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🪦Will Gervais 🪦
@wgervais.bsky.social
culture and evolution | atheists | methodological pluralism FTW | comic & horror nerd | he/him Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species www.amazon.com/Disbelief-Origins-Atheism-Religious-Species/dp/1633889246/
2.3k followers2.7k following1.1k posts

Gwgervais.bsky.social

Humans do lots of peculiar things (think: hot dog eating contests, parliaments). But religion stands out as truly exceptional. I argue that religion isn’t so much *an evolutionary puzzle* that we need to solve, it’s 2 intertwined puzzles. I call them The Puzzle of Faith and the Puzzle of Atheism.

in the animal kingdom, belief in gods is vanishingly rare. it’s only evi- dent in a single lineage of hominids. Yet among those hominids, belief in gods is overwhelmingly—but incompletely—the norm. Zoom all the way out with a broad biological lens and religious belief is an aberration between species. Zoom in a bit further and it’s atheism instead that stands out as exceptional within our species. Any comprehensive theory of human nature must account for religion. but any comprehensive theory of religion must also account for atheism
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🪦Will Gervais 🪦
@wgervais.bsky.social
culture and evolution | atheists | methodological pluralism FTW | comic & horror nerd | he/him Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species www.amazon.com/Disbelief-Origins-Atheism-Religious-Species/dp/1633889246/
2.3k followers2.7k following1.1k posts