71102.pdf

FUNDAMENTALISM AND THE PRICE OF DEFECTION In the most diverse traditions (American Christianity, Islam, Hin- duism and even more ...

extreme form of religious persuasion, this would not tell us anything about the reasons why some people in some circumstances ar ...

We can get a better sense of fundamentalist reaction if we describe more precisely what is so scandalous about modern influence ...

others. That is, it sends a powerful and memorable signal that defection is very costly. This is perceived intuitively as one wa ...

Fourth, the main target of many fundamentalist movements is often a localform of modernized religion. This is quite obvious in A ...

9 WHY BELIEF? Some Fang people say that witches have an animal- like, extra internal organ that flies away at night and ruins ot ...

now? I think we are, but the explanation is nota quick, shoot-from-the hip solution of the kind that many people, either religio ...

cannot be true. So let us see why what I called aggregate relevance is such an important feature. ACCOMMODATING AIRY NOTHING: A ...

are not material, they are somehow "like the wind," and also that they have left their body. The ghosts are described as general ...

False consensus effect: This is the converse effect, whereby people tend wrongly to judge that their own impressions are shared ...

shameful action and the ancestors' disapproval (potential false consen- sus); some of her representations about ancestors are se ...

different functions or organs: One of them is the Representations' Attorney and the other one is the Belief-Judge. The Attorney ...

two-dimensional information on the retina into a possible three- dimensional representation; another evaluates the respective di ...

grasping them. And so on. In many situations our intuitive systems produce precise inferences (about the meaning of a sentence, ...

lot of evidence that people spontaneously adjust their behavior with- out having the explicit beliefs that would justify the cha ...

The crucial point is this: All inferences delivered by specific sys- tems are compatiblewith an explicit interpretation like "Th ...

contact with gods—while the majority are content to perform the rit- uals as prescribed and hope they will work as expected. For ...

assumption creeps in, seemingly so obvious that it goes unnoticed) it would be even better if the religious thoughts in question ...

ter at it; training can make them very good. Indeed, there are archery and darts champions whose capacities are quite impressive ...

that of prophets and other virtuosos, by considering how it is derived from ordinary cognitive capacities. As I have pointed out ...