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How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others
The hard work required to make God real, how it changes the people who do it, and why it helps explain the enduring power of faith
How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people--as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn't easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort--by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others--helps to explain the enduring power of faith.
Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more.
A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits--but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.
How do gods and spirits come to feel vividly real to people--as if they were standing right next to them? Humans tend to see supernatural agents everywhere, as the cognitive science of religion has shown. But it isn't easy to maintain a sense that there are invisible spirits who care about you. In How God Becomes Real, acclaimed anthropologist and scholar of religion T. M. Luhrmann argues that people must work incredibly hard to make gods real and that this effort--by changing the people who do it and giving them the benefits they seek from invisible others--helps to explain the enduring power of faith.
Drawing on ethnographic studies of evangelical Christians, pagans, magicians, Zoroastrians, Black Catholics, Santeria initiates, and newly orthodox Jews, Luhrmann notes that none of these people behave as if gods and spirits are simply there. Rather, these worshippers make strenuous efforts to create a world in which invisible others matter and can become intensely present and real. The faithful accomplish this through detailed stories, absorption, the cultivation of inner senses, belief in a porous mind, strong sensory experiences, prayer, and other practices. Along the way, Luhrmann shows why faith is harder than belief, why prayer is a metacognitive activity like therapy, why becoming religious is like getting engrossed in a book, and much more.
A fascinating account of why religious practices are more powerful than religious beliefs, How God Becomes Real suggests that faith is resilient not because it provides intuitions about gods and spirits--but because it changes the faithful in profound ways.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published October 27, 2020
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1381 people want to read
About the author
T.M. Luhrmann
12 books102 followersTanya Marie Luhrmann is currently the Watkins University Professor in the Anthropology Department at Stanford University. She has been elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and has been the recipient of a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship.
Tanya Marie Luhrmann (born 1959) is an American psychological anthropologist best known for her studies of modern-day witches, charismatic Christians, and psychiatrists. She received her AB summa cum laude in Folklore and Mythology from Harvard-Radcliffe in 1981, working with Stanley Tambiah. She then studied Social Anthropology at Cambridge University, working with Jack Goody and Ernest Gellner. In 1986 she received her PhD for work on modern-day witches in England, later published as Persuasions of the Witch's Craft (1989). In this book, she described the ways in which magic and other esoteric techniques both serve emotional needs and come to seem reasonable through the experience of practice.
Her second research project looked at the situation of contemporary Parsis, a Zoroastrian community in India. The Parsi community enjoyed a privileged position under the British Raj; although by many standards, Parsis have continued to do quite well economically in post-colonial India, they have become politically marginal in comparison to their previous position, and many Parsis speak pessimistically about the future of their community. Luhrmann's book The Good Parsi (1996) explored the contradictions inherent in the social psychology of a post-colonial elite.
Her third book, and the most widely acclaimed, explored the contradictions and tensions between two models of psychiatry, the psychodynamic (psychoanalytic) and the biomedical, through the ethnographic study of the training of American psychiatry residents during the health care transition of the early 1990s. Of Two Minds (2000) received several awards, including the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing and the Boyer Prize for Psychological Anthropology (2001).
Her fourth book, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (March 2012), examines the growing movement of evangelical and charismatic Christianity, and specifically how practitioners come to experience God as someone with whom they can communicate on a daily basis through prayer and visualization.
Other projects she is working on include a NIMH-funded study of how life on the streets (chronically or periodically homeless) contributes to the experience and morbidity of schizophrenia.
Tanya Marie Luhrmann (born 1959) is an American psychological anthropologist best known for her studies of modern-day witches, charismatic Christians, and psychiatrists. She received her AB summa cum laude in Folklore and Mythology from Harvard-Radcliffe in 1981, working with Stanley Tambiah. She then studied Social Anthropology at Cambridge University, working with Jack Goody and Ernest Gellner. In 1986 she received her PhD for work on modern-day witches in England, later published as Persuasions of the Witch's Craft (1989). In this book, she described the ways in which magic and other esoteric techniques both serve emotional needs and come to seem reasonable through the experience of practice.
Her second research project looked at the situation of contemporary Parsis, a Zoroastrian community in India. The Parsi community enjoyed a privileged position under the British Raj; although by many standards, Parsis have continued to do quite well economically in post-colonial India, they have become politically marginal in comparison to their previous position, and many Parsis speak pessimistically about the future of their community. Luhrmann's book The Good Parsi (1996) explored the contradictions inherent in the social psychology of a post-colonial elite.
Her third book, and the most widely acclaimed, explored the contradictions and tensions between two models of psychiatry, the psychodynamic (psychoanalytic) and the biomedical, through the ethnographic study of the training of American psychiatry residents during the health care transition of the early 1990s. Of Two Minds (2000) received several awards, including the Victor Turner Prize for Ethnographic Writing and the Boyer Prize for Psychological Anthropology (2001).
Her fourth book, When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (March 2012), examines the growing movement of evangelical and charismatic Christianity, and specifically how practitioners come to experience God as someone with whom they can communicate on a daily basis through prayer and visualization.
Other projects she is working on include a NIMH-funded study of how life on the streets (chronically or periodically homeless) contributes to the experience and morbidity of schizophrenia.
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September 13, 2021
The basic premise of this book is that unlike a wooden table or a mobile phone, God/spirits/gods (“Gsg”) are not real. At best, people can have faith that Gsg exist and those same people can do things to make the Gsg seem real to them. However, those “real-making” practices do not actually make Gsg real in the same way a wooden table or a mobile phone are real. This induced reality is a sort of second tier reality available to and useful for only the person(s) engaged in the “real-making”.
Starting from this perspective – which is ultimately rooted in the anti-spiritual version of science taught in most Western universities – T.M. Luhrmann talks about “faith frames” and “paracosms” and the practices various religious groups have developed to make Gsg “real” to their members. Luhrmann discusses witches in London, newly orthodox Jews in San Diego, Catholics in an African-American parish in San Diego, Christian evangelicals in Chicago, San Francisco, Chennai (India) and Accra (Ghana), Santeria in San Diego, as well as some personal experiences. These are extremely interesting discussions.
Luhrmann also includes more general comments on prayer, individual predilections and talents, statistics regarding religious beliefs and the intellectual framework for anthropology. In these discussions, Luhrmann notes that the “real-making” practices people adopt with respect to Gsg can have significant effects for the people who engage in them: including improved health, happiness and longevity. Luhrmann also points out that the majority of U.S. residents believe Gsg are real.
Given the material Luhrmann presents and the neutrality expected of anthropologists, what is puzzling is Luhrmann’s starting point: Gsg are not real. That position is neither necessary nor helpful. It is especially puzzling given that that view is a minority position in the United States and throughout the world.
There can be no doubt that it would be awkward in 2020 – the year How God Becomes Real was published – for an anthropologist at Stanford (where Luhrmann teaches) to assert in a professionally-oriented publication that Gsg have an ontological status no less robust, valid and secure than a wooden table. Luhrmann has not put herself in that awkward position.
Instead, Luhrmann has implicitly gone along with the standard, anti-spiritual position of the sciences as taught at Stanford and elsewhere. But that anti-spiritual stance amounts to a claim to know what does not exist; namely, Gsg. Any such claim bristles with arrogance – one must be omniscient to know conclusively what does not exist – and it is especially problematic in the context of anthropological work. This point is acknowledged by Luhrmann in Chapter 7 (p. 182-3). But she remains tied to her position of “real-making” which implicitly says Gsg are not real. Gsg do not exist.
It is not clear why Luhrmann has aligned herself with this anti-spiritual version of science. She often points to the idea that Gsg are invisible – as if visibility were a reliable indicator of ontological status – a notion that radio waves quickly disprove. She also states, at page 183: “I myself struggle personally with the idea of an invisible other somehow out there, sitting apart, a man with a beard in the sky.” But surely this is not her adult conception of Gsg. If that childish image is how she thinks about Gsg then one can only wonder why she hasn’t given more thought to this matter.
In any event, Luhrmann has unnecessarily decided to deny the reality of Gsg. She could have remained agnostic on the point. Luhrmann’s ultimate interest appears to be not the truth of a belief in Gsg but rather a curiosity as to how people who believe in Gsg can devise ways to communicate with Gsg. This question can be viewed as a specific case of how do humans communicate with non-human sentient beings: a dolphin, a crow, an octopus, a chimpanzee? A Gsg.
If Luhrman were to frame the matter in this way, the ontological status of Gsg would not be relevant – it could be explicitly viewed as indeterminate and set aside – and the methodologies used by people would then become the sole focus of the discussion. It is unfortunate Luhrmann did not take this approach. As it is, there is a condescending air to her work which undermines both trust in her observations and confidence in her analysis.
Starting from this perspective – which is ultimately rooted in the anti-spiritual version of science taught in most Western universities – T.M. Luhrmann talks about “faith frames” and “paracosms” and the practices various religious groups have developed to make Gsg “real” to their members. Luhrmann discusses witches in London, newly orthodox Jews in San Diego, Catholics in an African-American parish in San Diego, Christian evangelicals in Chicago, San Francisco, Chennai (India) and Accra (Ghana), Santeria in San Diego, as well as some personal experiences. These are extremely interesting discussions.
