Cognitive science of religion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Cognitive Science of Religion is the study of religious thought and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive sciences. The field employs methods and theories from cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, neurobiology, zoology, ethology, among others. The scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religion by means of ordinary cognitive capacities.

E. Thomas Lawson is the founder of the Cognitive Science of Religion. A systematic treatment of religious representations can be found in the books he authored (with Robert McCauley): Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture and Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms. A festschrift in his honor, Religion as a Human Capacity was published in 2004. Pascal Boyer in his Naturalness of Religious Ideas and Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought made the contribution of explicitly demonstrating the value of an evolutionary psychology framework within cognitive psychology of religion. The focus in the field has now shifted from theorizing to experimental and empirical studies. Examples of current well publicized multi-million dollar projects are the Oxford University based Explaining Religion project and the Cognition Religion and Theology Project.

Other contributors to this field include Robert McCauley (who first came up with the notion of a Hyperactive Agency Detection Device - HADD), Stewart Guthrie, Pascal Boyer and Harvey Whitehouse. Dan Sperber foreshadowed the Cognitive Science of Religion in his 1975 book Rethinking Symbolism. The first use of the term "cognitive science of religion" appears to be in a 2000 article in the journal Numen entitled "Towards a Cognitive Science of Religion" by E. Thomas Lawson (2000).

Contents 1 Leading researchers 2 Publications 3 See also 4 References

[edit] Leading researchers

Researchers in the field include:

• Scott Atran, Directeur de Recherche, Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS, Paris
• Justin L. Barrett, senior researcher at the University of Oxford
• Jesse Bering, Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University - Belfast
• Pascal Boyer, Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis
• Emma Cohen, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford
• István Czachesz, fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki
• Michal Fux, PhD fellow at the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University - Belfast
• Armin W. Geertz, Professor of religion at the University of Aarhus
• Stewart E. Guthrie, Anthropology Emeritus at Fordham University
• Jeppe Sinding Jensen, Associate Professor of religion at the University of Aarhus
• Nicola Knight, researcher and lecturer at the University of Oxford
• E. Thomas Lawson, Honorary Professor and Research Scientist at the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University - Belfast
• Cristine Legare, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas - Austin
• Pierre Liénard, Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada - Las Vegas
• Brian Malley, lecturer at the University of Michigan
• Luther H. Martin, University Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont
• Robert N. McCauley, William Rand Kenan Jr. University Professor at Emory University
• William W. McCorkle Jr., Visiting Assistant Professor at Webster University
• Joel Mort, Research Scientist in the Cognitive Systems Branch, Air Force Research Laboratory and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University - Belfast
• Ara Norenzayan, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
• Ilkka Pyysiäinen, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki
• D. Jason Slone, assistant professor of religious studies at Webster University
• Jesper Sorensen, Associate Professor of religion at the University of Southern Denmark
• Dan Sperber, Directeur de Recherche, Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS, Paris
• Todd Tremlin, assistant professor of religion at Central Michigan University
• Harvey Whitehouse, professor of social anthropology at the University of Oxford
• Dimitris Xygalatas, postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University

