Bounded by Disbelief: How Atheists in the United States Differentiate themselves from Religious Believers

Recent empirical studies have revealed that religious believers tend to hold atheists and other religious doubters in low regard. This article examines how atheists in turn negotiate and construct the social and symbolic boundaries between atheists and religious believers. I draw on ethnographic and interview data to explore the lenses through which atheists view religion, religious believers, and the boundary between religious believers and non-believers. I find that atheists participate in boundary work to construct difference between religious believers and non-believers. However, atheists see greater social distance between themselves and some groups of religious believers than they do in relation to other groups, constructing religious leaders and devout adherents of particular religions as especially different. Atheists’ constructions of religious believers also vary in response to their individual experiences with religious people. The analysis illuminates the complexity of boundary work among members of a minority group.     

RECENT TRENDS IN THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION: NEUROSCIENCE,RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE,AND THE CONFLUENCE OF COGNITIVE AND EVOLUTIONARY RESEARCH

Cognitive science of religion (CSR) has increased influence in religious studies, the resistance of religious protectionists notwithstanding. CSR's most provocative work stresses the role of implicit cognition in explaining religious thought and conduct. Exhibiting explanatory pluralism, CSR seeks integrative accounts across the social, psychological, and brain sciences. CSR reflects prominent trends in the cognitive sciences generally. First, CSR is giving greater attention to the new tools and findings of cognitive neuroscience. Second, CSR researchers have done carefully designed, nonlaboratory studies of experience, incorporating precise physiological measures, obtaining astonishing findings about the experiences of ritual participants and observers. Third, CSR theorists have advanced evolutionary hypotheses about religions from eight perspectives (cross-indexing three levels of selection with three mechanisms of selection). Cultural group selectionists headline credibility enhancing displays and Big Gods in the religious consolidation of large-scale societies. Other CSR researchers marshal counterevidence and advance alternative hypotheses. CSR findings are incompatible with the New Atheists’ projects on two fronts.     

Interfaith Dialogue and the Science-and-Religion Discussion

The science-and-religion dialogue has so often assumed that the key issues for discussion are those that have arisen within the Western Christian religious and intellectual tradition that little interest has been devoted to the possible insights that the presence of non-Christian voices in the dialogue might bring. In the following I explore the benefits of a truly multireligious dialogue on science and religion and offer a model for integrating various religious perspectives into the science-and-religion dialogue. Of course, taking the multifaith perspectives of the religions seriously also means making a dialogue between religions a component of the science-and-religion dialogue, and I discuss how such a dialogue might unfold along with key ideas that might emerge in ever more interesting ways once the dialogue begins.     

MYTHIC RELIGIOUS NATURALISM

In his book Religion Is Not About God, Loyal Rue presents an evolutionarily based explanation of religion as a means to further the personal and social fulfillment of human beings. Rue argues that religions in the form of myths, adaptive falsities, provide an account of the connection between what is (facts) and what matters (values). Myths are false because they attribute subjectively based values to valueless facts, but adaptive because they motivate personally and socially beneficial actions. He maintains that the current crises of humankind, evidenced by both social conflict and environmental degradation, indicate that the major religious traditions—all of which project values onto some transcendent reality—are failing to serve humanity. To overcome these crises, Rue maintains that we need a new, scientifically based naturalized religion, one that attributes subjectively based values to Nature instead of a transcendent reality. I accept Rue's naturalism about values but reject his subjectivist account of them. Contrary to Rue, I show that the naturalistic fallacy sets no barrier to the existence of objective moral values. Modeling my view on the selection theories used in biology and psychology, I offer a scientifically based explanation of the origin and existence of objective values and support it with empirical findings from developmental psychology. Whether this account can count as religious, I do not address.     

