Do Naturalistic Explanations of Religious Beliefs Debunk Religion?

Abstract

Why do people hold religious beliefs about the existence of divinities, spiritual entities or God(s)? There is no single answer. One time-honoured commonly adopted “folk” explanation, given by believers themselves and aided and abetted by theologians, takes at face value the existence and casual effi cacy of divinities and gods in ultimately bringing about beliefs in them. Alternative explanations do not accept this “folk” stance and propose rival explanations of religious belief which reject any appeal to non-natural entities such as God(s); instead, they appeal to naturalistic entities or processes such as particular mental features of believers, their social conditions and the like. On this view, the cause of the way religious believers take the world to be is not a response to the way the world actually is; the cause is located in something that has nothing to do with God(s).