Luhrmann also includes more general comments on prayer, individual predilections and talents, statistics regarding religious beliefs and the intellectual framework for anthropology. In these discussions, Luhrmann notes that the “real-making” practices people adopt with respect to Gsg can have significant effects for the people who engage in them: including improved health, happiness and longevity. Luhrmann also points out that the majority of U.S. residents believe Gsg are real.
Given the material Luhrmann presents and the neutrality expected of anthropologists, what is puzzling is Luhrmann’s starting point: Gsg are not real. That position is neither necessary nor helpful. It is especially puzzling given that that view is a minority position in the United States and throughout the world.
There can be no doubt that it would be awkward in 2020 – the year How God Becomes Real was published – for an anthropologist at Stanford (where Luhrmann teaches) to assert in a professionally-oriented publication that Gsg have an ontological status no less robust, valid and secure than a wooden table. Luhrmann has not put herself in that awkward position.
Instead, Luhrmann has implicitly gone along with the standard, anti-spiritual position of the sciences as taught at Stanford and elsewhere. But that anti-spiritual stance amounts to a claim to know what does not exist; namely, Gsg. Any such claim bristles with arrogance – one must be omniscient to know conclusively what does not exist – and it is especially problematic in the context of anthropological work. This point is acknowledged by Luhrmann in Chapter 7 (p. 182-3). But she remains tied to her position of “real-making” which implicitly says Gsg are not real. Gsg do not exist.
It is not clear why Luhrmann has aligned herself with this anti-spiritual version of science. She often points to the idea that Gsg are invisible – as if visibility were a reliable indicator of ontological status – a notion that radio waves quickly disprove. She also states, at page 183: “I myself struggle personally with the idea of an invisible other somehow out there, sitting apart, a man with a beard in the sky.” But surely this is not her adult conception of Gsg. If that childish image is how she thinks about Gsg then one can only wonder why she hasn’t given more thought to this matter.
In any event, Luhrmann has unnecessarily decided to deny the reality of Gsg. She could have remained agnostic on the point. Luhrmann’s ultimate interest appears to be not the truth of a belief in Gsg but rather a curiosity as to how people who believe in Gsg can devise ways to communicate with Gsg. This question can be viewed as a specific case of how do humans communicate with non-human sentient beings: a dolphin, a crow, an octopus, a chimpanzee? A Gsg.
If Luhrman were to frame the matter in this way, the ontological status of Gsg would not be relevant – it could be explicitly viewed as indeterminate and set aside – and the methodologies used by people would then become the sole focus of the discussion. It is unfortunate Luhrmann did not take this approach. As it is, there is a condescending air to her work which undermines both trust in her observations and confidence in her analysis.
July 25, 2023
In this book, Tanya Luhrmann conducts an anthropological inquiry into people’s experience of deities – the invisible other. She sees that the deities become real for people, and are experienced as autonomous beings with agency, through the human practice of real-making (the first of her many neologisms). People accustom themselves to live in a paracosm – another neologism, meaning imaginative world – where “gods and spirits matter [and] must be made relevant by learning to feel that gods and spirits are real, sometimes in vividly sensory ways” (183). Through narrative, embodied worship and continuous practice, people activate “the [human] capacity to imagine that makes religion possible” (xi). They concretize the abstract and make it present to their own lives. Luhrmann argues that this is how religious practices endure; it is this real-making that changes its practitioners to the gods’ presence and efficacy. In her own words, it kindles a sense of response that reinforces the worshippers’ faith-frame, and enables them to form relationships with the deities.
Luhrmann conducts various ethnographic studies and analyzes her results with a comparative phenomenology method. This allows her to question much conventional wisdom in studying religion. How do we study religious experience? Does belief or practice come first, and to what extent does worship shape belief? Is the scholarly dismissal of its authenticity justified or does it spring from the Cartesian dualism between body and mind? Can we reach different conclusions by studying the sensory experience? Can scholars seriously study the gods as autonomous beings in relationship with humans?
I found her conclusions satisfying and thorough on the individual anthropological level. Yet the fact that some of the experiments were conducted for this particular book while others draw on earlier work and different contexts, made it unclear where to set boundaries between her current and previous research. Other elements also made her book rather difficult to read were her (ironically!) informal writing style and her many neologisms. The former – though it helped make the book accessible to a wide audience – often left me lost and longing for more theoretical grounding. The latter was distracting and felt excessive; by the middle of the book, one could no longer follow without making a list of her numerous neologisms. Yet it allowed her to create her own paracosm in the book. Maybe that was her purpose all along.
Luhrmann conducts various ethnographic studies and analyzes her results with a comparative phenomenology method. This allows her to question much conventional wisdom in studying religion. How do we study religious experience? Does belief or practice come first, and to what extent does worship shape belief? Is the scholarly dismissal of its authenticity justified or does it spring from the Cartesian dualism between body and mind? Can we reach different conclusions by studying the sensory experience? Can scholars seriously study the gods as autonomous beings in relationship with humans?
I found her conclusions satisfying and thorough on the individual anthropological level. Yet the fact that some of the experiments were conducted for this particular book while others draw on earlier work and different contexts, made it unclear where to set boundaries between her current and previous research. Other elements also made her book rather difficult to read were her (ironically!) informal writing style and her many neologisms. The former – though it helped make the book accessible to a wide audience – often left me lost and longing for more theoretical grounding. The latter was distracting and felt excessive; by the middle of the book, one could no longer follow without making a list of her numerous neologisms. Yet it allowed her to create her own paracosm in the book. Maybe that was her purpose all along.
May 13, 2022
As a pastor, I would be very careful who I recommended this to.
It was a fascinating phenomenological description of how people experience the presence of the supernatural. The sociologist who wrote it did extensive ethnographic research with religious groups, including charismatic evangelicals.
The book does not take a position of the existence of God, gods, or spirits of any kind. But, because spiritual experiences are described in very naturalistic terms, explaining the mental, emotional, and social factors that are catalysts for them, it could easily undermine the faith of people who already wonder, "Is this just in my head?" That is a question has bothered me personally over the years, and there are past versions of me who would not have been able to handle this book.
However, there is a lot that is illuminating in this book. There is some good in seeing your community and experience from an outside perspective. So, for some people, this might be good. For most, there is no need to prioritize this book. But for some, I'd advice them to steer clear.
Of course, the physiological, psychological, and sociological descriptions of spiritual experiences don't have to undermine faith any more than knowing the brain chemicals and social constructs involved in attachment, love, and romance undermine love. Both levels of explanation can be true.
It was a fascinating phenomenological description of how people experience the presence of the supernatural. The sociologist who wrote it did extensive ethnographic research with religious groups, including charismatic evangelicals.
The book does not take a position of the existence of God, gods, or spirits of any kind. But, because spiritual experiences are described in very naturalistic terms, explaining the mental, emotional, and social factors that are catalysts for them, it could easily undermine the faith of people who already wonder, "Is this just in my head?" That is a question has bothered me personally over the years, and there are past versions of me who would not have been able to handle this book.
However, there is a lot that is illuminating in this book. There is some good in seeing your community and experience from an outside perspective. So, for some people, this might be good. For most, there is no need to prioritize this book. But for some, I'd advice them to steer clear.
Of course, the physiological, psychological, and sociological descriptions of spiritual experiences don't have to undermine faith any more than knowing the brain chemicals and social constructs involved in attachment, love, and romance undermine love. Both levels of explanation can be true.
June 9, 2024
This is a book that I have been eager to read for quite some time. The basic question T.M. Luhrmann tries to answer, from an anthropologist's point of view, is how invisible beings (gods and spirits) come to be experienced as real by many people.
Having grown up in a very religious family, the existence and reality of ("the Christian") god was, for the longest time in my life, a given. Hearing about god, talking to him through prayer and listening to him through the reading of the Bible were as normal to me as breakfast is to most other people. It's been some years since this has changed for me, and although I have found some answers of my own, I was very curious to find out how Luhrmann would respond to the question of how it was possible that it all had seemed so real to me back then.
One of the most important things when it comes to making gods real, according to Luhrmann, is what she calls the faith frame. The faith frame can be defined as a "special way of thinking, expecting, and remembering" through which a believer interprets the world. When a believer prays for something - say for the healing of some illness - he is actively expecting it. If he gets well, as it often happens to believers and nonbelievers alike, his expectation will be fulfilled and he will feel that his prayer was answered. Additionally, he is very likely to remember this answered prayer. From what I understood, the faith frame includes a strong bias against remembering events, such as unheard prayers or other difficult experiences, as they are not easily reconciled with, for example, the image of a loving god.
The church, or other religious communities, also play an important role in this: The goal of their meetings is to strengthen this faith frame and encourage people to see the world through it more and more. Additionally, in such a context, stories about the invisible others play an important role, and enrich the believers' imagination about the entities.
Through the faith frame, and often with the support of religious community, people manage to develop a relationship with the invisible other(s). Something like this can be called a parasocial relationship, as the content of the relationship occurs (as far as science can tell) largely in the person's head, using his or her imagination.
