mental 6–7, 17, 24, 28, 49, 58, 65, 73–79, Norris, Pippa 124–6, 131, 135
84–90, 99, 113
Mercier, Hugo 9, 75, 88–9, 142 observable 66, 118
Messiah 94 obsessive–compulsive disorder 66
metabolize 32, 124 Okasha, Samir 100
methodological 8, 25, 44–5, 59–60, 68, omnipresent 103
73, 110, 112, 115 omniscience 35
Mickey Mouse 44–6 Ono, Koichi 81
millenarian 94 ontological 15, 53–4, 60, 94, 104, 140
Millerites 93 opaque 65, 67, 87, 89
mind 8, 13–19, 27–30, 56, 80, 84, 101, operant conditioning 80–81
105, 110, 125, 129, 133–4, 139–40 optimal 35, 42, 115
157
index
organism 33, 37, 56, 77 prosocial 10, 102, 117, 123, 132
organs 125, 132 Protestant 118
Osiris 113 pseudoscience 22, 50–51
otherworldly 121 psychic 78–9
psychologism 27
Padgett, Vernon 77 Ptolemaic 104–5
Palmer, Craig 79 punen 122
paradigm 5, 8, 106 Putnam, Hilary 52
paramecium 32, 120 Pyysiäinen, Ilkke 5, 48, 62–4, 66, 69, 95,
parapsychologists 88 97
parasite 98–9, 101, 111
Pascal, Blaise 17–18 Quine, Willard V. O., 46, 84
patriotism 114
pattern-seeking 84 Randi, James 47, 94
Paul, Gregory 76, 132 rational 3–4, 13–20, 27–31, 37, 40, 42,
Peirce, Charles 27 94, 98, 104, 140–41
perfectible 18, 23, 138, 143 rationalist 17–18, 30–32
phone 88 rationality 3, 7, 14–20, 27–8, 31–42, 51,
physicalism 49–50 75, 123, 140–43
physiological 57–8, 62, 98 realism 10, 29, 33, 98–9, 104, 119–21
pigeons 80–82, 133 reasonable 2–3, 5, 29, 32, 42, 84, 143
pilgrimage 117, 119 reasoners 13–14
Pinker, Steven 58 reasoning 4, 7, 14–44, 50, 55, 70, 88, 123,
pixies 64 141
Plantinga, Alvin 5, 120 reductionist 142
pluralism 3, 6, 101 Rees, Tom 76
Poland 57, 65, 113 Reformation 118
political 105, 113–14, 126 reincarnation 133
Popper, Karl 29, 58 relic 61
popularity 16, 18, 40, 98, 114, 135 religiosity 118, 124, 126–29, 132, 134,
population 121, 128, 132–3 137
populist 100 Rescher, Nicholas 50–51
positivism 24, 27, 58 resurrection 52
potion 70 Richerson, Peter 25, 101
pragmatic 5, 32, 104, 119–20, 141 rights 106–7, 111
prayer 63, 118, 127, 135 rite 62, 66
predictions 15, 21, 30, 82, 91–2, 94 ritual 66–7, 69–71, 76, 90–91, 94–5, 117
presence 59, 85, 90, 98, 103 ritualization 8, 45, 65, 67
priest 64 Roman Catholic 117–19, 130, 143
Pritchard, Duncan 61 Roud, Steve 22, 64, 68, 91, 116, 133
privatized religion 127–30, 133, 138 Rousseau, Jean-Jacques 107
procession 110 Rozin, Paul 67, 75, 86
profane 60 Ruffle, Bradley 100
progress 7, 14, 20–24, 33, 44, 50, 113, Russia 106, 112
126, 130, 135, 140, 143
progressivism 20, 24, 112 sacred 45, 60–61, 111–12
proletariat 106, 112, 115 sacrifice 64, 106
prophecies 75, 92–4, 112, 135 saints 135
158
index
salience 137 Stich, Stephen 120

