Richard G. Condon Prize What's Not to Know? A Durkheimian Critique of Boyer's Theory of Religion

This article examines Pascal Boyer's theory of religion, in which he argues that religious beliefs are an inessential by‐product of theory of mind functioning. I suggest that Boyer is emblematic of a new wave of thinking about religion that oversimplifies religion and theory of mind processes and in so doing misses something profound about human cognition. Through a reexamination of Emile Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life , one of the classic (and classically misunderstood) works on religion, the present work elucidates what the recent theories are missing. Specifically, where Boyer's arguments suggest that “mentally building a “god” requires first building a “thinking agent,”“Durkheim suggests that mentally building a “thinking agent” may first require building a “god.” [religion, theory of mind, counterintuitive beliefs, society, sacred, profane]