[edit] Publications

• Atran, S., & Norenzayan, A. (2004). Religion's evolutionary landscape: Counterintuition, commitment, compassion, communion. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 27, 713-770.
• Barrett, J.L. "Cognitive Science of Religion: What Is It and Why Is It?" Religion Compass. 2007, vol 1.
• Barrett, J.L. "Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion." Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2000, vol. 4 pp 29-34
• Barrett, J.L. "Why Would Anyone Believe in God?" AltaMira Press, 2004.
• Barrett, J.L. and Jonathan A. Lanman. "The Science of Religious Beliefs." Religion 38, 2008. 109-124
• Boyer, Pascal. "The Naturalness of Religious Ideas." University of California Press, 1994.
• Boyer, Pascal. "Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought." Basic Books, 2001
• Boyer, Pascal. "Religious Thought and Behavior as By-Products of Brain Functions," Trends in Cognitive Sciences, vol 7, pp 119-24
• Boyer, P and Liénard, P. "Why ritualized behavior? Precaution Systems and action parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals .” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 29: 595-650.
• Cohen, E. The Mind Possessed. The Cognition of Spirit Possession in the Afro-Brazilian Religious Tradition Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Geertz, Armin W. (2004). "Cognitive Approaches to the Study of Religion," in P. Antes, A.W. Geertz, R.R. Warne (Eds.) New Approaches to the Study of Religion. Volume 2: Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 347-399.
• Geertz, Armin W. (2008). "From Apes to Devils and Angels: Comparing Scenarios on the Evolution of Religion," in J. Bulbulia et al. (Eds.) The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, & Critiques. Santa Margarita: Collins Foundation Press, pp. 43-49.
• Guthrie, S. E. (1993). Faces in the Clouds: A new theory of religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Knight, N., Sousa, P., Barrett, J. L., & Atran, S. (2004). Children’s attributions of beliefs to humans and God. Cognitive Science 28(1): 117-126.
• Lawson, E. T. "Toward a Cognitive Science of Religion." Numen. 47(3): 338-349(12).
• Lawson, E. T. "Religious Thought." Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, vol 3 (A607).
• Lawson, E. T. and McCauley, RN. "Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture." Cambridge University Press, 1990.
• Legare, C. and Gelman, S. "Bewitchment, Biology, or Both: The Co-existence of Natural and Supernatural Explanatory Frameworks Across Development." Cognitive Science. 32(4): 607-642.
• Light, T and Wilson, B (eds). "Religion as a Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson." Brill, 2004.
• McCauley, RN. "The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of Science." Explanation and Cognition (Keil and Wilson eds), pp 61-85. MIT Press, 2000.
• McCauley, RN and Lawson, E. T. "Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms." Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Norenzayan, A., Atran, S., Faulkner, J., & Schaller, M. (2006). Memory and mystery: The cultural selection of minimally counterintuitive narratives. Cognitive Science, 30, 531-553.
• Nuckolls, C. "Boring Rituals," Journal of Ritual Studies, 2006.
• Pyysiäinen, I. "How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion." Brill, 2001.
• Slone, DJ. "Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't." Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Slone, DJ (ed). "Religion and Cognition: A Reader." Equinox Press, 2006.
• Sørensen, J. "A Cognitive Theory of Magic." AltaMira Press, 2006.
• Sperber, D. "Rethinking Symbolism." Cambridge University Press, 1975.
• Sperber, D. "Explaining Culture." Blackwell Publishers, 1996.
• Sperber, D. (1975). Rethinking Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Tremlin, T. "Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion." Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Whitehouse, H. (1995). Inside the Cult: Religious innovation and transmission in Papua New Guinea. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Whitehouse, H. (1996a). Apparitions, orations, and rings: Experience of spirits in Dadul. Jeannette Mageo and Alan Howard (eds). Spirits in Culture, History, and Mind, New York: Routledge.
• Whitehouse, H. (1996b). Rites of terror: Emotion, metaphor, and memory in Melanesian initiation cults. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2, 703-715.
• Whitehouse, H. (2000). Arguments and Icons: Divergent modes of religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of Religiosity: a cognitive theory of religious transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

[edit] See also

• International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion (IACSR)
• Issues in Science and Religion
• Evolutionary epistemology
• Evolutionary psychology
• Evolutionary psychology of religion

[edit] References

v • d • e Evolutionary psychology Psychology portal · Evolutionary biology portal Processes Altruism · Group selection · Kin selection · Sexual selection · Sociobiology  · Coevolution  · Evolutionarily stable strategy Areas Psychological development · Morality · Religion · Depression  · Developmental psychopathology  · Educational psychology  · Music Seminal writers Pascal Boyer · David Buss · Leda Cosmides · Charles Darwin · Richard Dawkins · Daniel Dennett · Jared Diamond · David Geary · Kevin B. MacDonald · Geoffrey Miller · John Tooby · Robert Trivers · E. O. Wilson · D. S. Wilson Related subjects Memetics · Sociobiology  · Evolutionary neuroscience · Human evolution · Sociocultural evolution  · Evolutionary anthropology  · Evolutionary medicine · Evolutionary linguistics Lists Evolutionary psychologists  · Evolutionary Psychology Research Groups and Centers  · Bibliography of evolution and human behavior