Source: "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure", 1976, p. 308-9
“Supernatural agents are critical components of all religions but not of all ideologies. They are, in part, by-products of a naturally selected cognitive mechanism for detecting agents-such as predators, protectors, and prey-and for dealing rapidly and economically with stimulus situations involving people and animals. This innate releasing mechanism is trip-wired to attribute agency to virtually any action that mimics the stimulus conditions of natural agents: faces on clouds, voices in the wind, shadow figures, the intentions of cars or computers, and so on. Among natural agents, predators such as snakes are as likely to be candidates for deification as are protectors, such as parent-figures.”
Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 15
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)
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Scott Atran 18
Anthropologist 1952Related quotes

“The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent.”
Source: God: The Failed Hypothesis (2007), Chapter 4: 'Cosmic Evidence', p.133
Context: The transition of nothing-to-something is a natural one, not requiring any agent. As Nobel laureate physicist Frank Wilczek has put it, "The answer to the ancient question 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' would then be that 'nothing' is unstable." [... ] In short, the natural state of affairs is something rather than nothing. An empty universe requires supernatural intervention--not a full one. Only by the constant action of an agent outside the universe, such as God, could a state of nothingness be maintained. The fact that we have something is just what we would expect if there is no God.
Introduction: an evolutionary riddle, p. 4
In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (2002)
Source: "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure", 1976, p. 308

Max Weber, The Nature of Social Action, 1922

“Each natural agent works but to this end,—
To render that it works on like itself.”
Act III, scene i.
Bussy D'Ambois (1607)
Thomas Robbins, Benjamin David Zablocki (2001) Misunderstanding Cults: Searching for Objectivity in a Controversial Field. p. 183