While I also claimed to have had a relationship with god back when I still was a believer, I never seemed to have felt it as intensely "real" as some of my fellow believers. The explanation Luhrmann has for this is that there is a certain character trait, called absorption, which, in her studies, correlates with a higher likeliness of experiencing the realness of invisible others. Absorption can be defined as the human capacity to be immersed in the world of senses and is closely related to imagination. I would probably score relatively low on a test for absorption, which would explain why my experience of a relationship with god was not as vivid.
More generally, Luhrmann claims: "Some people are more willing to blur the line between inner mind and outer world, so that which must be inwardly imagined comes to feel more autonomous, more agentic, more given from without."
The interesting thing about such parasocial relationships is that they are, from a neurological perspective, almost indistinguishable from social relationships with other people. This means it comes with benefits such as an increased feeling of belonging and generally increased well-being - at least as long as the believer has a positive understanding of god: "the more people pray to a god they feel loves them, the healthier they become, but the more they pray to a god they feel judges them, the more psychiatric symptoms they report."
There are many more interesting details that Luhrmann studied and explains in the book. I found this to be an amazing read that enriched my understanding of the dynamics of believing in god and helped me retrospect my own religious past even better.
In my current understanding, the experience of love is what actually renders the world meaningful. Some people might have such an experience through a parasocial relationship with god, but factors such as one's absorption ability and the religious context strongly shape the experienced realness of such a relationship. At least for me it seems not possible anymore to experience god as real. What I can truly and deeply experience instead, is the love for and of the people closest around me.
With regards to religion, I have a strong liking for Peter Rollins' understanding of god, not as a being or a divine personality, but rather as what we find "in the very act of love itself". Thus, "when God is found in love itself, then the very act of loving brings us into immediate relationship with the deepest truth of all". I think this is a beautiful way god can become real, even after losing one's faith in the all-powerful, invisible being up there in the sky.
Having grown up in a very religious family, the existence and reality of ("the Christian") god was, for the longest time in my life, a given. Hearing about god, talking to him through prayer and listening to him through the reading of the Bible were as normal to me as breakfast is to most other people. It's been some years since this has changed for me, and although I have found some answers of my own, I was very curious to find out how Luhrmann would respond to the question of how it was possible that it all had seemed so real to me back then.
One of the most important things when it comes to making gods real, according to Luhrmann, is what she calls the faith frame. The faith frame can be defined as a "special way of thinking, expecting, and remembering" through which a believer interprets the world. When a believer prays for something - say for the healing of some illness - he is actively expecting it. If he gets well, as it often happens to believers and nonbelievers alike, his expectation will be fulfilled and he will feel that his prayer was answered. Additionally, he is very likely to remember this answered prayer. From what I understood, the faith frame includes a strong bias against remembering events, such as unheard prayers or other difficult experiences, as they are not easily reconciled with, for example, the image of a loving god.
The church, or other religious communities, also play an important role in this: The goal of their meetings is to strengthen this faith frame and encourage people to see the world through it more and more. Additionally, in such a context, stories about the invisible others play an important role, and enrich the believers' imagination about the entities.
Through the faith frame, and often with the support of religious community, people manage to develop a relationship with the invisible other(s). Something like this can be called a parasocial relationship, as the content of the relationship occurs (as far as science can tell) largely in the person's head, using his or her imagination.
While I also claimed to have had a relationship with god back when I still was a believer, I never seemed to have felt it as intensely "real" as some of my fellow believers. The explanation Luhrmann has for this is that there is a certain character trait, called absorption, which, in her studies, correlates with a higher likeliness of experiencing the realness of invisible others. Absorption can be defined as the human capacity to be immersed in the world of senses and is closely related to imagination. I would probably score relatively low on a test for absorption, which would explain why my experience of a relationship with god was not as vivid.
More generally, Luhrmann claims: "Some people are more willing to blur the line between inner mind and outer world, so that which must be inwardly imagined comes to feel more autonomous, more agentic, more given from without."
The interesting thing about such parasocial relationships is that they are, from a neurological perspective, almost indistinguishable from social relationships with other people. This means it comes with benefits such as an increased feeling of belonging and generally increased well-being - at least as long as the believer has a positive understanding of god: "the more people pray to a god they feel loves them, the healthier they become, but the more they pray to a god they feel judges them, the more psychiatric symptoms they report."
There are many more interesting details that Luhrmann studied and explains in the book. I found this to be an amazing read that enriched my understanding of the dynamics of believing in god and helped me retrospect my own religious past even better.
In my current understanding, the experience of love is what actually renders the world meaningful. Some people might have such an experience through a parasocial relationship with god, but factors such as one's absorption ability and the religious context strongly shape the experienced realness of such a relationship. At least for me it seems not possible anymore to experience god as real. What I can truly and deeply experience instead, is the love for and of the people closest around me.
With regards to religion, I have a strong liking for Peter Rollins' understanding of god, not as a being or a divine personality, but rather as what we find "in the very act of love itself". Thus, "when God is found in love itself, then the very act of loving brings us into immediate relationship with the deepest truth of all". I think this is a beautiful way god can become real, even after losing one's faith in the all-powerful, invisible being up there in the sky.
November 17, 2023
In the past, I've written articles for Christian Century, The Banner, and a Christianity Today blog that questioned whether one can have a personal relationship with God or Jesus--at least in the most obvious grammatical sense. You can't share a glass of wine, phone or email God and expect a similar response. You can't go to a theatre and hear Jesus preach and then ask questions after. Etc. etc.
People respond to these articles not by arguing the logic, but by describing the experience of their personal relationships with the divine. In this book, Luhrmann explains the social practices, the settings, the psychology, the spiritual kindling and attunement that allows people to put their trust in these experiences, to really have them, regardless of whether or not there really is a god in that relationship.
I might have thought she would spend more time on how parents and teachers might model what having a personal relationship is like--though she certainly alludes to the import of this several times.
Great book. In reading about how important this personal relationship is in Evangelical circles--for creating growth and inviting deeper engagement with the community as a whole--it raises lots of questions for mainline Christians like me. Questions like, "well, what do I got?"
People respond to these articles not by arguing the logic, but by describing the experience of their personal relationships with the divine. In this book, Luhrmann explains the social practices, the settings, the psychology, the spiritual kindling and attunement that allows people to put their trust in these experiences, to really have them, regardless of whether or not there really is a god in that relationship.
I might have thought she would spend more time on how parents and teachers might model what having a personal relationship is like--though she certainly alludes to the import of this several times.
Great book. In reading about how important this personal relationship is in Evangelical circles--for creating growth and inviting deeper engagement with the community as a whole--it raises lots of questions for mainline Christians like me. Questions like, "well, what do I got?"
May 29, 2023
This was a super interesting book, and I’m glad I came across it. I believe I heard about the author from Michael Shermer’s podcast, and I wasn’t sure if I’d like the book or not, but I loved it. If you’re at all interested in psychology or anthropology, you’ll really enjoy this book. In this book, Luhrmann is trying to figure out why people believe in God, and she also wants to better understand the rituals of people from various religions.
She has a lot of interviews with various people from different faiths and tries to figure out why they do what they do and how they came to believe. For example, one question that comes up throughout the book is, “How do you know it’s God talking to you and not your own inner dialogue?”, and the answers are super interesting.
Unlike some other books, this one doesn’t poke fun at the religious or explain why they’re wrong for believing. If nothing else, it’s filled with non-judgmental curiosity, and that’s what made me love it so much.
She has a lot of interviews with various people from different faiths and tries to figure out why they do what they do and how they came to believe. For example, one question that comes up throughout the book is, “How do you know it’s God talking to you and not your own inner dialogue?”, and the answers are super interesting.
Unlike some other books, this one doesn’t poke fun at the religious or explain why they’re wrong for believing. If nothing else, it’s filled with non-judgmental curiosity, and that’s what made me love it so much.
November 14, 2021
I set out to understand how gods and spirits can be real for someone without presuming that gods and spirits are present in the world like tables and chairs (if I did, I might have to conclude that their beliefs are false) and without presuming that their words are mere metaphors (if I did, I would imply that god and spirits are not real for the person I am speaking with). This puzzle has been at the heart of my work for decades.
My solution has been to understand how gods and spirits are made real for people through human practices and come to be experienced as genuinely autonomous - as agents in people's lives. I have come to see that people have ontological commitments, faith frames, in which gods and spirits matter - but that those commitments must be made relevant by learning to feel that gods and spirits are real, sometimes in vividly sensory ways.
T.M. Luhrmann
My solution has been to understand how gods and spirits are made real for people through human practices and come to be experienced as genuinely autonomous - as agents in people's lives. I have come to see that people have ontological commitments, faith frames, in which gods and spirits matter - but that those commitments must be made relevant by learning to feel that gods and spirits are real, sometimes in vividly sensory ways.
T.M. Luhrmann
December 12, 2024
I wanna gush!! I love this approach to CogSci of Religion.
No shade to more analytical philosophy/ phenomenology, but it just doesn't connect & resonate with me on the same deep level (level of participatory knowing). As Luhrmann mentions: school 1 with Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Levinas; vs school 2, Karl Jaspers, William James. School 2 just seems so much real to me, because it connects to our actual experience, instead of removing experience from itself (through analysis to death).. Which is a symptom of the Blind Spot. Hehe, all those books interweave with each other.
