Sperber on the Causes of Religion

The anthropologist Dan Sperber delivered last week a one-hour lecture on the cognitive study of religion (in Vanderbilt University, Tennessee). Religious belief is analyzed as a side-effect of other dispositions.

(You can skip a 5' introduction; the methodological considerations on anthropological concepts are quite long too but the sequel is more focused on belief, in spite of its useless silent 21' preamble)



(The recording can be annoying sometimes. Scott Atran might be clearer on this topic, I really prefered his book In Gods We Trust to Pascal Boyer's Religion Explained, but there is no video by him, except this conference on the New Enlightenment).