- Why does religion prescribe rituals? Why are rituals the way they
are? - Why do most religions have religious specialists?
- Why does religion seem to provide "truth"?
- Why are there Churches and religious institutions?
- Why does religion trigger strong emotions? Why do people kill
for religion? [49] - Why does religion persist in the face of apparently more efficient
ways of thinking about the world? - Why does it lead to so much intolerance and so many atrocities?
Or, if you prefer, Why is it sometimes conducive to heroism and
self-sacrifice?
There remains one big question that most people would think is
the crucial one: Why do some people believe? The question is often the
first one people ask when they consider scientific accounts of religion,
yet it will be treated in the lastchapter of this book. This is not for the
sake of creating a spurious suspense. It turns out that you cannot deal
with this question unless you have a very precise description of what it
is that people actually believe. And that is far from obvious.
This may seem a strange thing to say, as religious people are in
general all too eager to let us know what they believe. They tell us that
an unseen presence is watching our every step, or that the souls of
dead people are still around, or that we will reincarnate in some form
commensurate with our moral achievements. So all we have to do, or
so it seems, is consider these diverse notions and ask ourselves, again:
Why do people believe in all this?
But this does not really work. What makes anthropology difficult—
and fascinating—is that religious representations are not all transpar-
ent to the mind. When people have thoughts about gods or spirits or
ancestors, a whole machinery of complex mental devices is engaged,
most of which is completely outside conscious access. This, obviously,
is not special to religion. Speaking a natural language or playing tennis
WHATISTHEORIGIN?