The Nature of Religion in Iain Banks’s Novels: The Wasp Factory and Consider Phlebas
The Nature of Religion in Iain Banks’s Novels: The Wasp Factory and Consider Phlebas

Summary/Abstract: The aim of this paper is to use cognitive approach in order to analyse the topic of religion in two novels by Iain Banks. I argue that in both The Wasp Factory and Consider Phlebas Banks presents divine thoughts as cognitively natural for humans, since, according to neuroscience, the propensity for religiosity is inborn and universal. Banks’s novels show that people have an innate need to fill space with agents, and cannot refrain from ascribing illusory purpose to the cruel chaos of the surrounding world.

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