on the right hand side of a particular rock. But if I use a goat of a dif-
ferent color or another rock, it will not work at all.You may be tempted to dismiss these vignettes as just so many exam-
ples of the rich tapestry of human folly. Or perhaps you think that
these illustrations, however succinct (one could fill volumes with such
accounts), bear witness to an admirable human capacity to compre-
hend life and the universe. Both reactions leave questions unan-
swered. Why do people have such thoughts? What prompts them to
do such things? Why do they have such different beliefs? Why are
[2] they so strongly committed to them? These questions used to be mys-
teries(we did not even know how to proceed) and are now becoming
problems(we have some idea of a possible solution), to use Noam
Chomsky's distinction. Indeed, we actually have the first elements of
that solution. In case this sounds hubristic or self-aggrandizing, let
me add immediately that this "we" really refers to a community of
people. It is not an insidious way of suggesting that I have a new the-
ory and find it of universal significance. In the rest of this book I
mention a number of findings and models in cognitive psychology,
anthropology, linguistics and evolutionary biology. All of these were
discovered by other people, most of whom did not work on religion
and had no idea that their findings could help explain religion. This is
why, although bookshelves may be overflowing with treatises on reli-
gion, histories of religion, religious people's accounts of their ideas,
and so on, it makes sense to add to this and show how the intractable
mystery that was religion is now just another set of difficult but man-
ageable problems.GIVING AIRY NOTHING A LOCAL HABITATION
The explanation for religious beliefs and behaviors is to be found in
the way all human minds work. I really mean all human minds, not
just the minds of religious people or of some of them. I am talking
about human minds, because what matters here are properties of
minds that are found in all members of our species with normal brains.
The discoveries I will mention here are about the ways minds in gen-
eral (men's or women's, British or Brazilian, young or old) function.
This may seem a rather strange point of departure if we want to
explain something as diverse as religion. Beliefs are different in differ-RELIGION EXPLAINED