ent people; some are religious and some are not. Also, obviously,
beliefs are different in different places. Japanese Buddhists do not
seem to share much, in terms of religious notions, with Amazonian
shamans or American Southern Baptists. How could we explain a phe-
nomenon (religion) that is so variablein terms of something (the
brain) that is the same everywhere? This is what I describe in this book.
The diversity of religion, far from being an obstacle to general expla-
nations, in fact gives us some keys. But to understand why this is so,
we need a precise description of how brains receive and organize
information.
For a long time, people used to think that the brain was a rather [3]
simple organ. Apart from the bits that control the body machinery,
there seemed to be a vast empty space in the young child's mind des-
tined to be filled with whatever education, culture and personal expe-
rience provided. This view of the mind was never too plausible, since
after all the liver and the gut are much more complex than that. But
we did not know much about the way minds develop, so there were no
facts to get in the way of this fantasy of a "blank slate" where experi-
ence could leave its imprint. The mind was like those vast expanses of
unexplored Africa that old maps used to fill with palm trees and croco-
diles. Now we know more about minds. We do not know everything,
but one fact is clear: the more we discover about how minds work, the
less we believe in this notion of a blank slate. Every further discovery
in cognitive science makes it less plausible as an explanation.
In particular, it is clear that our minds are not really prepared to
acquire just about any kind of notion that is "in the culture." We do
not just "learn what is in the environment," as people sometimes say.
That is not the case, because no mind in the world—this is true all the
way from the cockroach to the giraffe to you or me—could ever learn
anything without having very sophisticated mental equipment that is
preparedto identify relevant information in the environment and to
treat that information in a special way. Our minds are prepared
because natural selection gave us particular mental predispositions.
Being prepared for some concepts, human minds are also prepared for
certain variations of these concepts. As I will show, this means, among
other things, that all human beings can easily acquire a certain rangeof
religious notions and communicate them to others.
Does this mean religion is "innate" and "in the genes"? I—and
most people interested in the evolution of the human mind—think
that the question is in fact meaningless and that it is important to
WHATISTHEORIGIN?