Meek's Contact with Reality is interesting because it's also very sincere/ heartfelt (which is of high value/ import to me), even though it's much more philosophically dense. It's important that a text or our way of thinking doesn't have to be "objective" (if that were even possible; but we try to get there via abstractions/ removal from personal reality) to be philosophically rigorous. And if ultimately rationality is about care (not an argument I'm gonna go into it rn, but it's a serious one to be considered), then actually, it can't be removed from our personal cares & concerns, our personal reality.
No shade to more analytical philosophy/ phenomenology, but it just doesn't connect & resonate with me on the same deep level (level of participatory knowing). As Luhrmann mentions: school 1 with Husserl, Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty, Sartre, Levinas; vs school 2, Karl Jaspers, William James. School 2 just seems so much real to me, because it connects to our actual experience, instead of removing experience from itself (through analysis to death).. Which is a symptom of the Blind Spot. Hehe, all those books interweave with each other.
Meek's Contact with Reality is interesting because it's also very sincere/ heartfelt (which is of high value/ import to me), even though it's much more philosophically dense. It's important that a text or our way of thinking doesn't have to be "objective" (if that were even possible; but we try to get there via abstractions/ removal from personal reality) to be philosophically rigorous. And if ultimately rationality is about care (not an argument I'm gonna go into it rn, but it's a serious one to be considered), then actually, it can't be removed from our personal cares & concerns, our personal reality.
December 25, 2024
This was a pretty cool book. Cognitive science of religion is banging. Religion as make-belief, as worldbuilding, as relationship (can I get an amen?!).
Why do people believe that invisible beings exist and that they can talk to them? Well, maybe because we construct a mental landscape where we allow ourselves to believe it to be true. Pretty cool!
…if we understand gods first and foremost as in relationship with humans, the real-making seems naturally part of the process.
Why do people believe that invisible beings exist and that they can talk to them? Well, maybe because we construct a mental landscape where we allow ourselves to believe it to be true. Pretty cool!
Read
December 14, 2025I read this book for class, so I'm not going to give it a rating. The most interesting part was reading about her fieldwork experiences which actually intrigued me. The rest of her book (including her overall conclusions) were hidden behind a level of academic prowess that I apparently do not possess. I'm sure it's a good book, just not great for an intro level anthropology course.
Read
January 4, 2023Luhrmann went to great lengths to make this collection of essays easy to read and ya know I really appreciate that
April 2, 2022
It has taken me forever to rate/review this book because I never feel like I’m finished with it. But I *have* read it. It’s just not the kind of book you read straight through.
Tanya Luhrmann’s research has influenced and impacted me more than anybody else’s (except for maybe my advisor’s…*maybe*). This book is genius, life-clarifying. It’s so good that it’s hard to read because it makes me feel angry and jealous any time I open it. It’s always within arm’s reach in my office.
Tanya Luhrmann’s research has influenced and impacted me more than anybody else’s (except for maybe my advisor’s…*maybe*). This book is genius, life-clarifying. It’s so good that it’s hard to read because it makes me feel angry and jealous any time I open it. It’s always within arm’s reach in my office.
February 7, 2022
Phenomenology of discerning invisible presences...what does "discerning spirits" feel like? This stuff fascinates me to no end.
May 11, 2022
For philosophical interestingness and depth, I'd give this book a lower rating; but this is my first time reading an academic anthropology book, and I suppose that given its genre, this book is normal for barely touching upon any of the underlying philosophy of mind or cognitive processes that are presupposed by the author's central claims. Luhrmann's main thesis can be summed up as thus: Religious faith doesn't consist solely in belief, but also in one's phenomenal experience of interacting with god as a real being, who is external to and independent from oneself. She doesn't argue for this thesis per say, but presents empirical evidence of case studies of people's experiences, and explains these case studies in terms that would support this thesis.
Her main empirical claims are that (1) religions employ narratives that involve visual or sensory descriptions, and these are conducive towards practitioners's having emotional, perceptual, or imaginative experiences that go beyond mere belief, (2) religions involve training their practitioners to become capable of having such experiences, and the predisposition of suggestibility helps practitioners accomplish this, (3) religions vary with respect to their implicit views on how distinct the mind is from the external world, and this modulates the kinds of 'symptoms' or real-life experiences that are taken to be manifestations of god's presence, and (4) practitioners report various sorts of feedback or response from god, and they have relationships with god not unlike social relationships.
Again, Luhrmann doesn't argue for any of these points, nor does she examine the underlying assumptions that drive them; she only presents reports of her interactions with various religious practitioners and explains them in terms of her framework. My biggest dissatisfaction is that she doesn't even define belief and how it differs from this alternative sense of reality that practitioners ascribe to god. She talks about this sense of reality as being based in god's apparent capacity to talk back to practitioners, or god's apparent powers to cause the events they see around themselves -- but why is this sense of reality not reducible to belief? What's wrong with the concept of belief? I am sympathetic to that the term belief has been used to refer to a diverse array of kinds of attitudes we can hold towards a thing that we take to be real, and I wish the author explored further what these attitudes might be and how they're related to one another.
Luhrmann's claims are all commonsensical and plausible, as a whole, so I'm confused why she proposes her thesis as if it's controversial and requires such extensive first-hand testimony of watching religious practitioners in order to support it. It is obvious that religious people feel the presence of god; some of our beliefs are not accompanied by feeling of the presence of the contents of the belief (e.g., belief that our hand is actually empty space, given quantum phenomena), and so religious belief is distinct from these. It is obvious that prayer, ritual, and other practices are important for helping a person be capable of such feeling-based belief in god. Perhaps the only not automatically intuitive claim Luhrmann makes is that religious practitioners often struggle with accessing god's presence, and have to put in a lot of effort to access this. This involves questioning whether inner voices are their own or god's, for example, and being skeptical of whether other people in their faith community are sincere when they claim access to god, especially in ways that are deemed by the community as ideal or reflective of greatest faith.
For readers interested in how abstract, imaginative, or spatio-temporally remote objects can show up to us as real, I'd recommend the more theoretically rich books: Harris's Trusting What You're Told, Gibson's Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, and Tomasello's Becoming Human.
Some additional thoughts: it seems obvious that action and practice are required to make god really show up as present to someone. If one never prayed within a religious community, came from an atheist background, and just read wikipedia articles describing god, for example, god would fail to have a presence (e.g., seem to speak to one in one's mind), but would rather be apprehended in a faint way as reading any foreign fact on wikipedia would. What is really going on here that allows god to take on a presence? Some highly tentative and general guesses: practices, like prayer, are similar to other practices found in everyday life, like requesting things from friends. Performing the action, but now towards a new object, god rather than a friend, perhaps enables features of the old type of action to get 'imported' into this new type. Also, we seem to spontaneously come to see the world from what we take the perspectives of people whom we trust to be; so if one is surrounded by community members who see the world a certain way, this could create conditions for one to come to see it in this way, too. Also, perhaps when we perform an action in earnest and feel feedback from the world, from what we've intervened with respect to, the nature of this feedback can be very abstract and nonetheless be registered as feedback, which allows for abstract things like god to take on a presence. When one prays in earnest, perhaps a warm feeling arises inside, and if one imagines or interprets that to be god's presence, then this reinforces to one the sense of god's presence; reading wikipedia articles or contemplating things generally without action doesn't possibly yield such feedback that results from our action into what we take to the causal order that makes up reality.
Her main empirical claims are that (1) religions employ narratives that involve visual or sensory descriptions, and these are conducive towards practitioners's having emotional, perceptual, or imaginative experiences that go beyond mere belief, (2) religions involve training their practitioners to become capable of having such experiences, and the predisposition of suggestibility helps practitioners accomplish this, (3) religions vary with respect to their implicit views on how distinct the mind is from the external world, and this modulates the kinds of 'symptoms' or real-life experiences that are taken to be manifestations of god's presence, and (4) practitioners report various sorts of feedback or response from god, and they have relationships with god not unlike social relationships.
Again, Luhrmann doesn't argue for any of these points, nor does she examine the underlying assumptions that drive them; she only presents reports of her interactions with various religious practitioners and explains them in terms of her framework. My biggest dissatisfaction is that she doesn't even define belief and how it differs from this alternative sense of reality that practitioners ascribe to god. She talks about this sense of reality as being based in god's apparent capacity to talk back to practitioners, or god's apparent powers to cause the events they see around themselves -- but why is this sense of reality not reducible to belief? What's wrong with the concept of belief? I am sympathetic to that the term belief has been used to refer to a diverse array of kinds of attitudes we can hold towards a thing that we take to be real, and I wish the author explored further what these attitudes might be and how they're related to one another.
Luhrmann's claims are all commonsensical and plausible, as a whole, so I'm confused why she proposes her thesis as if it's controversial and requires such extensive first-hand testimony of watching religious practitioners in order to support it. It is obvious that religious people feel the presence of god; some of our beliefs are not accompanied by feeling of the presence of the contents of the belief (e.g., belief that our hand is actually empty space, given quantum phenomena), and so religious belief is distinct from these. It is obvious that prayer, ritual, and other practices are important for helping a person be capable of such feeling-based belief in god. Perhaps the only not automatically intuitive claim Luhrmann makes is that religious practitioners often struggle with accessing god's presence, and have to put in a lot of effort to access this. This involves questioning whether inner voices are their own or god's, for example, and being skeptical of whether other people in their faith community are sincere when they claim access to god, especially in ways that are deemed by the community as ideal or reflective of greatest faith.
