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Pascal Boyer (fl. c. 2000) is a french 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.

Boyer has conducted long term ethnographic fieldwork in Africa, where he studied the transmission of oral epics, and has held teaching and research positions at several universities. He is currently Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.

See also

• Evolutionary origin of religions
• Evolutionary epistemology
• Evolutionary psychology
• Faith and rationality
• Relationship between religion and science
• Cognitive science of religion
• Evolutionary psychology of religion

Notes and references

Books

• Tradition as Truth and Communication (1992) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• 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. Translated into Greek as Και ο Άνθωπος Έπλασε τους Θεούς, by Dimitris Xygalatas and Nikolas Roubekas (ISBN 9789602882252). Translated into Polish as "I człowiek stworzył bogów... Jak powstała religia?" (ISBN 83-7337-985-1).

External links

• Official home page
• Faculty page at Washington University

Notes