AMMDI is an open-notebook hypertext writing experiment, authored by Mike Travers aka mtraven. It's a work in progress and some parts are more polished than others. Comments welcome! More.
Locating agency in supernatural beings is of course as old as humanity. Pascal Boyer theorizes that the origins of religion might be found in an evolved tendency to over-attribute agency. Since religion is a central feature of culture, Gregory Bateson’s suggestion that it has a functional role in compensating for an overly short-term outlook seems plausible:
Locating agency in supernatural beings is of course as old as humanity. Pascal Boyer theorizes that the origins of religion might be found in an evolved tendency to over-attribute agency. Since religion is a central feature of culture, Gregory Bateson’s suggestion that it has a functional role in compensating for an overly short-term outlook seems plausible:
Should reread this, but my recollection is that Boyer proposes that religion is a specific cognitive result of various agency-related mechanisms.