Abstract

Guthrie has an interesting point: "I claim religion consists of seeing the world as humanlike and arises because doing so is a good bet even though, like other bets, it may fail". This book is best understood by identifying its two interwoven arguments. The first is that religion is anthropomorphism. The second is that this anthropomorphism is due to a perceptual strategy. He does an admirable job of presenting the first. Marshaling the thought of Spinoza, Hume, Feuerbach, and others, he argues that religion arises from projecting human traits into nature. His second argument basically runs as follows: anthropomorphism permeates our world, in science, philosophy, commercial and fine art, and religion. There is a universal cause of anthropomorphism in all of these enterprises, and it is due to the perceptual strategy that anthropomorphism is "the result of a general, spontaneous, and unconscious interpretive tendency... to find as much organization as possible in things and events". For Guthrie, the most organization indicates what matters the most, and what matters the most are living beings, and especially humans. He theorizes "that perception is interpretation, that interpretation attends to the most important possibilities, and that the most important possibilities are humanlike".