Straight out of Durkheim? Haidt’s Neo-Durkheimian Account of Religion and the Cognitive Science of Religion

A familiar theme in discussions of science and religion is the impact of scientific progress on our conception of ourselves. Of particular concern in understanding this impact is the question of how our view of human dignity is affected by scientific progress-or even influential scientific theories, whether or not they are ultimately well confirmed. I include here theories in the cognitive science of religion (CSR), but my concern is wider. It has been said that Darwin unseated our sense of our uniqueness in the biological realm and that Freud undermined our sense of rational self-control. Even supposing these claims are true and that they weaken or eliminate two of the pillars of human dignity, they do not by themselves undermine the possibility of justified theistic beliefs or other justified beliefs that support the view that human persons have a kind of dignity. Granted, the bare truth of theism does not imply that we are free and autonomous in the sense widely taken to be most relevant to human dignity, but some versions of theism-such as those implying that God would not have created persons who are not free and inherently valuable-tend to support the view that we have a kind of dignity. If, as many philosophers and others believe, scientific findings undermine both arguments for theism and, even apart from that, some cherished views about the uniqueness and rationality of human beings, the idea that human beings have dignity is deprived of one source of support. This paper will explore whether developments in CSR might threaten our positive selfconception and, independently of that, the idea that there is a rational basis for theism. Might the results and likely developments of CSR undermine the idea of human dignity as implying-in normal adult human beings- minimally, on the psychological side, free rational agency and a good measure of autonomy and, on the normative side, moral rights and a capacity for moral agency, i.e., roughly, for action based on moral judgment or cognition?1Scientists tend to presuppose, and philosophers widely agree, that our mental life depends on our neural life. Researchers in CSR tend to assume that their results can be accommodated by whatever is learned about the neural underpinnings of cognition, but most of them apparently proceed as if certain cognitive and broadly social-scientific concepts are adequate for scientific explanation of human behavior.2 This raises the question whether CSR is committed to the reducibility of the cognitive properties and laws crucial for its explanations to physical properties and correspondingly physicalistic laws. If not, it apparently presupposes a kind of autonomy on the part of those properties and laws. This, in turn, implies that the cognitive concepts and properties cmcial for religious expression and commitment might also have autonomous explanatory power, a kind that does not depend on taking them to be identical with any physical counterparts.Neutrality about reduction does not entail rejection of reducibility in principle. But it is not clear that anything essential in CSR precludes maintaining the irreducibility of psychological properties to physical ones (I hereafter assume that mentalistic concepts are not reducible to physicalistic ones and that in any case our main questions in this paper require considering reducibility only for properties and laws). If CSR does not entail such reducibility, then a kind of dualism important-even if not essential-for most religions cannot be attacked by naturalistic proponents of CSR as inconsistent with their scientific endeavors. If, however, CSR presupposes that physical (including neurobiological) properties and laws are explanatorily basic, it faces the problem of how to connect its own findings, at least in outline, with an underlying physicalistic theory. Section I will indicate some areas in which results in CSR bear on the issues sketched above. Section II will consider the relation between these results and a materialistic conception of the human person. …

Contemporary moral psychology has been enormously enriched by recent theoretical developments and empirical findings in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology and neuroscience, and social psychology and psychopathology. Yet despite the fact that some theorists have developed specifically “social heuristic” (Gigerenzer, 2008) and “social intuitionist” (Haidt, 2007) theories of moral judgment and behavior, and despite regular appeals to the findings of experimental social psychology, contemporary moral psychology has largely neglected the social dimensions of moral judgment and behavior. I provide a brief sketch of these dimensions, and consider the implications for contemporary theory and research in moral psychology.

Does the pantheon of supernatural agents in early China include beings that the cognitive science of religion would recognize functionally as high gods? Most sinologists—experts on Ancient China—answer in the negative. However, cognitive and behavioral research on religion gives reason to doubt their scholarly judgments. We first frame this study in terms of previous sinological research about supernatural agents, then introduce the concept of a high god from within the framework of the cognitive and behavioral sciences of religion. We hypothesize that supernatural beings that are candidates for high god status— Tian 天, Di 帝, and Shangdi 上帝—will bear stronger associations with punishment and reward than will lower supernatural beings. By quantitatively measuring the association of Chinese characters in several conceptual categories—including high gods, low gods, reward, and punishment—we operationalize this hypothesis and test it with a database of over 5 million characters from 96 classical Chinese texts dating from the pre-Warring States period (475-221 BCE) to the Song Dynasty (960-1279 CE). Contrary to the majority opinion of sinologists, but confirmed by the results of testing our hypothesis, punishment and reward have a stronger relationship to certain Chinese supernatural beings that the cognitive science of religion can confidently identify as high gods.

