New item in the Archive for Religion and Cognition:


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Author(s): Markusson, Gudmundur Ingi
Title: The Blank Spandrels of Dawkins’ Cathedral—the Origins of
Religion in The God Delusion
Category: manuscript
Length: 8
Keywords: Dawkins; religion; spandrels; by-product; mind; children; blank
slate; memes; origins; evolution

Abstract: While Dawkins embraces the spandrel position which dominates the CSR
(i.e. that religion is a by-product of cognitive mechanisms that evolution has
devised for other purposes) he still retains a view of the child’s mind as
general purpose, learning device or meme copier, to all intents and purposes a
blank slate. In short, Dawkins’ hypothesis is that religion is a
by-product of childish gullibility. In my view, superimposing a blank slate upon
the multimodal mind of evolutionary psychology in this way makes Dawkins’
account incoherent. Further, his hypothesis cannot account for universal aspects
of religion. Finally, the role of memetics in Dawkins’ account is
criticised.

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