Review: The Fundamentalist Mindset: Psychological Perspectives on Religion, Violence and History (original) (raw)

This slim volume is a surprising publication, not so much in the contents (Pascal Boyer's contributions to the Cognitive Science of Religion being well known), as in the context it stems from: a series of talks given in Germany in 2008 as the 'Templeton Research Lectures'. This is an interesting occurrence, as anyone familiar with Pascal Boyer's previous work will know. The Templeton Foundation seeks to further the so-called 'Constructive Engagement of Science and Religion', and Boyer certainly does not do that, as this volume amply demonstrates. Boyer says in an introductory 'cautionary note' that the lectures were 'delivered in the form of sermons' with very little on how the Cognitive Science of Religion has come to know what it does (p. 5). Instead, he takes current results and explores some questions that ensue: 'Can there be a free civil society with religions? Does it make sense to talk about religious experience? Do religions make people better? I encourage readers who find some of these statements odd or implausible (and the study of religion is replete with surprises) to have a look at the studies mentioned in the notes' (p. 5). For the reader not familiar with Pascal Boyer's truly groundbreaking work, this text is a good place to start. Boyer was given the opportunity to present the insights from his work to a different audience and his suggestions are as provocative as ever. He takes on some of the usual (if not trivial) conjectures about religion and twists them, turns them upside down or downright disposes of them on the heap of conceptual rubbish of yore. The title alone indicated this; where Sigmund Freud talked about religion in the 'Future of an Illusion', Boyer is more radical in 'The Fracture of an Illusion'a fracture that may (or must) even lead to 'The Dissolution of Religion'. His arguments are presented in five relatively short chapters that deal with questions such as: 'Is there such a thing as religion?', 'What is natural in religions?', 'Do religions make people better?', and 'Is there a religious experience?' The final chapter bears the title: 'Are religions against reason and freedom?' Here, Boyer is clearly a normatively concerned intellectual, as well as a brilliant scientist. He was originally trained as an anthropologist, and he remains true to the maxim of Edward Burnett Tylor that Anthropology is not only the science of culture but also a 'reformer's science'. So, Boyer is apologeticbut against religion and for reason, freedom, and science, so here he seizes the occasion to propagate an instantly recognizable French intellectual tradition. In the book, he does not want to make the case that religious ideas are created by human minds because this