This article is based on work conducted at a research unit that I head at Aarhus University called Religion, Cognition and Culture (RCC). It was originally designated as a special research area by the Faculty of Theology at the University and has since been integrated as a full-fledged research unit in the Department of the Study of Religion. In a recent statement by the RCC, we claim that humans are simultaneously biological and cultural beings. In all of hominin history, human biology and culture have never been separate. Each newborn infant is both unfinished and uniquely equipped, biologically and cognitively organized to flourish in socio-cultural environments that its genes could never anticipate. So a perspective on minds not limited to brains is required. Thus we must approach cognition as embodied and distributed. We must analyze religion by studying the functional organization of the human brain, its interaction with the social and cultural worlds that it inhabits and modifies, and its developmental constraints and flexibility. The RCC is a European institution, obviously. It differs in its approach to cognition from the few institutions in the United States, England and Northern Ireland that deal with cognition and religion. Whereas the RCC is similar in approach to other European initiatives such as the cognition group in Groningen and the research project in Helsinki. Therefore it could be claimed that our programmatic insistence on causal links between religion, cognition and culture is a peculiarly European approach. In the following, I will explain how the cognitive science of religion can become more relevant to the comparative study of religion and to cutting-edge cognitive science by following this European approach. 1 This article is a highly edited version of my keynote lecture presented at the EASR meeting in Messina in 2009 entitled Religion, Cognition and Culture: A European Idea?. 2 The RCC is closely integrated with the university-wide conglomerate in Aarhus, known as MINDLab, as well as the Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN), and the Cognition, Communication, and Culture (CCC) network, all consisting of researchers from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, health sciences, the university hospitals and the psychiatric hospital. Too much mind and not enough brain 2 Introduction The recent success of and growing interest in the cognitive science of religion (CSR) indicates that it has a lot of potential not only for the comparative study of religion but also for the cognitive neurosciences. Despite these successes, we should not be blind to the fact that a number of challenges must be overcome in order to ensure future growth in the field. My own list of challenges, idiosyncratic as it may be, looks like this: • accommodating current breakthroughs in the social neurosciences • bringing deficient methodological paradigms to terms with cutting edge philosophy of science • obtaining both cross-cultural and ecological validity of current psychological hypotheses • broadening perspectives and theories to accommodate the accumulated knowledge and breakthroughs in the comparative study of religion • broadening perspectives and theories to accommodate the accumulated knowledge and breakthroughs in semiotics, history, literature and linguistics • recruiting young scholars, especially women scholars, and encouraging exchange between the few cognitive science of religion centers and research units that exist in the world In a word, current cognitive science of religion is too much mind and not enough brain, body and culture. It is swiftly becoming esoteric in 3 Cf. ARMIN W. GEERTZ. Cognitive approaches to the study of religion, in New Approaches to the Study of Religion. Volume 2. Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches, edited by Peter Antes, Armin W. Geertz, Randi R. Warne, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 2004. pp. 347-399; ID.. Religion and cognition: A crisis in the academic study of religion?, «Bulletin of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion» XXXVII, 2008, 4, pp. 91-95; JEPPE SINDING JENSEN, The complex worlds of religion: Connecting cultural and cognitive analysis, in Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion, edited by Ilkka Pyysiainen, Veikko Anttonen, London & New York, Continuum, 2002, pp. 203-228; ID., Religion as the unintended product of brain functions in the “standard cognitive science of religion model”: On Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained (2001) and Ilkka Pyysiainen, How Religion Works (2003), in Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion, edited by Michael Stausberg, Abingdon & New York, Routledge, 2009, pp.

