| Author(s): | Markusson, Gudmundur Ingi |
| Title: | The Blank Spandrels of Dawkins’ Cathedral—the Origins of Religion in The God Delusion |
| Category: | manuscript |
| Length (pages): | 8 |
| Keywords: | Dawkins; religion; spandrels; by-product; mind; children; blank slate; memes; origins; evolution |
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| 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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| Remarks: | Submitted to Journal of Cognition and Culture in November 2006; to appear in one of the 2007 issues. |
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| Email: | gudmundurim @ yahoo.com |
| Bibliography: | |
| URL: | www.raunvis.hi.is/~steindor/dawkins.html |
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| Submitted: | 11/01/2007 23:15:07 (DD / MM / YYYY) |
| Published: | 11/01/2007 23:32:57 (DD / MM / YYYY) |