 Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi , a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Haifa, called the book "a milestone on the road to a new behavioral understanding of religion, basing itself on what has come to be known as cognitive anthropology, and pointedly ignoring much work done over the past one hundred years in the behavioral study of religion and in the psychological anthropology of religion."Book Review: Religion Explained Human Nature Review 2002 Volume 2: 308–309 (22 July) He continues: The clearest virtue of this book is that of dealing with the real thing. Even today, most scholarly work on religion consists of apologetics in one form or another, and we are deluged by offers of grants to study "spirituality" or teach "religion and science". This all serves to make us forget that religion is a collection of fantasies about spirits, and Boyer indeed aims to teach us about the world of the spirits in the grand tradition of the Enlightenment. Any general introduction to the world of the spirits must be ambitious because it hasn't been done and also because it has been done intuitively by all of us. David Klinghoffer, a journalist and intelligent design proponent, wrote in the National Review that "Boyer's talk of 'religion is suspiciously generic" and describes his work as "professorial noodlings" that attempt to raise the question whether "all religions are somehow the same". He further claims that "debunkers like Boyer ... have their own unconscious motivations (to undermine religious faith, after all, is to set oneself free of its many inconvenient strictures)."Faith no more—Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought—Review
The psychologist Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi called the book "a milestone on the road to a new behavioral understanding of religion, basing itself on what has come to be known as cognitive anthropology, and pointedly ignoring much work done over the past one hundred years in the behavioral study of religion and in the psychological anthropology of religion."Book Review: Religion Explained Human Nature Review 2002 Volume 2: 308–309 (22 July) He continues: The clearest virtue of this book is that of dealing with the real thing. Even today, most scholarly work on religion consists of apologetics in one form or another, and we are deluged by offers of grants to study "spirituality" or teach "religion and science". This all serves to make us forget that religion is a collection of fantasies about spirits, and Boyer indeed aims to teach us about the world of the spirits in the grand tradition of the Enlightenment. Any general introduction to the world of the spirits must be ambitious because it hasn't been done and also because it has been done intuitively by all of us. The journalist David Klinghoffer wrote in National Review that "Boyer's talk of 'religion is suspiciously generic" and describes his work as "professorial noodlings" that attempt to raise the question whether "all religions are somehow the same". He further claims that "debunkers like Boyer ... have their own unconscious motivations (to undermine religious faith, after all, is to set oneself free of its many inconvenient strictures)."Faith no more—Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought—Review
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The psychologist
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, a professor of developmental psychology at the University of Haifa,
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David Klinghoffer, a journalist and intelligent design proponent, wrote in the
The journalist David Klinghoffer wrote in