ABSTRACT
For most of the twentieth century, theory in the study of religion was marked by two main approaches – theologically or philosophically informed phenomenology and social-scientic theories of religion. It was only in the last decade of the century that theories inspired by the natural sciences, particularly evolutionary biology and cognitive psychology, became popular. The book to be considered in this chapter – Loyal Rue’s Religion is not about God (Rue 2005) – in some respects combines all three of these approaches, although at rst sight it appears to be attributable to the natural-scientic faction. This is due to the fact that its starting point and core argument is the biological evolution of the human species and its vocabulary makes heavy use of the terminology of cognitive psychology.