Ritualising the Secular? Inter‐Religious Meetings in the ‘Immanent Frame‘

I take a philosophical approach and seek to address the question of inter‐religious rituals and practices with reference to what Charles Taylor has called ‘the immanent frame.’ Whilst considering the dynamics of inter‐religious or cross‐religious ritual, this article will focus mainly on the idea of rituality occurring in an immanent frame or habitus (Pierre Bourdieu). I will argue that whilst there are specific cultic rituals that need to be negotiated as part of any form of explicit inter‐rituality, there is a larger potential that is suggested by a broader anthropological vision. Moreover, an ‘immanent turn’ by religions may be the positive step towards the joint creation of meaning and practice in the public sphere.     

Buddhism in America

This paper analyzes Buddhism in America from a social, rather than individual, perspective. In particular, an effort is made to move from informative but limited case studies of Buddhism to a national empirical study of the religion. Using the location of Buddhist organizations within the United States as the dependent variable, difference of means testing and logistic regressions are employed to determine what areas are the most receptive to Buddhism. Applying concepts from a variety of ethnographic and indirect approaches to Buddhism, as well as studies of the general success of new religions, I find that both individual and social factors influence the development of Buddhism in the United States. Specifically, significant Asian populations, more college graduates, the presence of schools of higher education and lower levels of conventional religious affiliation are all conducive to the success of Buddhist religious groups.     

The socialization of the gifts of tongues and healing in Mexican Pentecostalism

Mexican Pentecostalism emphasizes both speaking in tongues and faith healing as religious manifestations which believers should have. Although they are considered to be given by the Holy Spirit, these practices imply a socialization with the collective of followers. The analysis of pentecostal groups in the urban environment of Mexico City and in the rural Totonac Indian communities shows that these religious practices and beliefs are very similar in the two areas mentioned. It is necessary for the pentecostal believer to learn the ‘proper’ way to speak in tongues and to heal the sick, in order to separate followers from other religions which compete with pentecostalism by offering ritual possession and alternative forms of curing human suffering. In Mexico, popular spiritualism, the Catholic charismatic movement and traditional Indian curers all offer direct competition for pentecostalism. The religious mobility further complicates this situation. The important role of public discourse and testimony is also dealt with here.     

SELF-MAINTENANCE AS A RELIGIOUS CONCERN

Abstract. Human concern with problems of being and becoming promotes conceptions of ideal states of being, exemplified by paragons and heroes and projected as Utopias or visions of salvation; it leads to regimens for cultivating and maintaining individual ability to meet social expectations; and it produces fantasies, as in myth and popular literature, that rehearse the problems and that offer escape from them and roles to emulate in dealing with them. Many of these regimens and fantasies appear in the rituals and teachings of organized religion. Many also figure in private devotions apart from established religions. The many forms they take constitute much of the religious life of ordinary people. From this viewpoint, there is much to examine in American life.     

VARIETIES OF RELIGIOUS COGNITION: A COMPUTATIONAL APPROACH TO SELF-UNDERSTANDING IN THREE MONOTHEIST CONTEXTS

This study considered representations of divine and human others in the self-understanding of monotheists from three religions. Self-understanding was conceptualized on the basis of semantic and episodic knowledge in narrative response data. Given the importance of social context in the formation of cognitive schemas, the project emphasized self-understanding in a comparative religious design. The sample included sixty nominated religious exemplars who responded to a structured interview. Schemas were subsequently mapped for Jews, Muslims, and Christians by comparison of self and other representations in a computational model known as latent semantic analysis (LSA). Findings indicated that representation of the divine is far removed from parents in cognitive schemas for all participants. Unlike Jews and Christians, Muslims appear to represent human others on the basis of self-understanding which principally references the divine. When considered in a computational semantic space, exemplars generally represent the self in a manner corresponding with divine and peer figures.     

