Contemporary religious studies and science—A postcritical witches' brew

The six preceding essays are written at different levels and range over a complex set of issues which are representative of the methodological and theoretical disorder one finds in religious studies, today. So disordered is religious studies that it should be considered pre-scientific (perhaps like Alchemy), instead of a science. However, out of these essays, a common set of themes emerge. These are: contextualism, reduction, scientific or critical realism, explanation, and scientific models. An examination of the arguments of each of the preceding essays shows a wide variety of views, although two general positions can be discerned: on one hand, the reductionist-contextualist-realist position is (approximately) occupied by Geertz, Goldberg, Saler, and Segal, on the other hand, the anti-reductionist-contextualist-constructivist position is (approximately) occupied by Jensen and Rennie. To conclude, the author of this response paper makes an argument for a scientific approach to the study of religions which is moderately reductionist, contextualist, and critical realist but one which is also capacious enough to include hermeneutical explanation and the role of models in religious studies.