Cognitive Science of Religion

Perception, The Buddha-Nature, and the Brain: A Challenge to Neurotheology on the Dynamics of Spiritual Meaning.

by Jonathan Weidenbaum

This is my talk for the conference: Towards A Science of Consciousness 2012; Tucson, Arizona.

It incorporates insights from my earlier publications and conference talks (including "Between Mysticism and Medical Materialism"), but it is expanded, more general, more up to date, and offers different conclusions.

Neurotheology, the discipline which explores correlations between religious experience and the nervous system, comes... more Neurotheology, the discipline which explores correlations between religious experience and the nervous system, comes in more than one form. While some neurotheologians aim to isolate a specific part of the brain as the foundation for spirituality (i.e. the temporal lobe), others argue for the importance of recognizing myriad components of the nervous system as working in tandem. While a few are anti-religion, others seek, on the contrary, to vouch for both the validity of mystical experience and the value of religious commitment. However, what many neurotheologians seem to have in common is a general interpretation of the nature of experience: namely one in which the brain, as the primary seat of significance, fashions sensory data into structures of meaning. According to many neurotheologians, mystics can therefore alter their reality by provoking the right transformations within the nervous system. The purpose of this essay is to argue that this interpretation of our perceptual and intuitive life fails to account for the felt-character of some of the most venerable types of experience labeled as religious. I do not deny that the nervous system is a necessary condition for all experience, religious or otherwise. I maintain that it is not a sufficient condition, and that the ecstatic feel of religious experiences involves configurations of meaning that are not reducible to a model in which the brain receives and shapes value-neutral bits of stimulation. I argue that this model can also be self-refuting. For instance, in describing how the brain creates reality, the authors of Why God Won't Go Away state that even science is a kind of mythology, a useful fiction (leaving us to wonder why we should accept their conclusions). Drawing upon key American and European thinkers, I suggest that the rich qualities of religious experience are better accounted for through a more nuanced understanding of the relationship between the nervous system, an active and mobile body, and the environment--and not through a concentration upon a priori mechanisms or "God-parts" of the brain. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of my position for the veridicality of different kinds of religious and mystical experience. I hope only to advance the conversation over neurotheology, and not to dismiss it.

Explaining religion (away?): Theism and the cognitive science of religion

by Jonathan Jong

revised and resubmitted (email to request for draft)

In light of the advancements in the cognitive science and evolutionary psychology of religion in the past two decades,... more In light of the advancements in the cognitive science and evolutionary psychology of religion in the past two decades, scientists and philosophers have begun to reflect on the theological and atheological implications of naturalistic—and in particular, evolutionary—explanations of religious belief and behaviour. However, there is often philosophical naïvete on the part of the scientists, and scientific naïvete on the part of the philosophers. The aim of this paper is to draw from these recent contributions, point out some common pitfalls and important insights, and suggest a way forward. This proposal avoids the genetic fallacy as well as misunderstandings about the cognitive mechanisms that give rise to religious belief. In the end, it may well be that the cognitive science of religion is atheologically and theologically ambiguous; traditional philosophers of religion on both sides of the debate still have work to do.

Limit Conditions in an Encounter of Theology with Neuroscience

by Andrew Irvine

The Von Däniken Hypothesis: Furthering Our Understanding of Agency and UFO Religions

by Justin E. Lane

This paper was presented to the North American Undergraduate Conference for Religion and Philosophy in 2009. Awarded.
It is being prepared for publication at the moment.

(MA Thesis) Religion as Representations

by John McGraw

M.A. Thesis, UCSD Department of Anthropology

Cognitive Anthropology has developed some powerful tools in the refinement of schema theory and cultural models.... more Cognitive Anthropology has developed some powerful tools in the refinement of schema theory and cultural models. Unfortunately, the discipline has not utilized these tools to investigate religion. The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) has employed cognitive and evolutionary psychology towards better understanding how
the mind selects and internalizes religious representations but has not taken up schema theory as one of its techniques. This paper analyzes schema theory and the Cognitive Science of Religion with an eye towards reconciling these two methodologies in order to more comprehensively study religion. Bateson’s notions of the “ecology of mind,” Sperber’s ideas about the epidemiology of representations, and Sørensen’s concept of an immunology of cultural systems are highlighted as ways to envelop CSR methodologies into a systems-level approach. Part I reviews the development of schema theory and considers the influence of psychodynamic processes on the internalization of schemas. Part II looks at the major contributions of the Cognitive Science of Religion and points out potential criticisms of the field. Part III takes up systems-level analyses as a way to reconcile schema theory and CSR.

