Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion 1st Edition

Wish I could have read my own review of this book before I bought it. Tremlin does have a couple of important things to say, but they could have been said in ten or twelve pages. If you can grasp the following, you probably don't need to read this: humans have evolved as social animals, therefore we are highly skilled at figuring out what others are thinking--so good, in fact, that we tend to imagine that non-human entities of various kinds (from Mickey Mouse to a haunted house) are also busily engaged in motivated thought. We humans are also highly skilled at figuring out which objects in the world are "agents" (active causes of effects)--so good, that we tend to look for the "agents" behind events which in fact don't have direct causes. Put those two together, and you have what Tremlin claims to be the basis for religious cognition. Useful and probably valid information--but, the writing here is so very labored and is so filled with unnecessary exemplars that the pace is slowed to an agonizing crawl. The book also contains too many generalizations--the author downplays "personality types" and differing cognitive modalities, evidently finding it irresistibly convenient simply to lump us all together. Finally, the author defines a number of things in ways that I simply don't recognize. "Art," for instance, is defined here as an organized system. And death, according to Tremlin, is something we humans understand intuitively.

Tremlin gives us an outstanding book that looks to the mental machinery of homo sapiens in order to find where indeed God and his spiritual brethren live. In excellent fashion, the book introduces the reader to an up-to-date account of the evolutionary origins of the human mind and offers convincing speculation grounded in the evidence that there is of the selective pressures that produced such a wonder that sits atop our spinal column.

A key insight given to the reader is that agents (namely other people) were one of the most, if not certainly the most important aspects of our evolutionary environment. Detecting other agents (which also includes animals) and being attuned to clues that often signal them drove our mind to evolve the ADD or agency detection device. Every time that you hear an unfamiliar creak in the middle of the night and your mind seriously entertains the notion that it was a burglar's step and not temperature contraction among the boards, you know you have a working ADD. Every time a hunter sees a leaf move and raises a rifle, you know they have a working ADD.

Tremlin goes on to persuasively argue that the ADD is one of the most crucial aspects for building a mind capable of seriously entertaining and believing in the notion of supernatural beings. Why did you have that car accident immediately following entertaining thoughts of cheating on your spouse? There must have been an agent involved who knew your impure thoughts and became displeased with you! And this agent must have special powers to interrupt normal physical causality with psychological causality!

But detecting and entertaining the notions of agents that probably aren't really there doesn't give us God or Apollo or Thor. Indeed, that takes another special human thought process, our theory of mind or what Tremlin dubs the ToMM - Theory of Mind Mechanism. The ToMM evolved as a specialization of our hyper-social species because whether hypothesizing about what is going on in the mind of the salesman you are wrangling with or with an enemy who is saying peace but who has eyes that say War! - a working theory of mind is of particular survival value. Building upon the evidence for ADD, Tremlin argues successfully that all the various god concepts are a combination of detecting an agent and then theorizing about what is going on in their head.

Adding nuance to his argument, the author then expounds how just any old god concept doesn't entrance the mind. Drawing much from Pascal Boyer's work on counter-intuitiveness, Tremlin synthesizes a growing consensus in the field of cognitive science that minimally counter-intuitive (MCI) concepts are most memorable and relevant. A god that eats spaghetti with a water-hose, drinks dirt, and exists only on every third Thursday won't last long in the minds of humans. He would be too outlandish, or put in the more technical language, he wouldn't achieve a cognitive optimum. On the other side of the coin, a god that is normal except for having the ability to make magic rocks won't make it either; he'd be too mundane. The most cognitively optimal concepts for gods, Tremlin argues, are the ones that utilize the human template and violate it in a strategically important way, such as having access to juicy tidbits (omniscience) like knowing if Brother John got a DUI when he was in Cleveland. Socially strategic information is very important to people (as it tells us who will be good cooperators and who won't be) and therefore it is a prerequisite for any gods who wish to be believed in.

God also has to be practical. And as Tremlin mentions repeatedly, abstract notions of gods that are often entertained by theologians and philosophers don't have many believers. What good is it to believe in a god that is merely the first cause of the universe? If he can't help you with your life, he isn't of much use. A god such as that also doesn't activate our mental templates that generate inferences. This is why theologians who decry anthropomorphic conceptions of god will never make much headway with the congregation. Worshippers may lose the answer of "god is man in the clouds" when asked about the notion, but more often than not, in their "on-line" thinking, such a notion will be utilized. Tremlin cites the experiments conducted by Justin Barrett to back this up.

These things being said, there are some glaring omissions in the book. Death and afterlife beliefs are only summarily dealt with, the notion of sanctification (blessing or cleansing) wasn't covered in depth, and a discussion of the cognitive phenomenon of "essences" such as "sin" in religion was nearly absent (although it was covered in its ontological iteration).

However, despite the omissions, this is still one of the best books available on the topic and the aspects of religion that Tremlin elucidates with power easily outweigh what he leaves out. Students of religion and anyone interested in a grounded psychological explanation of religion will not want to miss this. And, as Tremlin says in the conclusion, a cognitive-scientific explanation of religion isn't about explaining it away (although certain people will still see it that way). It is rather about garnering a deeper understanding of this human phenomenon we call religion and what it can tell us about ourselves.

I found Tremlin's articulation of the cognitive theory of religion (that religion is the byproduct of other cognitive evolutionary adaptations) to be very concise and very readable. He presents it in logical order and without cluttering his argument (as Atran does) by trying include a crash course on evolution in general. Tremlin avoids the tangents, and he also avoids judgements on religion itself.

Tremlin focuses primarily on one argument - that our propensity to believe in supernatural beings is the byproduct of two evolutionary adaptations in the brain: a hyperactive Agency Detection Device (adapted to detect the presence of agents, especially predators, hidden in our ancestral environment) coupled with a very complex Theory of Mind Module (our cognitive ability to form a theory of what another person or agent knows, thinks, or intends). According to Tremlin, we are thus prone to ascribe agency even where it does not exist, and, having done so, we create a theory of mind for these unseen agents.

Tremlin also explains why some god-concepts are more successful (more likely to catch on) than others. His discussion of successful supernatural agents as "minimally counter-intuitive) is especially helpful.

One area where Tremlin may find criticism is his rather narrow definition of religion as "belief in supernatural beings." This alone will bring challenge from many in the academic study of religion, but for those who object to this definition, let us say then that Tremlin is addressing merely this aspect of religion, which his indeed pervasive.

My own criticism of this work is that Tremlin's argument that we are interested in these supernatural agents because they have access to strategic social information is unconvincing, and does not come close to explaining the sort of awe and dread with which human beings have tended to approach the divine. My own "folk theology" would imagine that we are attracted to gods because of what we believe they can do for us (or to us) rather than because of what they know about whom.

But as an introduction to the field of the cognitive study of religion, this is a very helpful text exactly because it is so concise and focused. It is definitely remaining on my shelf next to Atran and Boyer.