Mickey Mouse Problem
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The evolutionary theory of religion developed by Pascal Boyer, Scott Atran and others differs from previous attempts to explain why religion exists in that it does not assign certain "essential" characteristics to religion but uses an evolutionary landscape of ideas instead. These authors ask under what conditions an idea or a complex of ideas has the propensity to impress people and to spread within a human population.
The answer offered by evolutionary psychology is as follows: People have certain intuitive beliefs about the physical world, about plants and animals and about other people; these intuitive beliefs are called "folk physics", "folk biology", "folk psychology". These folk beliefs act as inference mechanisms - we use them to make predictions about what physical objects, plants, animals and people will do. According to Atran[1] and Boyer[2], a certain supernatural belief has the propensity of impressing people and spreading only if it alters the format of the folk beliefs just slightly. If a certain story departs too far away from the format of folk beliefs, other people find it difficult to believe it or even to remember it. It turns out that, as far as the anthropologists have studied insofar and Boyer and Atran have reported in their books, all religious stories from all cultures can be understood as based on slight departures from the folk beliefs.
Within this evolutionary conceptual framework, the following problem (the Mickey Mouse problem) appears: Non-religious fantastic stories and characters, such as Mickey Mouse, are also successful in impressing people's minds and successful in being remembered via the exact same psychological mechanism as the religious beliefs. For example the original Mickey Mouse (a talking mouse) is more successful than Mighty Mouse (a talking flying mouse super hero) because the original fictional character departs from folk biology only slighter. But if the psychological mechanism responsible for their spreading is the same, what is then the difference between religious stories and fantastic non-religious stories? Moreover, why are religious beliefs so often associated with very strong commitments? Nobody would give his life for Mickey Mouse, but thousands would for Jesus Christ.
The solution to this problem probably involves the fact that the content of religious stories often deals with important events such as death, while the subject of non-religious stories is usually much more trivial.[3]
[edit] References
- ^ Scott Atran, In Gods We Trust, Oxford University Press, USA; New Ed edition (November 12, 2004)
- ^ Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained, Vintage; New Ed edition (November 7, 2002)
- ^ NeuroTheology, University Press, California ISBN: 0971644586, Chapter 10, Scott Atran, The Neuropychology of Religion