For readers interested in how abstract, imaginative, or spatio-temporally remote objects can show up to us as real, I'd recommend the more theoretically rich books: Harris's Trusting What You're Told, Gibson's Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, and Tomasello's Becoming Human.
Some additional thoughts: it seems obvious that action and practice are required to make god really show up as present to someone. If one never prayed within a religious community, came from an atheist background, and just read wikipedia articles describing god, for example, god would fail to have a presence (e.g., seem to speak to one in one's mind), but would rather be apprehended in a faint way as reading any foreign fact on wikipedia would. What is really going on here that allows god to take on a presence? Some highly tentative and general guesses: practices, like prayer, are similar to other practices found in everyday life, like requesting things from friends. Performing the action, but now towards a new object, god rather than a friend, perhaps enables features of the old type of action to get 'imported' into this new type. Also, we seem to spontaneously come to see the world from what we take the perspectives of people whom we trust to be; so if one is surrounded by community members who see the world a certain way, this could create conditions for one to come to see it in this way, too. Also, perhaps when we perform an action in earnest and feel feedback from the world, from what we've intervened with respect to, the nature of this feedback can be very abstract and nonetheless be registered as feedback, which allows for abstract things like god to take on a presence. When one prays in earnest, perhaps a warm feeling arises inside, and if one imagines or interprets that to be god's presence, then this reinforces to one the sense of god's presence; reading wikipedia articles or contemplating things generally without action doesn't possibly yield such feedback that results from our action into what we take to the causal order that makes up reality.
September 4, 2022
I think this is an important book. It cleverly begins with the question: “do people worship because they believe, or do they believe because they worship?” It explores how rituals and habitual spiritual practices reframe our cognitive (and extra-cognitive) relation to the “real” world. The discussions of prayer were especially interesting, as they demonstrated how, from a psychological perspective, prayer can be as real a social relationship as any other, with all the benefits and complications that can bring. The concept of kindling, the proclivity of a spiritual event or situation to occur multiple times in a person of faith, was also helpful for me in making sense of my own childhood faith tradition.
The thing I appreciated most, however, was the tact and respect with which the author approaches practices and beliefs which she does not hold. This is an exceptional piece in that regard, though that didn’t totally become clear until the last chapter. At times, the scientific distance blurred that charity, but it was ultimately a better study for that.
The thing I appreciated most, however, was the tact and respect with which the author approaches practices and beliefs which she does not hold. This is an exceptional piece in that regard, though that didn’t totally become clear until the last chapter. At times, the scientific distance blurred that charity, but it was ultimately a better study for that.
December 19, 2025
One of the most interesting books I have read.
One idea that really made me think in How God Becomes Real is that people come to believe that God speaks to them because they learn to see their thoughts and feelings as coming from Him.
On one hand, I related to the description of prayer as a regular practice that brings you closer to God and helps you pay attention to what is happening inside you. On the other hand, the book made me more doubtful about the idea that God speaks clearly and directly to people. It made me question how much of these experiences come from God and how much come from personal beliefs, culture, or imagination.
The book also made me think that even if these experiences feel very real, that does not mean they are truly divine. When people are taught to listen for God’s voice, they may also be learning to understand their own inner thoughts in a religious way. This does not mean the experience has no value, but it makes the idea of God “speaking” less certain.
Overall, I really enjoyed the book. It made me think a lot and gave me a new perspective on how people experience God.
One idea that really made me think in How God Becomes Real is that people come to believe that God speaks to them because they learn to see their thoughts and feelings as coming from Him.
On one hand, I related to the description of prayer as a regular practice that brings you closer to God and helps you pay attention to what is happening inside you. On the other hand, the book made me more doubtful about the idea that God speaks clearly and directly to people. It made me question how much of these experiences come from God and how much come from personal beliefs, culture, or imagination.
The book also made me think that even if these experiences feel very real, that does not mean they are truly divine. When people are taught to listen for God’s voice, they may also be learning to understand their own inner thoughts in a religious way. This does not mean the experience has no value, but it makes the idea of God “speaking” less certain.
Overall, I really enjoyed the book. It made me think a lot and gave me a new perspective on how people experience God.
July 4, 2023
This review is under construction—I wrote a very long and detailed review only to have my phone drop the app cold, saving none of my progress. It nauseates me to have to rewrite all of that NOW, so I’ll return with a review for this shortly.
—————
Well, it just happened again. Alas. It’s destined not to happen.
This book is tremendously inspirational despite being/because it is a secular anthropological study. The beautiful part—for me—is that Luhrmann’s thesis is that PRAXIS PRECEDES CREED, that this praxis INFORMS and STRENGTHENS our creed, and that, done with an open heart, these practices CAN make us scientifically healthier and less lonely whether they’re “true” or not.
—————
Well, it just happened again. Alas. It’s destined not to happen.
This book is tremendously inspirational despite being/because it is a secular anthropological study. The beautiful part—for me—is that Luhrmann’s thesis is that PRAXIS PRECEDES CREED, that this praxis INFORMS and STRENGTHENS our creed, and that, done with an open heart, these practices CAN make us scientifically healthier and less lonely whether they’re “true” or not.
June 8, 2023
I found this a deeply insightful study of spiritual practice through the lens of anthropology and phenomenology. Whether gods and spirits are "real" or not is a moot point--instead, the author focuses on what it is that practitioners do to make those gods feel alive and present. These practices--prayer, mindfulness, following certain strictures like keeping kosher, being with other believers--are simple, but not easy, and such practices cross many religions and cultures. This book gave me much to think about my own spiritual practice and helped me to understand that of others.
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May 22, 2024Greatest book ever written. Ever.
An anthropologist’s perspective of how religious people come to believe what they believe. Luhrmann has a generally non-judgmental approach with a strong devotion to understanding a believer’s mindset, or “faith frame”, above all.
An anthropologist’s perspective of how religious people come to believe what they believe. Luhrmann has a generally non-judgmental approach with a strong devotion to understanding a believer’s mindset, or “faith frame”, above all.
October 31, 2024
This was good. I thought the field material was interesting and relevant (if at times lengthy), and I found the analysis compelling and useful for the most part. Decisively putting practice before belief and fleshing out what it actually means to be faithful was interesting. It's easy to strawman the faithful from the atheist/agnostic perspective as holding nonsensical beliefs, but I think Luhrmann does a good job of explaining not just why this is naive - 'ontological attitudes'/'faith frames' are distinct from beliefs - but also how these complex relations with 'invisible others' actually come about.
That being said, I think Luhrmann had a little too much fun creating her own terms, sometimes for concepts that felt understandable without a new terminology. I also have a sneaking suspicion that the structure of the book could have been better optimized. It felt a little bit like the author slapped together former research papers and crafted a rhetorical structure around this preexisting content. I would prefer it to be the other way around, where the argument takes precedence over evidence in terms of the structure and flow of the presentation. But honestly I have no idea if this is what she did - all I want to really say is that the ordering of the book felt a bit choppy at points and I was wanting a bit more flow.
So I'm pretty happy with it. Luhrmann writes in a generally accessible style, punctuated by the occasional inexplicable piece of esoteric jargon (which contrasts comically with the overall casual style), and did not feel dull or impenetrable. I enjoyed the focus she puts on phenomenology and the felt experiences of the faithful, and it was cool to see a different, more anthropological perspective on this area as opposed to the individualistic, psychological one of William James. This might just be one of the last tomes I toss absentmindedly into the bonfire at moonlight beach.
That being said, I think Luhrmann had a little too much fun creating her own terms, sometimes for concepts that felt understandable without a new terminology. I also have a sneaking suspicion that the structure of the book could have been better optimized. It felt a little bit like the author slapped together former research papers and crafted a rhetorical structure around this preexisting content. I would prefer it to be the other way around, where the argument takes precedence over evidence in terms of the structure and flow of the presentation. But honestly I have no idea if this is what she did - all I want to really say is that the ordering of the book felt a bit choppy at points and I was wanting a bit more flow.
So I'm pretty happy with it. Luhrmann writes in a generally accessible style, punctuated by the occasional inexplicable piece of esoteric jargon (which contrasts comically with the overall casual style), and did not feel dull or impenetrable. I enjoyed the focus she puts on phenomenology and the felt experiences of the faithful, and it was cool to see a different, more anthropological perspective on this area as opposed to the individualistic, psychological one of William James. This might just be one of the last tomes I toss absentmindedly into the bonfire at moonlight beach.
July 19, 2022
As an evangelical Christian-turned-agnostic atheist I'm continuously fascinated by the subject of faith. Lurhmann's phenomenological approach to understanding how we sustain faith in invisible others is summed up in the final chapter and the reason I found this book so insightful:
"I think that if you want to understand faith, you should focus on relationship as well as belief...To understand gods and spirits as relationships is truer to the human experience of faith. It is also more respectful. I myself struggle personally with the idea of an invisible other somehow out there, sitting apart, a man with a beard in the sky. You might say that I do not believe that such a god exists. But I find it uncomfortable to characterize what one might call believers as having false beliefs. I find it more honest to proceed with what the philosopher Donald Davidson (1984) called the principle of charity: to set out to understand how a statement (“I believe in God”) is true for someone within the context of our shared understanding. I set out to understand how gods and spirits can be real for someone without presuming that gods and spirits are present in the world like tables and chairs (if I did, I might have to conclude that their beliefs are false) and without presuming that their words are mere metaphors (if I did, I would imply that gods and spirits are not real for the person I am speaking with). This puzzle has been at the heart of my work for decades."
