Pascal Boyer Quotes & Sayings

[R]eligious concepts are parasitic upon moral intuitions. — Pascal Boyer

A slew of cognitive traits predisposes us to faith, — Pascal Boyer

The fundamentalist violence is, so is it, an attempt to increase the stakes, i.e. to discourage the potential desertions by showing that defection will cost them dear, that those who adopt other values will be persecuted or even killed. — Pascal Boyer

What we mean when we say that something is "cultural" is that it is roughly similar to what we find in other members of the particular group we are considering, and unlike what we would find in members of a contrast group. This is why it is confusing to say that people share a culture, as if culture were common property. We may have strictly identical amounts of money in our respective wallets without sharing any of it! — Pascal Boyer

[T]he choice of human groupings for cultural comparisons is not a natural or scientific choice, but a political one. — Pascal Boyer