Editor's Summary
23 October 2008
What makes us human: beyond belief
A new Essay series starts this week, introduced in an Editorial, on the theme of what makes us human. How, in the two-and-a-half million years that separate us from stone-tool wielding hominids, have 'human' behaviours and attitudes emerged from pre-human behaviour patterns. In week one of the series, Pascal Boyer places religion in a context of the human neurocognitive systems that evolved to allow us to survive as social animals. Religious thinking of some type seems to be the path of least resistance for our cognitive systems; disbelief requires a conscious effort to counter our natural cognitive dispositions.
Editorial: A look within
A series of Essays examines what science has to say about being human.
doi:10.1038/4551007b
Essay: Being human: Religion: Bound to believe?
Atheism will always be a harder sell than religion, Pascal Boyer explains, because a slew of cognitive traits predispose us to faith.
Pascal Boyer
doi:10.1038/4551038a
