[Yahwe]

Originally Posted by Nodrog

Talking about 'religious' experiences and the 'supernatural' is a crazy oversimplification, because it fails to distinguish between relatively naturalistic beliefs (eg Greek religion, witches), and beliefs which are irreducibly supernatural (Christianity, souls, etc). Theres no good apriori reason to believe that Greek religion and Christianity share a common psychological cause, given that pretty much everything about them from the metaphysics to the ethics is diametrically opposed. The mindset that leads a person to Christianity is very different from the mindset that would lead a person to traditional Norse beliefs, and talking about 'religion' in general tends to mask these huge contrasts. The idea of religion being universal strikes me as terribly confused.

The article largely seems to be the usual evo-psych 'far-reaching conclusions with very little directly relevant evidence, and no attempt whatsoever to control for cultural-specific variables' gimmick (the part about 'attributing agency to moving shapes' is particularly blatent - did they also perform this experiment on people who came from a culture whose language/folk-psychology placed less emphasis on individual agency and free-will? If not, what is the justification for postulating a hard-wired cause?)