Abstract
“The Naturalization of Religion” This chapter fills an important gap in the atheist naturalist account. If there are no supernatural entities, then the prevalence of belief must be explained. Lorkowski first discusses the scope of the problem, showing that the popularity of belief does not constitute an argument against atheist naturalism. The author then goes on to discuss important natural explanations for religious phenomena, distinguishing the cause for original belief as a spandrel of our agent-detecting abilities from the transmission of such beliefs. Lorkowski accounts for the latter through the mechanisms of social Darwinism, memetics, and the structures of cognitive science. Lastly, the author points out these natural explanations support atheist naturalism over its competitors, since the patterns are what is expected given natural but surprising given supernatural origins.
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Lorkowski, C.M. (2021). The Naturalization of Religion. In: Atheism Considered. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56208-3_21
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-56208-3_21
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