Salmon, Michael 33 suggestible 34
salvation 64 superempirical 8, 10, 43–76, 94–8, 103,
Santa Claus 54 111–17, 122, 134, 141, 143
Santiago de Compostela 135 supplication 69–71
satisfice 35, 37, 42 Svedholm, Annika 62
Scandinavia 121, 126 Sweden 124
sceptic 7, 18, 21, 29–33, 38, 47 Sørensen, Jesper 65, 115
scissors 37
séances 54 taboos 61
secular 10, 22, 102, 124, 126, 128, 131–4, tabula rasa 34
136–7, 141, 144 talisman 63
secularization 10–11, 22–3, 144–6, Teehan, John 141
129–32, 134–8, 140, 143–4 telepathic 88
Shariff, Azim 71, 97 telepathy 49
Sheldrake, Rupert 88 temple 61
Sherratt, Tom 81 testable 93–4
shrine 135 theist 1
Shroud of Turin 61 theology 2, 52–3, 100
signalling 91 Timberlake, William 81
Simmelhag, Virginia 81 Tinbergen, Niko 25, 131
Simon, Herbert 15, 28, 34–5, 37–8, 41 Todd, Peter 35
Simoons, Frederick 57 Tomasello, Michael 26
sin 63–4, 70, 95 tortoises 32–3
Skinner, B. F., 74, 80–83 trait 14, 25, 38, 42, 54–5, 99–102, 123–43
Skyrms, Brian 107–8 Trobriand Islands 65
Slone, Jason 5 truth 2, 5–6, 10, 60, 79, 93, 98, 103–5,
Smart, Pamela 88 108–21, 136, 140–41
Sober, Elliott 52 Tversky, Amos 27–8, 41–2
sociality 100
society 21, 39, 56–63, 69, 75, 89–90, unfalsifiable 94
100–01, 112, 121, 125–6, 130–31 unicorns 59
Socrates 16 uninvestigable 45, 51, 59–60
Sosis, Richard 2, 97, 100, 113 utopian 20, 106, 112
soul 19, 139
Soviet Union 106 Vedic 114
spectroscopic 49 Venus 55–7, 88
Spencer, Herbert 20, 24–5 vestigial trait 132
Sperber, Dan 142 Virgin Mary 117
spiritual 51, 54, 93–4, 122, 129, 139 Vishnu 113
spiritualization 76, 93, 135 visions 20, 117
Staddon, John 81 Voas, David 124, 126–34, 137
stag hunt 107–9 Voltaire 16–18, 76
Stalin 106 Vyse, Stuart 13, 23, 74, 79, 81–3, 87
Stanovich, Keith 28, 42
Stark, Rodney 127 wands 46
Steadman, Lyle 79 Warsaw Bloc 111, 113
Sterelny, Kim Weinberg, Steven 21
159
index
West, Richard 28, 42 World Values Survey 126

West, Stuart 100 worship 114
Whitehouse, Harvey 115
Whiten, Andrew 67 Yahweh 113
Whitson, Jennifer 76
Wilson, David Sloan 2, 10, 52, 97–103, Zahavi, Amotz 91
113–14, 119–22 Zeus 113
Wimsatt, Bill 28, 35–8, 42 Zuo, Jiping 114
Witherington, Blair 33 Zygmunt, Joseph 93–4
160

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religion as magical ideology

Religion, Cognition and Culture

Series Editors: Jeppe Sinding Jensen and

This series is based on a broadly conceived cognitive science of religion. It

The Burning Saints: Cognition and Culture

Past Minds: Studies in Cognitive Historiography

Religion as Magical Ideology: How the Supernatural

Religious Narrative, Cognition and Culture:

Mental Culture: Towards a Cognitive Science of Religion

Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture

This book is copyright under the Berne Convention.

First published in 2013 by Acumen

Acumen Publishing Limited

ISD, 70 Enterprise Drive

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

Designed and typeset in Adobe Garamond Pro by JS Typesetting Ltd.

Even Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some

4. Magic as cognitive by-product 73

5. Religion as magical ideology 97

6. Religion as ancestral trait 123

Unavoidably, the author’s name as it appears on the front of any scientific

underpinned by cognitive mechanisms, shaped by genetic as well as cultural

Varieties of religious research

Within the academic context, human religious commitments have tradition-

most reasonable. The other way of thinking about religious commitments

focus is on why it is that people have deemed it reasonable to believe in a

Chapter 2 sets up the ground by elucidating an account of reason that

Chapter 4 focuses on the magical beliefs and practices, exploring how

Chapter 5 develops the discussion of religious beliefs and practices, look-

with significant support. The explanation of secularization turns on the fact

In his Philosophical Dictionary, Voltaire asks whether there may be a place

As is often the case, especially when it comes to broad, pejorative terms,

Man is only a reed, the weakest in nature; but he is a thinking

• Reason and superstition are in conflict.

Perhaps no Enlightenment philosopher believed in all of these claims simulta-

connected and influential since the Enlightenment. I will therefore refer to

We are dualists who have two ways of looking at the world: in

phenomena the philosophes would have recognized as superstition have not

The relationship between Wilhelm Dilthey’s position concerning the sta-

• What is the mechanism underlying the trait?

It is hardly surprising that philosophical positivism also inherited aspects of

On the classical model of rationality, reasons are provided by the

We may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of

The limited scope of the theories is mirrored on the level of scientific

We have sketched some of the basic consequences of taking the natural-

significance for a bottom-up view of rationality. According to Wimsatt, heu-

• Fallible – even when used properly, heuristics do not guarantee that

just another way of thinking about adaptations, it is hardly surprising

as it is because of their modest aims that heuristics succeed where idealized

Heuristics and by-products

supernatural beliefs as a by-product of the normal functioning of human cog-

beliefs, such beliefs must be largely the by-products of such maturationally

tends to think of heuristics as necessarily very, very simple. However, if we

overtly present in the cognitive science of religion literature. The point, as

tools available for investigating the belief ). In the case of religious/magical

Science and the supernatural

1. Significantly, the explanandum in such cases is taken to be the seemingly miraculous

dilemma (Hempel 1969). The dilemma originally applied to physicalism,

version of Hempel’s dilemma. Furthermore, tying the limits of the supernatu-

The inherent unpredictability of its internal changes is an ineradica-

Immediately we can see the previously mentioned difficulties arising in the

that process of making sense of things inevitably involves appeals to

2. Boyer, similarly to a number of other researchers working in the cognitive science of

rocession of now-falsified but once-dominant theories, including luminif-

make it possible for them to be chosen on a basis that is connected to their