Is religion natural?
The study of language provides many examples of how
the universality of
X
does not entail that
X
is innate (see
Pinker, 1994, for discussion). All languages have a word
that refers to hands, for instance, but this is probably
because it is important for people everywhere to talk
about hands, not because of a specific innate propensity
toward hand-naming. Similarly, beliefs in Gods, the
afterlife, and so on may be universal, not because they
are innate, but because such beliefs emerge in all societies,
perhaps as solutions to some problems that all
human groups face. From this perspective, universals of