The Agency Paradigm: A Pedagogical Tool to Facilitate Nuanced Thinking on Sensitive Issues

Sensitive issues, rife in religious studies and in theology, present a pedagogical challenge when teaching students to nuance their thinking around positions that are often sharply defined and elicit strong feelings. I developed a learning tool that I call the “Agency Paradigm.” The purpose of this tool is to help students comprehend diversity within religious traditions, particularly regarding the agencies of women who are committed to them. Drawing on the open and critical dialogue of emancipatory pedagogy, the Agency Paradigm encourages students to explore a range of ways women in world religions choose to act in varying contexts. This approach to teaching world religions increases students’ cognitive knowledge base and expands their understanding of each of the religions studied in the course, as examined through the perspective of differing women; it also assists them in developing their own agency through thoughtful reflection.     

Adaptation, evolution, and religion

Neo-Darwinian theories of religion include both nonadaptationist and adaptationist versions. Nonadaptationist versions contend that the mental architecture of the brain is wired for religious thinking but that religious concepts have piggybacked on other cognitive adaptations, especially those for agency detection. Religious concepts are not evolved biological adaptations but rather by-products of more general cognitive structures that are adaptations. Adaptationist versions concentrate on the benefits provided by religion, such as increased social cohesion and the individual benefits that stem from it, such as better physical and mental health and greater longevity. After clarifying the meaning of the terms “adaptation” and “adaptationism,” this article presents four lines of evidence in favor of the adaptationist position: (1) in the ancestral environment the role of the shaman was nearly universal and was primarily devoted to the crucial human goals of curing illness and protecting and finding vital resources; (2) religion generally has positive effects on both physical and mental health; (3) religions tend to be pro-natalist and more religious people tend to leave more offspring than less religious or nonreligious people; (4) the major world religions that evolved in the first millennium BCE during a period of major social chaos and disruption emphasized an omnipotent, transcendent God of love and mercy who offered salvation in a heavenly afterlife and released individuals from earthly suffering. None of these facts demonstrate conclusively that cognitive modules specifically oriented to supernatural agents evolved by natural selection, but they are highly suggestive and make a good inferential case.     

Ritual Participation and Social Support in a Major Japanese Festival

In this study, residents of Kyôto's Gion Festival "float-cart neighborhoods" reveal how ritual participation yields a strong sense of community, and this is connected with several forms of social support. By applying the theory of ritual practice to qualitative research conducted in 2003, I examine how some of the main participants in this month of rites and festivities gain a sense of belonging and emotional support based on their roles in this historically and culturally significant shrine-related festival. Specifically, highly involved male participants form intimate and exclusive relationships and develop enduring networks that offer feelings of unity and spiritual guidance. With a combination of well-accepted "Western" theories and methods, and an understanding of distinct cultural differences, I explore how involvement in a major Japanese religious festival is positively associated with a sense of community and lasting social support.     

SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION,HEALING, AND ALTRUISM: INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM

This essay introduces the five articles that follow, whose aim is to show how altruism emerges out of spiritual transformation and is integral to healing process in four kinds of ritual healing systems—popular, folk, an indigenous religious healing tradition, and complementary and alternative medicine represented by consciousness transformation movements. In this introduction I situate these largely marginalized religious and spiritual practices within the context of the religion‐science discourse, which has focused for the most part on the relationship between the established, mainstream religions and the dominant biomedical system. Antecedents of two of these types of religious practices, Spiritism and consciousness transformation movements, were part of the development of the psychological sciences in the nineteenth century but lost ground in the twentieth. Despite discrimination and persistent negative attitudes on the part of the established religions and biomedicine, these healing traditions have not only survived through the twentieth century but appear to have gained both followers and interest in the twenty‐first. In future decades, at least for complementary and alternative medical practices and perhaps also for spirit healing centers, there may be a reversal in status through greater acceptance of their unique combination of scientific and religious perspectives.     

