understand why. Consider other examples of human capacities. All
human beings can catch colds and remember different melodies. We
can catch colds because we have respiratory organs and these provide a
hospitable site for all sorts of pathogens, including those of the com-
mon cold. We can remember tunes because a part of our brain can
easily store a series of sounds with their relative pitch and duration.
There are no common colds in our genes and no melodies either.
What is in the genes is a tremendously complex set of chemical recipes
for the building of normal organisms with respiratory organs and a
complex set of connections between brain areas. Normal genes in a
[4] normal milieu will give you a pair of lungs and an organized auditory
cortex, and with these the dispositions to acquire both colds and tunes.
Obviously, if we were all brought up in a sterile and nonmusical envi-
ronment, we would catch neither. We would still have the disposition
to catch them but no opportunity to do so.
Having a normal human brain does not imply that you have reli-
gion. All it implies is that you can acquire it, which is very different.
The reason why psychologists and anthropologists are so concerned
withacquisitionandtransmissionis that evolution by natural selection
gave us a particular kind of mind so that only particular kinds of reli-
gious notions can be acquired. Not all possible concepts are equally
good. The ones we acquire easily are the ones we find widespread the
world over; indeed, that is whywe find them widespread the world
over. It has been said of poetry that it gives to airy nothing a local
habitation and a name. This description is even more aptly applied to
the supernatural imagination. But, as we will see, not all kinds of "airy
nothing" will find a local habitation in the minds of people.
ORIGIN SCENARIOS
What is the origin of religious ideas? Why is it that we can find them
wherever we go and, it would seem, as far back in the past as we can
see? The best place to start is with our spontaneous, commonsense
answers to the question of origins. Everybody seems to have some
intuition about the origins of religion. Indeed, psychologists and
anthropologists who like me study how mental processes create reli-
gion face the minor occupational hazard of constantly running into
people who think that they already have a perfectly adequate solution
to the problem. They are often quite willing to impart their wisdomRELIGION EXPLAINED