Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought by Pascal Boyer is a great book if you find the subject of religion a little daunting. While it may seem to have an ambitious approach, I enjoyed how it made the effort to see the commonalities and diversity of religions, with well-structured sections, including main points summarised.

Why do people believe? Boyer takes the approach of looking at various scientific elements such as anthropology and evolutionary and cognitive psychology, and finds that the abstract and social aspects of religion are greatly influential on our practices. We tend towards hidden causal forces as being important to our lives, we are naturally pattern-seeking creatures and aim to have control and influence in order to bring structure to our lives and have activities that relate to that. Traditions, society, community all help build upon these and while there’s a trend towards thinking that religion is going to help bring us stability and comfort, it’s not always a guarantee.

As a thought-provoking read, I thought this was a useful text and one I’ll probably visit again in order to not only review on the influence of religion, but the influence that our minds can have.