Rating: 
Summary: Religion Incompletely Explained
Review: While the title of this work promises (or at least did to me) an exploration of various religious dogma or comparative religion, the author gives us instead a general critique of religious concepts. Boyer traces religious concepts to systems of mental activity based on human social orientation. in Boyer's view, we develop "templates" for understanding phenomena. Templates lead us to interpret human nature and human reactions based on our social nature and observations of others and their interactions. We then extrapolate from these templates to conceive of the spirits of dead ancestors and supernatural beings with human attributes (e.g.. hunger and jealousy) and reactions (e.g.. anger, gratitude and willingness to reward desired behavior). This cogent work appears to authenticate the atheistic viewpoint, but I think the devout reader will retain his or her faith. And rightly so. For no religious dogma is refuted by Boyer's thesis. The existence of the Judeo-Christian God is plausible regardless of how humans developed the concept and how hit-and-miss our reasoning has been, just as the existence of a man named Fred living in Pittsburgh is plausible regardless of how I came to believe he is there. The existence of harmful spirits today is as implausible as the existence of harmful microbes was several hundred years ago. Three beings in one (the Christian trinity) is as implausible as the equivalence of matter and energy. If the template theory of human reasoning invalidates conclusions, scientific findings are invalid because scientific reasoning, despite Boyer's denial, follows templates itself. The scientist, for example, follows a scientific template to disbelieve that which he cannot prove by scientific methods. Boyer attributes altruism, perhaps religion's greatest contribution to humanity, to simple self interest. By altruistic acts we seek the cooperation of others. This, of course seems reasonable. I'm not sure it explains our tendency to help a complete stranger in a disabled automobile on a forsaken road the middle of the night, or the tendency of anthropologists to write books to enlighten the ignorant. Boyer may be right, but many will find his proof lacking. Some apparent ignorance of Judaism displayed in this work does not to detract from its message. Boyer, for instance, finds "no description of why" a mixture of meat and milk is ritually impure (p.133)*. Torah's commandment against boiling a kid in its mother's milk, whatever one thinks of it, is sufficient description for the observant Jew. The plural of mitzvah (commandment) is mitzvot not "mitzvoth." (p.280) Boyer's thesis can withstand these discrepancies. * Page references are to the hardback edition Merwyn R. Markel
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