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Religious Book Store > Religious books beginning with A
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Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion |
Author: Lee A. Kirkpatrick
Published: 2004-10-18 |
List price: $48.00
Our price: $40.80
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As of: January 07th, 2009 08:58:50 PM
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Customer comments on this selection.
 Very Interesting
Although I have read other theories with which I agree more (evolutionary theories elaborated upon by Atran and Boyer), the Attachment Theory perspective is a very interesting point of view on how people form and maintain relationships with supernatural beings. The book as a whole makes some pretty persuasive arguments for the Attachment Theory and does it with humor and facts combined. For a subject that has great potential to be dry and boring, Kirkpatrick leads the reader through the points in a very fluid and entertaining way. Again, I really enjoyed this book, both as a Psych major and as a Philosophy & Religion major.
 An eminently readable and balanced approach to the psychology of religion
I began reading this book in the library of the college where I teach psychology, and after finishing Kirpatrick's introduction I knew I had to purchase the book for myself.
Kirpatrick provides a rigorously scientific approach to the psychology of religion. Couching religious belief, or at least parts of our religious belief, in the context of attachment theory is both intuitively appealing and empirically supported. Wrapping the whole in the metatheoretical framework of evolutionary psychology is the final piece that puts everything together, and Kirkpatrick does just that, in an eminently readable way.
Certainly there is much more research to be done in this area before we can even begin to provide potential answers to all questions about religious belief, but Kirkpatrick does an excellent job summarizing the state of the research at present, and drawing reasonable--and interesting--interpretations.
Finally, I was impressed by the intellectually balanced approach Kirkpatrick provides. There is no hint of an agenda or an axe to grind; theist and atheist alike can read this book and learn from it without having their sensibilities offended. I thoroughly enjoyed this book, and I highly recommend it.
an intelligent look at religion
Kirkpatrick has given us a scholarly, comprehensive and comprehendable discussion of an extremly important part of human experience. This work is well and carefully documented for the scholar and clearly written for the casual (but curious) reader. It's too bad Dennett didn't read this before he wrote "Breaking the Spell." He could have saved hinself a couple of years and sent us to read "Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion."
 a marginal contribution, at best, to religious studies
My excitement upon purchasing this book did not last long. Kirkpatrick argues that a person's "attachment" style, shaped at an early age by his relationship with his primary caregiver, plays a role in his subsequent relationships with peers, lovers, spouses, and even God. I find the theory and evidence marshalled in support of this argument unpersuasive.
Suppose a mother is cold and avoidant in her relationship with her infant. According to Kirkpatrick, this environmental stimulus leads the infant to form an internal model of social interaction in which ALL agents are seen as cold and avoidant. Having learned not to trust or depend on others, the infant grows up to become a cold and avoidant himself. He doesn't hug his parents, he doesn't buy his wife flowers, he doesn't warm to the idea of a benevolent God.
I don't buy it. Some of the studies Kirkpatrick describes in support of his thesis are interesting, but most are so profoundly confounded with hereditary factors that they cannot possibly support the conclusions that Kirkpatrick forces upon them. The evidence from behavioral genetics shows that, typically, fifty percent of the variance in stable behavioral treats is caused by genetic variation in the population. Moreover, many behavioral geneticists now accept that NONE of the variance is attributable the environment that siblings in a household share (which assuredly includes parental childrearing style). With this data in hand, we see that the dogma of attachment theory dissolves. Yes, nurturant parents produce children who grow up to become nurturant adults. Yes, mean parents produce children who grow up to become mean adults. Yes, clingy parents produce children who grow up to become clingy adults. But this is all because children inherit the genes for these traits from their parents. Adopted children, who are objects of the same parental "attachment style" as the other children in their household, grow up to become as different from their adoptive siblings as can be. The theoretical arguments against attachment theory, based on evolutionary grounds, are also powerful; but in this case data suffices to cast it thoroughly in doubt.
What is left of Kirkpatrick's book? The last hundred pages are useful in overviewing the theory of religion as spandrel that has been developed in recent years, but they fail to redeem the whole. The same ground has been already covered by Pascal Boyer and Scott Atran in much greater detail. In any case, Kirkpatrick is not a particularly compelling writer.
Individual differences in religiosity is a gold mine waiting to be tapped, but Kirkpatrick's approach is a dead end in my view. Save your money and pass on this one.
Recommended instead: THE NURTURE ASSUMPTION by Judith Rich Harris, RELIGION EXPLAINED by Pascal Boyer, THE BLANK SLATE by Steven Pinker, IN GODS WE TRUST by Scott Atran
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