the way it is. So why bother with them? It is not my intent here to
ridicule other people's ideas or show that anthropologists and cogni-
tive scientists are more clever than common folk. I discuss these spon-
taneous explanations because they are widespread, because they are
often rediscovered by people when they reflect on religion, and more
importantly because they are not that bad. Each of these "scenarios" for
the origin of religion points to a real and important phenomenon that
any theory worth its salt should explain. Also, taking these scenarios
seriously opens up new perspectives on how religious notions and
beliefs appear in human minds.
[6]
UNFAMILIAR DIVERSITY
Let it not be said that anthropology is not useful. Religion is found
the world over, but it is found in very different forms. It is an unfortu-
nate and all too frequent mistake to explain all religion by one of its
characteristics that is in fact special to the religion we are familiar
with. Anthropologists are professionally interested in cultural differ-
ences, and they generally study a milieu other than their own to avoid
this mistake. In the past century or so, they have documented
extremely diverse religious notions, beliefs and practices. To illustrate
why this knowledge is useful, consider the inadequate information
found in many atlases. At the same time as they tell you that the Arc-
tic is all ice and the Sahara mostly sand and rock, they often provide
information about religious affiliation. You will read, for instance,
that Ulster has a Protestantmajority and a Catholicminority, that Italy
is overwhelmingly Catholicand Saudi Arabia Muslim.So far, so good.
But other countries are more difficult to describe in these terms. Take
India or Indonesia, for example. Most of the population belongs to
one of the familiar "great religions" (Hinduism, Islam); but in both
countries there are large, so-called tribal groups that will have no
truck with these established denominations. Such groups are often
described as having animistic or tribal religion—two terms that
(anthropologists will tell you) mean virtually nothing. They just stand
for "stuff we cannot put in any other category"; we might as well call
these people's religions "miscellaneous." Also, what about Congo and
Angola? The atlas says that most people in these places are Christian,
and this is true in the sense that many are baptized and go to church.
However, people in Congo and Angola constantly talk about ances-RELIGION EXPLAINED