The role of testimony in the evaluation of ritual expertise

by Andre Luiz Souza

Co-authored with Cristine H. Legare

People learn about the efficacy and validity of cultural practices through the testimony and expertise of others.... more People learn about the efficacy and validity of cultural practices through the testimony and expertise of others. Although some religious practices are highly accessible and require no specialized expertise to engage in them, and others are part of highly controlled religious organizations that designate and legitimate religious experts, many are associated with loosely organized religious traditions that involve a variety of supernatural healing practices and remedies. How is expertise evaluated in these contexts? One possibility is that consensus information may be important; higher levels of agreement about the efficacy of an expert may be more convincing than lower levels of agreement. Another possibility is that the expertise of the informant may influence efficacy judgments. In cases in
which the skeptic or supporter is another religious expert, does the expertise of the informant override consensus information? In the current study, we investigated the effect of consensus information and the expertise of informants on perceived efficacy evaluation of religious healers in Brazil, a cultural context in which religious healers are consulted to solve a great variety of everyday problems. Results indicate that although both consensus information and expertise independently influence the perceived efficacy of a religious healer, the
opinion of another expert overrides consensus information when the two are in conflict.

Rutjens, B. T., van der Pligt, J., & van Harreveld, F. (2010). Deus or Darwin: Randomness and belief in theories about the origin of life. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 46, 1078-1080.

by Bastiaan Rutjens

A simple reminder of the fact that we do not always control life's outcomes reduced people's belief in Darwin's Theory... more A simple reminder of the fact that we do not always control life's outcomes reduced people's belief in Darwin's Theory of Evolution. This control-threat resulted in a relative preference for theories of life that thwart randomness, either by stressing the role of a controlling God (Intelligent Design) or by presenting the Theory of Evolution in terms of predictable and orderly processes. Moreover, increased preference for Intelligent Design over evolutionary theory disappeared when the latter was framed in terms of an orderly process with inevitable outcomes. Thus, psychological threat enhances belief in God, but only in the absence of other options that help to create order in the world.

Implicit measures in the experimental psychology of religion

by Jonathan Jong

in press (e-mail to request for draft)

The new cognitive science of religion (CSR) is now over a decade old, but has only recently begun to scrutinize its... more The new cognitive science of religion (CSR) is now over a decade old, but has only recently begun to scrutinize its methodological practices, pluralistic as they decidedly are. In keeping with this concern for methodological rigour, Gibson and Barrett’s (2008, p. 335) manifesto, commissioning psychologists to contribute to the field in five crucial ways, includes the call, “to adapt indirect or implicit measurement techniques from the social cognition and cognition and emotion literatures”. In this chapter, I shall expand on why this is an important challenge, and how experimental social psychologists can begin to meet it.

Foxhole atheism, revisited: The effects of mortality salience on explicit and implicit religious belief

by Jonathan Jong

in press in Journal of Experimental Social Psychology

Although fear of death features prominently in many historical and contemporary theories as a major motivational... more Although fear of death features prominently in many historical and contemporary theories as a major motivational factor in religious belief, the empirical evidence available is ambivalent, and limited, we argue, by imprecise measures of belief and insufficient attention to the distinction between implicit and explicit aspects of cognition. The present research used both explicit (questionnaire) and implicit (single-target implicit association test; property verification) measurement techniques to examine how thoughts of death influence, specifically, belief in religious supernatural agents. When primed with death, participants explicitly defended their own religious worldview, such that self-described Christians were more confident that supernatural religious entities exist, while non-religious participants were more confident that they do not. However, when belief was measured implicitly, death priming increased all participants’ beliefs in religious supernatural entities, regardless of their prior religious commitments. The results are interpreted in terms of a dual-process model of religious cognition, which can be used to resolve conflicting prior data, as well as to help explain the perplexing durability of religious belief.

