great deal about human thinking, including religious thoughts. But—
this is the most important point—the workings of inference systems
are not something we can observe by introspection. Philosopher
Daniel Dennett uses the phrase "Cartesian theater" to describe the
inevitable illusion that all that happens in our minds consists of con-[18]PROGRESS BOX 1:
RELIGION AS EXPLANATION- The urge to explain the universe is not the
origin of religion. - The need to explain particular occurrences
seems to lead to strangely baroque constructions. - You cannot explain religious concepts if
you do not describe how they are used by individ-
ual minds. - A different angle: Religious concepts are
probably influenced by the way the brain's infer-
ence systems produce explanations without our
being aware of it.
scious, deliberate thoughts and reasoning about these thoughts. But a
lot happens beneath that Cartesian stage, in a mental basement that
we can describe only with the tools of cognitive science. This point is
obvious when we think about processes such as motor control: the fact
that my arm indeed goes up when I consciously try to lift it shows that
a complicated system in the brain monitors what various muscles are
doing. It is far more difficult to realize that similarly complicated sys-
tems are doing a lot of underground work to produce such deceptively
simple thoughts as "Mrs. Jones is angry because the kids broke her
window" or "The ancestors will punish you if you defile their shrine."
But the systems are there. Their undetected work explains a lot about
religion. It explains why someconcepts, like that of invisible personsRELIGION EXPLAINED