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Print Price: $28.95

Format:
Paperback
388 pp.
45 halftones, 4 line illus., 234 mm x 155 mm

ISBN-13:
9780195178036

Publication date:
November 2004

Imprint: OUP US

In Gods We Trust

The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion

Scott Atran

Series : Evolution and Cognition Series

This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.

Readership : Enormous interdisciplinary scope: will interest evolutionary, cognitive, and developmental psychologists; neuropsychologists; cultural and physical anthropologists; evolutionary biologists and primatologists; philosophers of religion, science, and mind; religious scholars and comparative historians; and those interested in the origins, scope, and limits of religious belief, practice, and experience.

Reviews

"So how, [Atran] asks, is it that religious beliefs and practices are manifest, anywhere there are people, past or present? How could evolution have favoured wasteful investment in preposterous beliefs? ... Quite a project. He relies on a combination of the most recent human sciences. ... One of his exceptional talents is in weaving together a vast number of strands that most of us keep asunder."--Ian Hacking, London Review of Books
"It is one thing to ascribe the ubiquity of religious systems to their emotional, intellectual, social and survival consequences, but such explanations apply also to many other aspects of human social systems. They do not account for religious commitment to factually impossible and counter-intuitive worlds. How can it be that human minds, evolved to cope with the real world, can hold beliefs that are patently improbable? Scott Atran, who has wide experience as a cognitive psychologist, field anthropologist and philosopher, focuses on the properties of the human mind and human needs that lead to religion's appeal. Thereby he takes much further previous explanations of how religious systems make the acceptance of improbable entities possible... [His] approach must be incorporated into all future studies of the genesis of religious systems."--Robert Hinde, The Online Journal for Philosophy of Religion
"In Gods we Trust is a marvelous work on the evolution of religions."--Michael Shermer, E- Skeptic Newsletter
"Atran's work is a brilliant exposition of the evolutionary by-product interpretation [of religion] as well as a mine of references for empirical research into the psychology of religion."--Pascal Boyer, Current Anthropology
"With almost 1000 references and discussions of most of human history and culture, from Neanderthal burials to suicide-bombers in the Palestinian anti-colonialist struggle, this book is consciously and truly encyclopedic in scope, and shows both breadth and depth of scholarship...the reader finds himself constantly challenged and provoked into an intellectual ping-pong game as he follows the arguments and the huge body of findings marshaled to buttress them...Atran managed to combine the old and the new by relating the automatic cognitive operations to existential anxieties. This combination will be a benchmark and a challenge to students of religion in all disciplines."--Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Human Nature Review
"In Gods We Trust is by far the best exploration so far of the evolutionary basis of religious behavior."--James Fox, Prof of Anthropology, Stanford University
"I have little but praise for this marvelous book...It does not take long to realize that one is dealing with a formidable mind; Atran is not only a fine writer, his breadth of knowledge and intellectual depth are nothing short of inspiring. This book is one to read slowly and savor. Keep a post-it pad handy, to mark the pages: the scope of this book is so wide-ranging that whatever your research interest in evolutionary psychology, it is bound to be touched upon at some point in these 400 pages of informative analysis."--David Livingstone Smith, Human Nature Review

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Scott Atran is a Director of Research at the Institut Jean Nicod at the Centre National de Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in Paris. He is also Adjunct Professor of Anthropology, Psychology, and Natural Resources and the Environment at the Institute for Social Research at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. A respected cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, his publications include Fondement de l'histoire naturelle, Cognitive Foundations of Natural History: Towards an Anthropology of Science, and Folk Biology. He has done long-term fieldwork in the Middle East and has also written and experimented extensively on the ways scientists and ordinary people categorize and reason about nature. He currently directs an international, multidisciplinary project on the natural history of the Lowland Maya.

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Special Features

Scott Atran is an anthropologist, psychologist, and senior research scientist of international repute
The breathtaking scope of this work will appeal to a wide range of academics, but is also accessible to non-specialists
The hardback received tremendous publicity: it sold over 2,000 copies and there were discussions of In Gods We Trust in Reuters (World Service, Maggie Fox); in Discover Magazine (Atran was interviewed by Jody Glausiuz); on CNN Television with Renay San Miguel; on FOX News Television with Tony Snow, 28 September 2003; on BBC Radio News Hour