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Anthropology
In anthropology the issues are very similar. Classical anthropologists such as E.B.Tylor and James Frazer, generally considered the pioneers of social anthropology in Britain, were, like the pioneer sociologists, reductionist in their approach to religion. Similarly to the sociologist Comte, many early anthropologists subscribed to the view that societies evolved from primitive to advanced. According to this analysis, religious thinking represented a primitive form of (quasi-)scientific thinking. Again, however, they tended to assume (on philosophical grounds) that religious truth claims were false and then set about explaining them away in terms of primitive scientific thinking. Like the pioneer sociologists, they did not therefore regard religion as false on the basis of their anthropological findings, but rather the reverse: they assumed the falsity of religion and thus set about finding a secular explanation for it.[1]
However, contemporary anthropologists, like sociologists, tend to bracket the question of the truth of religion methodologically. Berger, for example, has argued generally that the issue of the truth of religion is beyond the competence of the social sciences: 'it is impossible within the frame of reference of scientific theorizing to make any affirmations, positive or negative, about the ultimate ontological status of this alleged reality [i.e., religion]'.[2]
As a consequence, social anthropologists are in general very hesitant about offering explanations and tend to reject bold reductionist explanations of religion. These include those made more recently by anthropologists such as Pascal Boyer and Lionel Tiger who have drawn theoretically on evolutionary psychology. The latter have offered reductive causal explanations of religion in evolutionary terms and as a consequence their writings have appealed strongly to the New Atheists.[3] Although Dennett and others praise these researchers as 'pioneering scientists'[4] their approach is contentious within the anthropological community.
References
The Sacred Canopy. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor Books,
1969.
Religion Explained : The Human Instincts That Fashion Gods,
Spirits and Ancestors. London: Vintage, 2002.
Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon. New
York: Penguin, 2006.
"Contributions from the Social Sciences." In The Oxford
Handbook of Religion and Science, edited by Philip Clayton and Zachary
Simpson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006.
The Manufacture of Evil: Ethics, Evolution and the
Industrial System. New York ; London: Boyars, 1991.
Footnotes
[1]↑ Robert A. Segal, "Contributions from the Social Sciences," in The
Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, ed. Philip Clayton and Zachary
Simpson (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 315.
[2]↑ P.L. Berger, The Sacred Canopy (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor
Books, 1969), 100., cited in Segal, "Contributions," 318.
[3]↑ See, for example, Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained : The Human
Instincts That Fashion Gods, Spirits and Ancestors (London: Vintage,
2002).; Lionel Tiger, The Manufacture of Evil : Ethics, Evolution and the
Industrial System (New York ; London: Boyars, 1991).
[4]↑ Daniel Dennett, Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon
(New York: Penguin, 2006), 104.