Invisible Forces and Powerful Beliefs: Gravity, Gods, and Minds

12. How does God become real?^*

^* The lead author is Tanya Luhrmann, Ph.D., a professor in the Stanford Anthropology Department. Her interests include the social shaping of psychological experience, and the way social practice may affect even the most concrete ways in which people experience their world, particularly in the domain of what some would call the “irrational.” Her first project, Persuasions of the Witch’s Craft (Harvard, 1989), was a detailed study of the way apparently reasonable people come to believe apparently unreasonable beliefs. Her second project, The Good Parsi (Harvard, 1996), explored the apparently irrational self-criticism ...