Belief in gods depends on an intuitive mind-body dualism
Evidence
What Bloom is referring to here is an intuitive belief in mind-body dualism-the idea that there is something immaterial in a person that is separate from the physical body and may survive physical death. It’s the feeling of “I” that is distinct from the body and the brain. As we saw in chapter 2, dualism is one of the intuitive building blocks of religious thinking. To believe in a soul, or in various gods and spirits, one has to intuitively get this kind of dualism. Moreover, if such intuitions are the product of fast and automatic sense-making, then our brains have to do some hard work to reject them through reflection and deliberation. Pascal Boyer explains: Some form of religious thinking seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems. — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 574
Categorization
- DEFINE: Defines mind-body dualism as the intuitive foundation of theism — useful for precise term use in the reader’s integration.
- XREF: connects to: Belief in gods emerges from ordinary cognition, not dedicated brain machinery — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 131; The intuition of mind-body dualism underpins belief in disembodied supernatural agents; Mind-reading capacity supplies the cognitive basis for belief in disembodied gods (+3 more)
- yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Belief in gods emerges from ordinary cognition, not dedicated brain machinery — Norenzayan, Ara, Big gods - how religion transformed…, 131; The intuition of mind-body dualism underpins belief in disembodied supernatural agents; Mind-reading capacity supplies the cognitive basis for belief in disembodied gods (+3 more)