Pascal Boyer

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Pascal Boyer (fl. c. 2000) is an anthropologist who advocates the idea that human instincts provide us with the basis for an intuitive theory of mind that guides our social relations, morality, and predilections toward religious beliefs. Boyer and others propose that these innate mental systems make human beings predisposed to certain cultural elements such as belief in supernatural beings.

Pascal Boyer was a student of philosophy and anthropology and has held teaching and research positions at several universities. He is as of 2004 at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

[edit] Books

  • The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion (1994) Berkeley: University of California Press.
  • Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (2002) Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-00696-5.

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