Intergenerational Religious Mobility in Contemporary China

This study illustrates intergenerational religious mobility with the case of Chinese society. Using the quasi‐symmetric log‐linear model to separate structure mobility from exchange mobility, we examine the variation in religious identities between the reform era generation and their parents. Structure mobility results suggest that the encompassing social reform over the past decades in China has encouraged the structural growth of Islam and Christianity across generations, but traditional Chinese religions bear remarkable intergenerational disadvantages. Moreover, religious nones are growing across generations, at least relative to traditional Chinese religions. Exchange mobility findings indicate that individuals whose parents follow traditional Chinese religions are very likely to “convert” to Christianity. However, children of religious nones do not necessarily remain irreligious, possibly undermining the structural advantages of religious nones in the future. Finally, a comparison between cohort and period effects drives us to conclude that the major social force underpinning the revival of Chinese religion in the reform era is generational replacement instead of an increasingly religious transition of “old” generations.     

Rule-governed activity vs. rule-creating activity

Questioning the usual understanding of Native American religions as supernaturalistic, this study re-examines the ritual system of the Yaqui people of Arizona. First, it evaluates assumptions about the nature of religion—including God, grace, and prayer—which inform the ethnographical interpretation of Yaqui religion. Second, it reconstructs the Yaqui cosmological system and relates their complex cosmos to the traditional religious actors, the Deer Dancer and the Pascola clowns. Third it examines the master symbol, Sewa or Flower, to demonstrate that Yaqui religious logic does not correspond to the grace theory of Catholicism. Fourth, it demonstrates that flower embodies a causal system in which all religious actors, human and transcendent beings alike, achieve ritual efficacy in mutual, reciprocal acts of witnessing. Finally, the essay observes that ‘conversion’ fails to make sense of Yaqui syncretism for two related reasons. In the first place, the Yaqui neither rejected the world nor embraced a monotheism which assigns a privileged, vertical superiority to God. In the second, the Yaqui applied traditional insights deriving from the most basic realm of myth to reach an understanding that Jesus and Deer are alike powerful innocents who sacrifice themselves so that others might live. In all these ways, the essay demonstrates that the concept of the supernatural fails to explain either the traditional or the Christian sides of Yaqui religion and suggests that the same may be true for other Native American religions as well.     

Religion,Politics and Ethics: Towards a Global Theory of Social Transformation

In this paper I set out a phenomenology of social transformation, based on an analysis of the distinctively religious form of communication which underlies the trans-generational and trans-cultural transmission of world traditions, taking Confucianism and Christianity as their representatives. A phenomenological analysis of their communicative structure allows the possibility of a better understanding of what can be learnt from them in the context of contemporary debates in both China and the West on the relations between religion, ethics and politics. This analysis suggests that the ethical consistency of belief and act, which is the necessary condition for the engendering of long-term solidarity in religious community, has significant implications for ethics in politics, and especially for the legitimacy of representational leadership as a focal point for change in society. The paper concludes that the historical experience of world religions can offer new insights into the nature of political leadership and representation in today’s globalised world and that the appropriate locus for this inquiry is the present negotiation and re-negotiation of relations between China and the West.     

Cognitive templates for religious concepts: cross-cultural evidence for recall of counter-intuitive representations

Presents results of free-recall experiments conducted in France, Gabon and Nepal, to test predictions of a cognitive model of religious concepts. The world over, these concepts include violations of conceptual expectations at the level of domain knowledge (e.g., about 'animal' or 'artifact' or 'person') rather than at the basic level. In five studies we used narratives to test the hypothesis that domain-level violations are recalled better than other conceptual associations. These studies used material constructed in the same way as religious concepts, but not used in religions familiar to the subjects. Experiments 1 and 2 confirmed a distinctiveness effect for such material. Experiment 3 shows that recall also depends on the possibility to generate inferences from violations of domain expectations. Replications in Gabon (Exp. 4) and Nepal (Exp. 5) showed that recall for domain-level violations is better than for violations of basic-level expectations. Overall sensitivity to violations is similar in different cultures and produces similar recall effects, despite differences in commitment to religious belief, in the range of local religious concepts or in their mode of transmission. However, differences between Gabon and Nepal results suggest that familiarity with some types of domain-level violations may paradoxically make other types more salient. These results suggest that recall effects may account for the recurrent features found in religious concepts from different cultures.