"I think that if you want to understand faith, you should focus on relationship as well as belief...To understand gods and spirits as relationships is truer to the human experience of faith. It is also more respectful. I myself struggle personally with the idea of an invisible other somehow out there, sitting apart, a man with a beard in the sky. You might say that I do not believe that such a god exists. But I find it uncomfortable to characterize what one might call believers as having false beliefs. I find it more honest to proceed with what the philosopher Donald Davidson (1984) called the principle of charity: to set out to understand how a statement (“I believe in God”) is true for someone within the context of our shared understanding. I set out to understand how gods and spirits can be real for someone without presuming that gods and spirits are present in the world like tables and chairs (if I did, I might have to conclude that their beliefs are false) and without presuming that their words are mere metaphors (if I did, I would imply that gods and spirits are not real for the person I am speaking with). This puzzle has been at the heart of my work for decades."
March 27, 2022
I read When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God several years ago and found it fascinating- a book about the practices of a particular American evangelical Christian denomination. This kind of expands on the research from that book by exploring the practices of members of several other religions as well and examining how they work to experience God, and it's pretty interesting.
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August 2, 2022Z rozhovoru s Tanyou Luhrmann: „Je těžké se v jedno úterní ráno vzbudit a říct si, že do odpoledne budete věřit v boha. Uvěřit v to, že se o vás hluboce zajímá neviditelný duch, jde proti intuici. Lidé do kostela chodí, aby si připomněli, že je bůh skutečný. Víra je tedy pozoruhodná: u jiných přesvědčení přece myšlenku, které věříte, nepotřebujete aktivně prosazovat,“ říká Tanya Luhrmannová, antropoložka ze Stanfordovy univerzity a autorka knihy o tom, jak se bůh stává reálným.
Celý rozhovor tu: https://denikn.cz/925702/i-jezisova-r...
Celý rozhovor tu: https://denikn.cz/925702/i-jezisova-r...
September 20, 2024
Extremely good, of course this is the kind of book that I would like.
I will expand on this later, but my one frustration is that some of what she says is obvious--for example, WRT prayer and meditation. To me it feels obvious that prayer is a kind of metacognitve restructuring, and that it is similar both to Eastern meditation and to CBT, etc. It feels like anyone would realize this if they took religion seriously from an atheist's perspective....*
Much of the book is like this. I am extremely interested in her field work with American evangelicals and with "witches," and the kind of mental techniques she claims are trainable--to become more 'absorbed,' which I am naturally disposed to by disposition... to me, it's interconnected with aesthetic experience and the philosophical view that aesthetic experience is about disinterest, which in this case of course means disinterest v/a/v instrumental or goal-oriented reasoning. (I now have a slightly urgent sense that I need to write all of this down, because if this scholar can write a whole chapter on something obvious about prayer, maybe it isn't so obvious after all... and maybe I don't want to get scooped...) It's also strange to realize how much the cultivation of "prayer" and talking with God is a specific thing, with obvious echoes of schizophrenia... one motif that also pops up everywhere is how anthropomorphizng humans are: and so it's apparently not that difficult to get us to halluciante full-on people and hear voices. That is, I think the naive reaction I have is like: schizophrenia is one disorder among many (like addiction). But the reformed reaction is something like: schizophrenia/mania are the archetypical madness. (Much like how addiction is the archetypical problem in abundant societies--in liberal times.)
It also, I guess, emphasizes the sense in which actual religious people are both crazy (they perceive things that aren't there, orient their life around something to which others at least don't have access) and, specifically, are doing something that atheists aren't. I like, and agree with, TML's skepticism about the view that (I associate it with Charles Taylor, Baudrillard--I once argued with Kenzie about this--and some of the supposedly liberal critics of literalists like Sam Harris) the kind of people studied by anthroplogists really don't make a distinction between invisivble things and visible ones. She says: Of course they do, in fact, the point of all this ritual is in fact to make you believe. I think that's a healthy corrective....
I had an experience, readng this book, of fear: Like Oliver Sacks' Hallucinations (from which I heard of TML, I think, and which, funnily, is itself cited herein--he referenced an earlier work of hers): of fear, of realizing that the mind is permeable, that it's possible to become more 'absorbant' and lose touch with reality... Relately, it's interesting to me that you can train your ability to visualize... I am extremely interested in this: She at least purports that she was able. It sounds strange because I associated visualization with spatial abilities, which feel like the kind of thing that intelligence people say you can't train.... But of course: The fear is that I am already too receptive and absorbant, and that I shouldn't take risks with my own mind.... But the experience was fear intermingled with excitement, because the book was so captivatingly interesting that it literally exhilarated me, and so I couldn't sleep.
This book is full of references, I had to switch from an audio to print version, because I wantd to read all of them. It's like when I read The Denial of Death and was suddenly exposed to a great canon of books I had never heard of....
You can tell that her husband is a classicist, she makes constant references to work in classics. She is also a lover of Wittgenstein (as Sacks is). Of course anthropologists love W., and the whole book is Wittgensteinian. I had that thought and then she later wrote, "There are no private language games, but[...]" Hilariously, one of her thesis advisers was Gellner, who (in some of my favorite quotes of all time)--well, goddammit, I can't find them, maybe I'll adjust this later. I instinctively trust authors who clearly read as much as TML reads (and who loves William James as much...).
But file under: meditation is everywhere. So many distinct religious or philosophical traditions encourage somethng that basically amounts to the 'loop' of mindfulness, although in different terms. (Even in the business world, or in athletics: They say to visualize, they say to engage in rituals....) That is, one confusion I had when I began meditating was: If this is so good for me, why doesn't everyone do it? It felt like the economist's "free lunch," of which there is apparently none. If I was really benefitting, why don't high achievers in other fields benefit? But in fact, the longer you poke around, the more you see it everywhere, or at least in most of the places that matter. (Just like how, investigate intellectual history, and you see that the Jews are eveywhere...) I was listening to this book of practical advice on how to improve your social skills (I may put it on here, but probably won't, because it's too embarrassing, although sometime I'd like to write out my defense of self-help books....), and, there it was: More or less explicit references to mindfulness, and propounded not by nerds who love the life of the mind, but by eminently practical people. Almost everywhere you look, drill down enough, and you'll find some variant of meditation....
I will expand on this later, but my one frustration is that some of what she says is obvious--for example, WRT prayer and meditation. To me it feels obvious that prayer is a kind of metacognitve restructuring, and that it is similar both to Eastern meditation and to CBT, etc. It feels like anyone would realize this if they took religion seriously from an atheist's perspective....*
Much of the book is like this. I am extremely interested in her field work with American evangelicals and with "witches," and the kind of mental techniques she claims are trainable--to become more 'absorbed,' which I am naturally disposed to by disposition... to me, it's interconnected with aesthetic experience and the philosophical view that aesthetic experience is about disinterest, which in this case of course means disinterest v/a/v instrumental or goal-oriented reasoning. (I now have a slightly urgent sense that I need to write all of this down, because if this scholar can write a whole chapter on something obvious about prayer, maybe it isn't so obvious after all... and maybe I don't want to get scooped...) It's also strange to realize how much the cultivation of "prayer" and talking with God is a specific thing, with obvious echoes of schizophrenia... one motif that also pops up everywhere is how anthropomorphizng humans are: and so it's apparently not that difficult to get us to halluciante full-on people and hear voices. That is, I think the naive reaction I have is like: schizophrenia is one disorder among many (like addiction). But the reformed reaction is something like: schizophrenia/mania are the archetypical madness. (Much like how addiction is the archetypical problem in abundant societies--in liberal times.)
It also, I guess, emphasizes the sense in which actual religious people are both crazy (they perceive things that aren't there, orient their life around something to which others at least don't have access) and, specifically, are doing something that atheists aren't. I like, and agree with, TML's skepticism about the view that (I associate it with Charles Taylor, Baudrillard--I once argued with Kenzie about this--and some of the supposedly liberal critics of literalists like Sam Harris) the kind of people studied by anthroplogists really don't make a distinction between invisivble things and visible ones. She says: Of course they do, in fact, the point of all this ritual is in fact to make you believe. I think that's a healthy corrective....
I had an experience, readng this book, of fear: Like Oliver Sacks' Hallucinations (from which I heard of TML, I think, and which, funnily, is itself cited herein--he referenced an earlier work of hers): of fear, of realizing that the mind is permeable, that it's possible to become more 'absorbant' and lose touch with reality... Relately, it's interesting to me that you can train your ability to visualize... I am extremely interested in this: She at least purports that she was able. It sounds strange because I associated visualization with spatial abilities, which feel like the kind of thing that intelligence people say you can't train.... But of course: The fear is that I am already too receptive and absorbant, and that I shouldn't take risks with my own mind.... But the experience was fear intermingled with excitement, because the book was so captivatingly interesting that it literally exhilarated me, and so I couldn't sleep.
