STEPS TOWARD A COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

The article chronicles the different panels devoted tothe cognitive science of religion at the meeting of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion (SSSR) in Tampa, Florida, in November 2007. The aim is to verify the state of this subdiscipline and to check how much this work‐in‐progress affects the present state of the dialogue between science and religion. Several signs point to a positive development in this scientific branch and favor a sound reception in theology, which should not ignore the new research.     

COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION AND FOLK THEISTIC BELIEF

Cognitive scientists of religion promise to lay bare the cognitive mechanisms that generate religious beliefs in human beings. Defenders of the debunking argument believe that the cognitive mechanisms studied in this field pose a threat to folk theism. A number of influential responses to the debunking argument rely on making two sets of distinctions: (1) proximate/ultimate explanations and (2) specific/general religious beliefs. I argue, however, that such responses have drawbacks and do not make room for folk theism. I suggest that a detour through the literature in the philosophy of mind regarding the problem of mental causation regarding nonreductive physicalism can provide a way for preserving folk theism without doing violence to the way cognitive science of religion is being practiced today. More specifically, I believe there is a way of responding to the debunking argument that does not require a rejection of the causal premise.     

PEIRCEAN APPROACHES TO EMERGENT SYSTEMS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Cognitive science and religion provides perspectives on human cognition and spirituality. Emergent systems theory captures the subatomic, physical, biological, psychological, cultural, and transcendent relationships that constitute the human person. C. S. Peirce's metaphysical categories and existential graphs enrich traditional cognitive science modeling tools to capture emergent phenomena. From this richer perspective, one can reinterpret the traditional doctrine of soul as form of the body in terms of information as the constellation of constitutive relationships that enables real possibility.     

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.     

EMIL BRUNNER REVISITED: ON THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION,THE IMAGO DEI,AND REVELATION

This article aims at a constructive and argumentative engagement between the cognitive science of religion (CSR) and philosophical and theological reflection on the imago Dei. The Swiss theologian Emil Brunner argued that the theological notion that humans were created in the image of God entails that there is a “point of contact” for revelation to occur. This article argues that Brunner's notion resonates quite strongly with the findings of the CSR. The first part will give a short overview of the CSR. The second part deals with Brunner's idea of the imago Dei and the “point of contact.” The third and final part of the article outlines a model of revelation that is in line with Brunner's thought and the CSR. The aim of this article is to show how the naturalistic methodology of the CSR provides a fertile new perspective on several theological issues and thereby enriches theological reflection.     

EXPLANATORY MODESTY

Although I certainly have differences with some of my commentators, I am grateful for the time, effort, and attention that each has devoted to my book, Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not. They have helpfully pointed out features of my positions that need clarification and elaboration. I am also grateful to the editor of Zygon, Willem Drees, for this opportunity to undertake that task here.     

CRITICAL REMARKS ON THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

Cognitive explanations of religious beliefs propose an evolutionary past in which humans had to possess certain cognitive adaptations to survive. The aim of this article is to show that some cognitive accounts may overvalue the putative role of cognition. One such cognitive idea is an assumption that cognition has been evolutionarily shaped only, or most importantly, in the Pleistocene. This idea seems common among writers on the cognitive science of religion (CSR), but is mistaken. Cognition has been shaped throughout evolution. Another idea is that components of religion could not have been produced by natural selection (the hypothesis that religion is a by-product). But the article suggests that there are some domains in the field of religion and religious components that could be acquired and transmitted despite or even against alleged cognitive biases. The aim of this article is to argue for an extended approach that combines a cognitive account with functional naturalistic approaches, including an adaptationist one. Such distinction could imply that cognition is not functional. Obviously, this is not the case since cognition is the process of knowing, and surely knowledge is functional. However, the main argument for such a distinction lies in the key idea of the cognitive account that as far as cognition is functional and adaptive, religious components are not. Functionalism or “adaptivism” concerning cognition contradicts functionalism concerning religion. Numbers of scholars who consider themselves part of CSR seem also to consider both cognition and religion adaptive. However, in regard to components of religion, their adaptive, functional power is only secondary. The article concludes that the study of religion—as the study of cultural evolution in general—should include a pluralistic methodology combining cognitive and evolutionary accounts with the specificity of cultural evolution.     

IS A COMPLETE BIOCOGNITIVE ACCOUNT OF RELIGION FEASIBLE?

The biological and cognitive approach to religion has matured somewhat and reveals interesting results. Nevertheless, some questions arise about its foundation and development. The essay offers a review of current research in the cognitive field, focusing on its conclusions, the internal discussions, and the problems that need more study or correction. Emphasis is placed on a more intricate account of the factors involved in religious experience, discussing the proper use of the discoveries of biocognitive research and the limits that should be placed on said conclusions.     

TWO TYPES OF “EXPLAINING AWAY” ARGUMENTS IN THE COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

This article discusses “explaining away” arguments in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). I distinguish two rather different ways of explaining away religion, one where religion is shown to be incompatible with scientific findings (EA1) and one where supernatural entities are rendered superfluous by scientific explanations (EA2). After discussing possible objections to both varieties, I argue that the latter way offers better prospects for successfully explaining away religion but that some caveats must be made. In a second step, I spell out how CSR can be used to spell out an argument of the second kind. One argument (“Bias Explaining Away”) renders religion superfluous by claiming that it results from a cognitive bias and one (“Adaptationist Explaining Away”) does the same by claiming religion was (is) a useful evolutionary adaptation. I discuss some strengths and weaknesses of both arguments.     

