ABSTRACT
One of the classical problems in the study of religion is the question of what makes a belief true for someone. For a long time two basic strategies have been used to answer this question. The first strategy, employed mostly by philosophers, has been to search for the logical conditions that make religious statements true. The problem with this approach is that in ordinary circumstances, people do not have religious beliefs because rational argumentation leads them to think that way. Instead, some individuals use rational argumentation to justify religious beliefs that they hold for other reasons (see, e.g. Shermer 2000, 59-88). The second strategy has been to argue, like scholars of culture tend to do, that we hold something to be true because we have been taught to do so by the cultural authorities of our social community (See Geertz 1973; Boyer 1994, ix). Thus, most Europeans believe in the existence of the Christian God but not in the existence of Mickey Mouse because we are coached to do so because of patterns established by our cultural environment. The problem with this approach is that people do not seem to believe in something simply because they are told to do so. Additional and more fundamental cognitive factors seem to be involved (Sperber 1975, 1996; Boyer 1990, 1994).