This book is full of references, I had to switch from an audio to print version, because I wantd to read all of them. It's like when I read The Denial of Death and was suddenly exposed to a great canon of books I had never heard of....
You can tell that her husband is a classicist, she makes constant references to work in classics. She is also a lover of Wittgenstein (as Sacks is). Of course anthropologists love W., and the whole book is Wittgensteinian. I had that thought and then she later wrote, "There are no private language games, but[...]" Hilariously, one of her thesis advisers was Gellner, who (in some of my favorite quotes of all time)--well, goddammit, I can't find them, maybe I'll adjust this later. I instinctively trust authors who clearly read as much as TML reads (and who loves William James as much...).
But file under: meditation is everywhere. So many distinct religious or philosophical traditions encourage somethng that basically amounts to the 'loop' of mindfulness, although in different terms. (Even in the business world, or in athletics: They say to visualize, they say to engage in rituals....) That is, one confusion I had when I began meditating was: If this is so good for me, why doesn't everyone do it? It felt like the economist's "free lunch," of which there is apparently none. If I was really benefitting, why don't high achievers in other fields benefit? But in fact, the longer you poke around, the more you see it everywhere, or at least in most of the places that matter. (Just like how, investigate intellectual history, and you see that the Jews are eveywhere...) I was listening to this book of practical advice on how to improve your social skills (I may put it on here, but probably won't, because it's too embarrassing, although sometime I'd like to write out my defense of self-help books....), and, there it was: More or less explicit references to mindfulness, and propounded not by nerds who love the life of the mind, but by eminently practical people. Almost everywhere you look, drill down enough, and you'll find some variant of meditation....
September 7, 2025
"When I ponder why faith endures, I am struck by how little our theories consider two straightforward features of religion. First, religion is a practice in which people go to effort to make contact with an invisible other. Second, people who are religious want change. They want to feel differently than they do. Yet instead of exploring these features, most theories of religion begin by treating belief in an invisible other both as taken for granted and as a cognitive mistake."
Luhrman, an anthropologist of religion with training in the cognitive sciences, sets out to describe how belief in invisible others -- gods, angels, spirits-- is "kindled". Such beliefs must be kindled, she argues-- because invisible others, being invisible, belong to a different ontological category than the mundane objects of the everyday world-- tables and chairs, et cetera. Therefore certain practices and cultivations are utilized in a process she calls "Real making" and "kindling." This real-making process changes those who practice it -- often for the better.
In her preface, she lays out 7 basic contentions:
(1) People don't (easily) have faith in gods and spirits. This claim is exceedingly interesting to me. She says that most anthropologists of religion have assumed that the existence in invisible others is an unproblematic "given" for most people-- perhaps especially non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) people. But she shows convincingly that in many contexts, not just WEIRD ones, invisible others exist in a distinct ontological category from mundane, everyday objects. Faith is not "natural" or automatic, and must be consciously cultivated to be kept alive. It's true that humans are cognitively programmed with "agency detection devices" to intuit agency everywhere-- but to sustain a belief in invisible agents is hard work.
(2) Detailed stories help to make gods and spirits feel real. This is the essential narrative component of religion. The key word here is paracosm. "certain kinds of narrative kindles the realness of spirits. These are detailed stories, for sure, because detail makes what described to feel more present. If religion is a narrative that shifts attention away from the ordinary, detail is the narrative mechanism that makes this shifting of attention possible. The successful narrative creates a paracosm—a private-but-shared imagined world sufficiently rich in detail that people become engaged and can return to the stories again and again, exploring them from different angles, reliving different moments, recasting them as if they were there, even adding new chapters to the story. The narratives also need to set out rules about who shares the paracosm, how to know when gods and spirits are present, and how they interact."
(3) "Talent and training matter." The basic point here is that certain people have proclivities towards spiritual experiences. Those who score high on the "absorption scale" for example, are more likely to have spiritual-mystical-numinous experiences. But also these talents can be cultivated-- even in a person without an aptitude for them-- by imagination training. You can become more proficient at having spiritual experiences.
(4) the way people think about their minds also matters the key idea here is that how we think about "mind" often determines how spiritual experiences manifest. This is because spiritual experiences often happen in an "in between" space between mind and the external world. In a particular cultural milieu, ideas about where the mind ends and where the external world begins can mean that spiritual experiences might happen in differently delineated "in-between spaces" -- and so God might feel more or less interior, more or less independent of mind, more or less in the external world, based on how "mind" is conceived.
(5) the sense of response is "kindled"
(6) Prayer practice changes the way people attend to their thoughts Prayer is a special kind of meta cognition, which bears many resemblances to the most cutting-edge and clinically significant therapeutic practices, cognitive behavioral therapy. In prayer, one engages in a metacognitive reflection on one's own actions. Talking to an invisible other about habits and behaviors-- and imagining that invisible other hearing one's prayer -- allows one to achieve a kind of objectivity -- a useful distance from which to reflect on one's own actions, to shape one's thinking and behavior in healthful ways.
the point here is that belief is not really propositional or logical but a matter of FEELING. People consider god a friend. They get mad at god. The relationship changes people-- just as all social relationships change the people involved in them.
Luhrman, an anthropologist of religion with training in the cognitive sciences, sets out to describe how belief in invisible others -- gods, angels, spirits-- is "kindled". Such beliefs must be kindled, she argues-- because invisible others, being invisible, belong to a different ontological category than the mundane objects of the everyday world-- tables and chairs, et cetera. Therefore certain practices and cultivations are utilized in a process she calls "Real making" and "kindling." This real-making process changes those who practice it -- often for the better.
In her preface, she lays out 7 basic contentions:
(1) People don't (easily) have faith in gods and spirits. This claim is exceedingly interesting to me. She says that most anthropologists of religion have assumed that the existence in invisible others is an unproblematic "given" for most people-- perhaps especially non-WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) people. But she shows convincingly that in many contexts, not just WEIRD ones, invisible others exist in a distinct ontological category from mundane, everyday objects. Faith is not "natural" or automatic, and must be consciously cultivated to be kept alive. It's true that humans are cognitively programmed with "agency detection devices" to intuit agency everywhere-- but to sustain a belief in invisible agents is hard work.
(2) Detailed stories help to make gods and spirits feel real. This is the essential narrative component of religion. The key word here is paracosm. "certain kinds of narrative kindles the realness of spirits. These are detailed stories, for sure, because detail makes what described to feel more present. If religion is a narrative that shifts attention away from the ordinary, detail is the narrative mechanism that makes this shifting of attention possible. The successful narrative creates a paracosm—a private-but-shared imagined world sufficiently rich in detail that people become engaged and can return to the stories again and again, exploring them from different angles, reliving different moments, recasting them as if they were there, even adding new chapters to the story. The narratives also need to set out rules about who shares the paracosm, how to know when gods and spirits are present, and how they interact."
(3) "Talent and training matter." The basic point here is that certain people have proclivities towards spiritual experiences. Those who score high on the "absorption scale" for example, are more likely to have spiritual-mystical-numinous experiences. But also these talents can be cultivated-- even in a person without an aptitude for them-- by imagination training. You can become more proficient at having spiritual experiences.
(4) the way people think about their minds also matters the key idea here is that how we think about "mind" often determines how spiritual experiences manifest. This is because spiritual experiences often happen in an "in between" space between mind and the external world. In a particular cultural milieu, ideas about where the mind ends and where the external world begins can mean that spiritual experiences might happen in differently delineated "in-between spaces" -- and so God might feel more or less interior, more or less independent of mind, more or less in the external world, based on how "mind" is conceived.
(5) the sense of response is "kindled"
(6) Prayer practice changes the way people attend to their thoughts Prayer is a special kind of meta cognition, which bears many resemblances to the most cutting-edge and clinically significant therapeutic practices, cognitive behavioral therapy. In prayer, one engages in a metacognitive reflection on one's own actions. Talking to an invisible other about habits and behaviors-- and imagining that invisible other hearing one's prayer -- allows one to achieve a kind of objectivity -- a useful distance from which to reflect on one's own actions, to shape one's thinking and behavior in healthful ways.
the point here is that belief is not really propositional or logical but a matter of FEELING. People consider god a friend. They get mad at god. The relationship changes people-- just as all social relationships change the people involved in them.
Read
March 29, 2025Loved this book. Things I aligned with:
- Idea of religion and the human relationship with spirt as a real-making exercise, in which we use imagination and ritual to make gods felt in our worlds
- Faith frame as a play frame, a frame that we enter into using imagination (and the idea that the capacity to imagine is that which makes religion possible)
- Ritual = real-making exercise in which we utilize imagination to make god(s) felt
- The act of prayer being that which changes the sensory feedback loop/texture of one’s experience itself. Prayer as a practice that changes the prayer through the act itself. Prayer as metacognition
- What it means for gods and spirits to feel real = humans feel a responsiveness, an aliveness, and this places them into a relationship that changes the humans. The relationship changes the asker.
Favorite quotes:
- "the important point is not whether women become jaguars, but whether jaguar spirits are felt to be real in the world –and if we focus on belief, we tend to miss the experience.”