RELIGION IS EASY,BUT SCIENCE IS HARD … UNDERSTANDING McCAULEY'S THESIS

Robert N. McCauley's new book Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not (2011) presents a new paradigm for investigating the relationship between science and religion by exploring the cognitive foundations of religious belief and scientific knowledge. McCauley's contention is that many of the differences and disagreements regarding religion and science are the product of distinct features of human cognition that process these two domains of knowledge very differently. McCauley's thesis provides valuable insights into this relationship while not necessarily leading to a dismissive view of theology or religious belief. His paradigm allows the research lens to focus on cognitive differences in processing scientific versus religious information and the important role of automatic, unconscious, and intuitive cognitive processes in understanding both the natural and supernatural worlds.     

ASSESSING THE FIELD OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION: ADVICE FROM THE NEXT GENERATION

The field of science and religion is undergoing a transition today requiring assessment of its past movements and identifying its future trajectories by the next generation of science and religion scholars. This essay provides such assessment and advice. To focus efforts on the past, I turn to Ian Barbour's own stock taking of the field some forty years ago in an essay entitled “Science and Religion Today” before giving some personal comments where I argue that much of the field has traditionally focused on the conversation between Christianity and the natural sciences. At present, however, we are beginning to see that the future of the conversation lies beyond the dialogue between the natural sciences and Christianity. I suggest that the future dialogue will and ought to expand in several directions: (1) into non‐Christian religions and theology, (2) into the human sciences, (3) into science and technology Studies, and (4) into the humanities more broadly.     

RECONNECTING SCIENCE AND SPIRITUALITY: TOWARD OVERCOMING A TABOO

Abstract. We argue that reconnecting science and spirituality yields the best rational understanding of the world. Spirituality is seen as the core of many religions. Distinctions are drawn between science and scientism and between spirituality and religion. A historical analysis provides a partial explanation of scientists' aversion to religion. A thought experiment illustrates that spirituality could not only be a legitimate research topic of science but also inform science by offering certain insights. Specifically, science could and should more freely study spirituality in its beneficial impact on individuals' attempts to attain personal wholeness, overcome substance abuse, achieve a more communal society, and safeguard the environment.     

FAITH,SCIENCE, AND NONRELIGIOUS IDENTITY FORMATION AMONG MALE KENYAN YOUTH

The faith and science dialogue has received scholarly attention in the recent past. Within the African landscape at large, the underlying assumption has been that Africans are religious. However, there has been a rising cohort of Africans who are increasingly identified as nonreligious or atheist or agnostic. This research presents a qualitative analysis of the sociocultural factors that affect or influence these minority identities within a pluralistic African context, exploring their emergence and diversities within the African context, with a specific focus on 20 male Kenyan youth who are identified as nonreligious. This research utilized purposive sampling within nonreligious groups and networks. Second, this research aims at exploring how nonreligious identities are constructed, particularly given the concomitant issues surrounding emerging adulthood and new media. This builds up on the theories around youth and identity formation, while foregrounding science and belief as a central theme of study.     

COGNITIVE DISABILITY AND COGNITIVE ENHANCEMENT

Abstract: This essay explores problems of consistency among commonsense beliefs about the comparative moral status of animals, fetuses, and human beings congenitally endowed with cognitive capacities and potential no higher than those of higher animals. The possibility of genetic cognitive enhancement exacerbates some of these problems, but also offers new resources for understanding the basis of our moral status as inviolable.     

THE ANIMAL BODY MULTIPLE: SCIENCE,RELIGION, AND THE INVENTION OF HALAL STUNNING

This article proposes a specific kind of ontological investigation in the field of science and religion. I argue that science and religion can create distinct practices that enact multiple realities, and thus they should be seen as more than different views of the same world. By analyzing the details of scientific experiments crucial for the invention of halal stunning, I demonstrate that religion and science are both permeable to the social, the biological, and to each other, and that seemingly incommensurable realities can co-occur in the body of an animal. Here, animals’ modes of existence are interdependent with the technologies being used, and with the web of interactions that they are drawn into. In the process of inventing halal stunning, it is not so much about the same animal body that is thought about differently as it is about animals spanning across multiple, physiological, realities as they are recruited into different webs of interactions to create a new slaughter method.     

ON McCAULEY'S WHY RELIGION IS NATURAL AND SCIENCE IS NOT: SOME FURTHER OBSERVATIONS

Robert McCauley's Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not provides a summary interpretive statement of the standard model in cognitive science of religion, what I have previously called the HADD + ToM + Cultural Epidemiology model, along with a more general argument comparing religious cognition to scientific thinking and a novel framework for understanding both in terms of the concept of the maturationally natural. I here follow up on some observations made in a previous paper, developing them in light of McCauley's own response to my previous arguments.     

论认知科学对文章阅读研究的影响

以信息加工为基本范式的当代认知科学极大地影响和深化了阅读心理的研究。本文结合国内外现有研究,首先回顾了文章阅读认知加工研究的发展历程,然后总结了当代认知科学对文章阅读心理研究的主要贡献之所在,并对在认知科学影响下该领域未来的发展趋势和方向进行了分析与展望。     

CHALLENGES,OPPORTUNITIES, AND SUGGESTIONS FOR A RENEWED PROGRAM IN THE SCIENTIFIC STUDY OF RELIGION

This is an introduction to the Symposium on “The New Scientific Study of Religion Moving On.” The introduction briefly indicates why the cognitive science of religion (CSR) needs re-evaluation. It subsequently gives an overview of the contributions of the symposium's articles.