What buddhism taught cognitive science about self, mind and brain

by Asaf Federman

Results of my survey on natural theological arguments

by Helen De Cruz

draft only

What do philosophers think about arguments for the existence of God? To find out, I launched a survey among... more What do philosophers think about arguments for the existence of God? To find out, I launched a survey among professional philosophers. This is a short summary of the results.

THEORY OF MIND, MIND-BODY DUALISM, AND THEIR (MIS)APPLICATION IN THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

by K. Mitch Hodge

This Paper was Submitted to Cognitive Science on 04 March 2012 in slightly revised form.
THIS IS A MANUSCRIPT IN PRODUCTION: PLEASE DO NOT CITE OR QUOTE THIS MANUSCRIPT WITHOUT THE AUTHOR’S PERMISSION.

Abstract: The cognitive science of religion has contributed greatly to our understanding the cognitive processes... more Abstract: The cognitive science of religion has contributed greatly to our understanding the cognitive processes involved in religious beliefs and practices. The author warns, however, that current research trends and theories in the cognitive science of religion threatens the relevancy of this project. By misapplying the psychological and philosophical theories of mind and mind-body dualism to supernatural agents, these cognitive theories are positing supernatural agents that are not representative of anthropologically documented instances. The author traces the historical patterns and logical errors that have contributed to this trend, and then demonstrates how these patterns and logical errors are present in the literature. Finally, the author suggests why cognitive scientists of religion have fallen prey to these errors and ways to rectify them.

Jezično opojmljivanje iskustva svetog. Doprinosi kognitivne lingvistike kognitivnim znanostima o religiji. ( Language conceptualization of the experience of sacred. Contribution of the cognitive linguistics to the cognitive science of religion. )

by Benedikt Perak

Zbornik radova: Suvremena znanost i vjera. Contemporary science and faith

Među suvremenim znanostima o religiji ističu se kognitivnoznanstveni pristupi koji istražuju iskustva
svetoga kao... more Među suvremenim znanostima o religiji ističu se kognitivnoznanstveni pristupi koji istražuju iskustva
svetoga kao osobita stanja svijesti, s osobitim fenomenološkim
sadržajem i neurološkim korelatima. U ovome članku navode se temeljne postavke kognitivnoga proučavanja tih ontološki subjektivnih stanja te se objašnjava mehanizam kategoriziranja, opojmljivanja i prenošenja u kulturi s pomoću simboličkoga jezičnog sustava. Pojmovni i komunikacijski aspekti iskustava
svetoga proučavaju se u kognitivnolingvističkoj teoriji pojmovne metafore po kojoj se značenje subjektivnih apstraktnih entiteta uspostavlja preslikavanjem značajkâ objektivnijih i konkretnijih domena. Ukazuje se na ulogu perspektivizacije u izgradnji značenja, kategorizacije i agentivnoga opojmljavanja skupnoga
iskustva svetoga. Na temelju složenosti preslikavanja značenja predstavlja se ontološka, prostornoodnosna, personifikacijska i kulturološka struktura metaforičkoga opojmljavanja skupnoga iskustva svetoga, kao i njihove pragmatične inferencije koje imaju važnu ulogu za uspješnost njihova prijenosa u kulturi.


The cognitive sciences of religion offer some of the most stimulating insights in the contemporary scientific study of religion. Their overarching epistemic objective is to study the experience of the sacred as any other naturally occurring state of consciousness endowed with inherent intentional and phenomenological content and their neural correlates. This article offers an explanatory model of categorizing and conceptualizing the subjective of religious experiences in semantically relevant symbolic language structures that are available for cultural transmission. The study of linguistic
and communicational aspects are based on the basic tenets of embodiment and experientalism with emphasis on the theory of conceptual metaphor and the role of the construal and perspectivization in conceptualization of the entity and agency of
the culturally postulated collective experience of the sacred. The proposed model highlights four levels of conceptualization achieved though ontological, spatial, anthropomorphic
and cultural metaphorical mappings. Each conceptual level is discussed with reference to its pragmatic inferences and motivational potential success that is crucial for transmission of the representations in the culture.