- “If religion is a narrative that shifts attention away from the ordinary, detail is the narrative mechanism that makes this shifting of attention possible”
- "At the heart of the religious impulse lies the capacity to imagine a world beyond the one we have before us. To do so requires a narrative, but it also requires the capacity to hold in abeyance the matter-of-fact expectation that the world of the senses is all there is.”
- “The implicit expectations people have about mind-stuff affect the way they experience the in-between, and thus the way they experience gods and spirits”
- "Prayer is often rich in feeling. Prayer and ritual express intense feeling and the expression – and transformation – of the feeling was the point"
Things I found challenging:
Doesn’t leave a whole lot of room, in my read at least, for the ineffable, for there being actual presence of spirit, actual entities that exist beyond ourselves. Yes, in away the entities become real through our kindling, in her framework — but there is something of the mystery lost/not fully captured for me in this. It still is our brains/volition doing the conjuring and realmaking, in its entirety. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with this personally, but I also see how this could be a bit condescending/delegitimizing in regards to one's relationship to spirit.
- Idea of religion and the human relationship with spirt as a real-making exercise, in which we use imagination and ritual to make gods felt in our worlds
- Faith frame as a play frame, a frame that we enter into using imagination (and the idea that the capacity to imagine is that which makes religion possible)
- Ritual = real-making exercise in which we utilize imagination to make god(s) felt
- The act of prayer being that which changes the sensory feedback loop/texture of one’s experience itself. Prayer as a practice that changes the prayer through the act itself. Prayer as metacognition
- What it means for gods and spirits to feel real = humans feel a responsiveness, an aliveness, and this places them into a relationship that changes the humans. The relationship changes the asker.
Favorite quotes:
- "the important point is not whether women become jaguars, but whether jaguar spirits are felt to be real in the world –and if we focus on belief, we tend to miss the experience.”
- “If religion is a narrative that shifts attention away from the ordinary, detail is the narrative mechanism that makes this shifting of attention possible”
- "At the heart of the religious impulse lies the capacity to imagine a world beyond the one we have before us. To do so requires a narrative, but it also requires the capacity to hold in abeyance the matter-of-fact expectation that the world of the senses is all there is.”
- “The implicit expectations people have about mind-stuff affect the way they experience the in-between, and thus the way they experience gods and spirits”
- "Prayer is often rich in feeling. Prayer and ritual express intense feeling and the expression – and transformation – of the feeling was the point"
Things I found challenging:
Doesn’t leave a whole lot of room, in my read at least, for the ineffable, for there being actual presence of spirit, actual entities that exist beyond ourselves. Yes, in away the entities become real through our kindling, in her framework — but there is something of the mystery lost/not fully captured for me in this. It still is our brains/volition doing the conjuring and realmaking, in its entirety. I'm not necessarily disagreeing with this personally, but I also see how this could be a bit condescending/delegitimizing in regards to one's relationship to spirit.
October 12, 2025
Luhrmann provides an anthropological space that suspends the assumptions of whether believers are “right” or “wrong” in their faith in an effort to truly understand what is sociologically and psychologically happening within the believer. Her scientific approach while also respecting the belief systems or “faith frames” of her subjects is a unique perspective that provides many interesting insights.
The last two chapters were most interesting to me since they really delve into the ways prayer affects the one who prays. Two insights I came away with were that people of faith are deliberately choosing to believe and act as if invisible others matter in their lives. And that they use prayer to transform themselves into a person whose thoughts and behaviors are in accord with that divine reality which truly matters.
The effect on the person who prays includes emotional management. When people ask a god for change they are reaching for a world to come that is better than the one in which they find themselves, imagining that world and who they would be within it. The prayerful act of Supplication is not simply asking a god for results and expecting them to occur, it is an act of deliberately choosing to hope. Choosing to hope asserts that hope is real; asking requires you to think and frame what it is appropriate to ask for; even the choice to submit to a god’s will is a significant act of choosing.
Luhrmann quotes Victor Frankl from his “Man’s Search for Meaning”: one must deliberately choose to act even in the concentration camp where guards regulate all behavior. The capacity to choose to act even on the smallest scale is what gives life its meaning.
Luhrmann makes no claim that all results of prayer and faith are good for individuals or society. But she focuses on those positive changes that explain the emotional and physical benefits of belonging to a community of believers. These insights have informed by attempts to improve my prayer life and grow in faith.
The last two chapters were most interesting to me since they really delve into the ways prayer affects the one who prays. Two insights I came away with were that people of faith are deliberately choosing to believe and act as if invisible others matter in their lives. And that they use prayer to transform themselves into a person whose thoughts and behaviors are in accord with that divine reality which truly matters.
The effect on the person who prays includes emotional management. When people ask a god for change they are reaching for a world to come that is better than the one in which they find themselves, imagining that world and who they would be within it. The prayerful act of Supplication is not simply asking a god for results and expecting them to occur, it is an act of deliberately choosing to hope. Choosing to hope asserts that hope is real; asking requires you to think and frame what it is appropriate to ask for; even the choice to submit to a god’s will is a significant act of choosing.
Luhrmann quotes Victor Frankl from his “Man’s Search for Meaning”: one must deliberately choose to act even in the concentration camp where guards regulate all behavior. The capacity to choose to act even on the smallest scale is what gives life its meaning.
Luhrmann makes no claim that all results of prayer and faith are good for individuals or society. But she focuses on those positive changes that explain the emotional and physical benefits of belonging to a community of believers. These insights have informed by attempts to improve my prayer life and grow in faith.
February 16, 2025
This book was a book that was a gift from the gods. The book examines how god becomes real. The book starts off how often we refer to fictional characters as real. I remember in high school i had friends that talked about characters in soap operas as there were real but the invisibles are not fictional characters. then how does one experience them as real, faith frame and spiritual kindling.
Faith frame, a parasocial relationship. when it comes from a neurological perspective is almost indistinguishable from a social relationship. Now with that being said will this relationship be health. Perhaps you have some trauma from a fearful god from your birth religion or came from a family were your parents had unhealth expectation.
Spiritual kindling-Was that my imagination? It does no matter either way. You trust your experiences. The more experiences you have the more you trust.
I highly recommend this book. I don't know if I want to be initiated. What I do know is I want the Gods to be in my life and they love me just as much as I love them.
5/5
Faith frame, a parasocial relationship. when it comes from a neurological perspective is almost indistinguishable from a social relationship. Now with that being said will this relationship be health. Perhaps you have some trauma from a fearful god from your birth religion or came from a family were your parents had unhealth expectation.
Spiritual kindling-Was that my imagination? It does no matter either way. You trust your experiences. The more experiences you have the more you trust.
I highly recommend this book. I don't know if I want to be initiated. What I do know is I want the Gods to be in my life and they love me just as much as I love them.
5/5
September 12, 2022
I am thankful for this book. It was recommended to me by someone when I was discussing feeling isolated from the divine. This book makes spirituality seem real, if you do the work.
The book is written from an anthropological perspective, and Luhrmann gives many study samples, notes, and numbers that do not necessarily pertain to me. I was bored in Chapter 4 because she goes more in depth about how she did her research. I think that is great information to have, but I would have rather seen that in the Notes section. And I thought a couple of the Notes would have been nice to read during the course of the chapters. So, not a perfect book for me, but excellent nonetheless.
It helped me feel more connected and powerful in my ability to connect with the divine, and that is what I was hoping for when I first opened it up.
The book is written from an anthropological perspective, and Luhrmann gives many study samples, notes, and numbers that do not necessarily pertain to me. I was bored in Chapter 4 because she goes more in depth about how she did her research. I think that is great information to have, but I would have rather seen that in the Notes section. And I thought a couple of the Notes would have been nice to read during the course of the chapters. So, not a perfect book for me, but excellent nonetheless.
It helped me feel more connected and powerful in my ability to connect with the divine, and that is what I was hoping for when I first opened it up.
May 9, 2024
A fascinating study through several disciplines including psychology, anthropology, and literature on how beliefs become actualized.
You have to work at believing in invisible things, and there are ways to make the work less onerous. Repetition of actions/rituals/prayer, belonging to a community of believers, suspending disbelief (i.e. acting "as if,") to name a few.
T.M. Luhrman covers a lot of territory in this book, conducts many interviews, and her written sources are myriad. She neither claims belief nor disbelief in gods or spirits, but she does examine how and why believers act as they do.
I learned a lot, and just the introduction of "paracosms" to my understanding was worth the price of admission. Paracosm is the realm of the invisible, unprovable, and imaginative made real enough to act in history.
Heady, and worth it.
You have to work at believing in invisible things, and there are ways to make the work less onerous. Repetition of actions/rituals/prayer, belonging to a community of believers, suspending disbelief (i.e. acting "as if,") to name a few.
T.M. Luhrman covers a lot of territory in this book, conducts many interviews, and her written sources are myriad. She neither claims belief nor disbelief in gods or spirits, but she does examine how and why believers act as they do.
I learned a lot, and just the introduction of "paracosms" to my understanding was worth the price of admission. Paracosm is the realm of the invisible, unprovable, and imaginative made real enough to act in history.
Heady, and worth it.
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