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The Michael Shermer Show # 439

We often assume that religious beliefs are no different in kind from ordinary factual beliefs―that believing in the existence of God is akin to believing that May comes before June. Neuroscientist Neil Van Leeuwen shows that, in fact, these two forms of belief are strikingly different.

Van Leeuwen argues that religious belief is best understood as a form of imagination that people use to define the identity of their group and express the values they hold sacred. When a person pretends, they navigate the world by consulting two maps: the first represents mundane reality, and the second superimposes the features of the imagined world atop the first.

Drawing on psychological, linguistic, and anthropological evidence, Van Leeuwen posits that religious communities operate in much the same way, consulting a factual-belief map that represents ordinary objects and events and a religious-credence map that accords these objects and events imagined sacred and supernatural significance.

Neil Van Leeuwen is Associate Professor of Philosophy and Neuroscience at Georgia State University. His new book is Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination and Group Identity.

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