Religion: Accident or Design?

by Taner Edis

in Joseph Bulbulia et al, eds., The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques (Santa Margarita: Collins Foundation Press, 2008)

Religion's Folk Psychological Context

by Uku Tooming

In: Studies in Science and Theology, No. 13: European Society For the Study of Science and Theology Conference, University of Edinburgh, 07.04 - 10.04, 2010. (Toim.) Jackelén, Antje; Smedes, Taede; Fuller, Michael; Evers, Dirk., 2012, pp. 243-258

The paper deals with the application of the study of folk psychology to the cognitive science of religion. It has been... more The paper deals with the application of the study of folk psychology to the cognitive science of religion. It has been quite a common understanding in the aforementioned area that religious cognition (namely, the representation of supernatural or counterintutive agents) makes use of the same folk psychological inferences that are drawn in the case of dealing with human agents.
Relying on some recent authors in the study of folk psychology (Dan Hutto, Shaun Gallagher, Matthew Ratcliffe), I am going to argue that many important aspects of person-specific knowledge depend crucially on the embodiment of the other, social context (most notably, social roles and norms) and also second-person interactions. Because of that, there is a rather strong asymmetry between the representations of human and nonhuman agents. For the latter to be relevant for human cognition, these three aforementioned aspects have to be created or somehow simulated and this requires a great amount of construction from humans. This also means that the conception of the ’naturalness’ of religion is ambivalent, to say the least, because only in the case of humans can we have these aspects naturally.

You'll Get What is Coming to You: Why is the Just-World Hypothesis Cognitively Conjoined with Afterlife Beliefs

by K. Mitch Hodge

This paper was submitted to Religion, Brain, and Behavior on 05 March 2012 in slightly revised form.
(manuscript in production) DO NOT CITE OR QUOTE WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR.

In the decade since Bering (2002) revealed that humans intuitively believe in an afterlife, a growing body of research... more In the decade since Bering (2002) revealed that humans intuitively believe in an afterlife, a growing body of research has contributed to understanding the nature of that belief. What has received little-to-no attention is why the afterlife, cross-culturally, is imagined to be a just place. In this article, the author offers experimental and theoretical evidence which supports a cognitive explanation for this phenomenon. The author argues that the conjunction of the just-world hypothesis (that people get what they morally deserve) with afterlife beliefs is over determined by a number psychological and cognitive mechanisms.

Religion: Explained

by Jonathan Jong

published in Critic – Te Arohi, 2010

The cognitive science of religion and Christian faith: some preliminary considerations

by Jonathan Jong

in press, Christian Perspectives on Science and Technology (e-mail to request for draft)

The "cognitive science of religion" (CSR) is an inter-disciplinary research programme, predominantly... more The "cognitive science of religion" (CSR) is an inter-disciplinary research programme, predominantly involving anthropologists, psychologists, religious studies scholars, and philosophers. The aim of the research programme is, in Boyer's (2001) titular phrase, to "explain religion". That is, CSR endeavours to understand the psychological underpinnings of religious belief and behaviour, thereby explaining the ubiquity of religious belief and practice and the similarities and differences across religious traditions. While the empirical and theoretical research has been going on for nearly two decades, little attention has been turned to the implications of CSR for Christian belief and practice. In this paper, I shall (begin to) explore the potential implications of CSR for traditional Christian theism.

Review of “The God instinct: the psychology of souls, destiny, and the meaning of life

by Jonathan Jong

Published in Ars Disputandi, 11, 79–82.

Anthropomorphism in God concepts: The role of narrative

by Peter Westh

To be published in Armin W. Geertz (ed.) Origins of Religion, Cognition and Culture, Equinox Publishing 2012.
http://www.equinoxpub.com/equinox/books/showbook.asp?bkid=358

There is an emerging consensus among current, cognitive theories of religion that the detection and representation of... more There is an emerging consensus among current, cognitive theories of religion that the detection and representation of intentional agents and their actions are fundamental to religion. By no means a monolithic theory, this is an argument with several separate lines of reasoning, and several different kinds of empirical evidence to support it. This essay focuses specifically on the notion that people tend to spontaneously make inferences about gods based on intuitive, ontological assumptions, and on one of the main pieces of evidence that is cited to support it, the narrative comprehension experiments conducted by psychologists Justin L. Barrett and Frank C. Keil. It is argued that the experimental data in fact do not support the conclusions that have been drawn from them.