This article is based on work conducted at a research unit that I head at Aarhus University called Religion, Cognition and Culture (RCC). It was originally designated as a special research area by the Faculty of Theology at the University and has since been integrated as a full-fledged research unit in the Department of the Study of Religion. In a recent statement by the RCC, we claim that humans are simultaneously biological and cultural beings. In all of hominin history, human biology and culture have never been separate. Each newborn infant is both unfinished and uniquely equipped, biologically and cognitively organized to flourish in socio-cultural environments that its genes could never anticipate. So a perspective on minds not limited to brains is required. Thus we must approach cognition as embodied and distributed. We must analyze religion by studying the functional organization of the human brain, its interaction with the social and cultural worlds that it inhabits and modifies, and its developmental constraints and flexibility. The RCC is a European institution, obviously. It differs in its approach to cognition from the few institutions in the United States, England and Northern Ireland that deal with cognition and religion. Whereas the RCC is similar in approach to other European initiatives such as the cognition group in Groningen and the research project in Helsinki. Therefore it could be claimed that our programmatic insistence on causal links between religion, cognition and culture is a peculiarly European approach. In the following, I will explain how the cognitive science of religion can become more relevant to the comparative study of religion and to cutting-edge cognitive science by following this European approach. 1 This article is a highly edited version of my keynote lecture presented at the EASR meeting in Messina in 2009 entitled Religion, Cognition and Culture: A European Idea?. 2 The RCC is closely integrated with the university-wide conglomerate in Aarhus, known as MINDLab, as well as the Center for Functionally Integrative Neuroscience (CFIN), and the Cognition, Communication, and Culture (CCC) network, all consisting of researchers from the humanities, social sciences, natural sciences, health sciences, the university hospitals and the psychiatric hospital. Too much mind and not enough brain 2 Introduction The recent success of and growing interest in the cognitive science of religion (CSR) indicates that it has a lot of potential not only for the comparative study of religion but also for the cognitive neurosciences. Despite these successes, we should not be blind to the fact that a number of challenges must be overcome in order to ensure future growth in the field. My own list of challenges, idiosyncratic as it may be, looks like this: • accommodating current breakthroughs in the social neurosciences • bringing deficient methodological paradigms to terms with cutting edge philosophy of science • obtaining both cross-cultural and ecological validity of current psychological hypotheses • broadening perspectives and theories to accommodate the accumulated knowledge and breakthroughs in the comparative study of religion • broadening perspectives and theories to accommodate the accumulated knowledge and breakthroughs in semiotics, history, literature and linguistics • recruiting young scholars, especially women scholars, and encouraging exchange between the few cognitive science of religion centers and research units that exist in the world In a word, current cognitive science of religion is too much mind and not enough brain, body and culture. It is swiftly becoming esoteric in 3 Cf. ARMIN W. GEERTZ. Cognitive approaches to the study of religion, in New Approaches to the Study of Religion. Volume 2. Textual, Comparative, Sociological, and Cognitive Approaches, edited by Peter Antes, Armin W. Geertz, Randi R. Warne, Berlin, Walter de Gruyter, 2004. pp. 347-399; ID.. Religion and cognition: A crisis in the academic study of religion?, «Bulletin of the Council of Societies for the Study of Religion» XXXVII, 2008, 4, pp. 91-95; JEPPE SINDING JENSEN, The complex worlds of religion: Connecting cultural and cognitive analysis, in Current Approaches in the Cognitive Science of Religion, edited by Ilkka Pyysiainen, Veikko Anttonen, London & New York, Continuum, 2002, pp. 203-228; ID., Religion as the unintended product of brain functions in the “standard cognitive science of religion model”: On Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained (2001) and Ilkka Pyysiainen, How Religion Works (2003), in Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion, edited by Michael Stausberg, Abingdon & New York, Routledge, 2009, pp.

The article offers a critical analysis of the cognitive science of religion (CSR) as applied to new and quasi-religious movements, and uncovers implicit conceptual and theoretical commitments of the approach. A discussion of CSR’s application to new religious movement (NRM) case studies (charismatic leadership, paradise representations, Aḥmadiyya, and the International Society for Krishna Consciousness) identifies concerns about the theorized relationship between CSR and wider socio-cultural factors, and proposals for CSR’s implication in wider processes are discussed. The main discussion analyses three themes in recent work relating CSR to religious and religion-like activities that extend and reframe the model. These include (1) identification of distinctive and accessible cognitive pathways associated with new forms of religious belief and practice (in particular in ‘New Age’ movements), (2) application of CSR to movements and practices outside traditional definitions of religion (near death experiences, conspiracy theories, virtual reality), and (3) engaging CSR in wider cultural processes and negotiations (religion in healthcare settings, and the definition of the study of esoteric religious traditions within academic domains). The conclusion identifies two particular findings: (1) that application of CSR in these areas renders underlying cognitive processes more available to scrutiny and (2) that CSR is employed to identify and enlarge the category of religion. The conclusion suggests that the study of CSR in its application to NRMs and quasi-religion identifies a wide field of common and overlapping themes and interests in which CSR is a more active operand than is commonly assumed.

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) is distinctive in its systematic methodology and its interdisciplinary nature. In the field of the study of religion, however, scholars are hardly receptive to CSR because of its “scientific” nature. The reason for this is that CSR is understood as distinct from other studies, nevertheless it has humanistic backgrounds. In order to investigate the intellectual backgrounds of CSR, the paper will describe the initial development of CSR by introducing researches and academic cooperation in the period from the 1990s to the early 2000s. Moreover, by examining academic contexts, what the emergence of CSR brought about to the study of religion will be clarified. CSR emerged as a result of the debate between modernist and postmodernist, connecting various views and resulting in a great shift in the intellectual landscape. This interdisciplinary role can be seen as the most important achievement of CSR.

This article explores the cognitive science of religion to discover the challenges and implications for theology by providing a critical evaluation through the lenses of philosophy, evolutionary biology and neuroscience. Four positive implications of the cognitive science of religion are identified. Firstly, the cognitive science of religion can function as a strong hermeneutics of suspicion through which theologians can criticise dogmatic and authoritative religions and theologies. Secondly, the cognitive science of religion invites scholars of religion and theology to consider the evolutionary view of survival. Thirdly, the discipline’s counter-intuitive concept of God could provide the basic material for theology. Finally, the folk psychology this field depends on can be harmonised with theological emphasis on the weak. Despite these positive comments, it is nevertheless clear that a constructive encounter between the cognitive science of religion and theology should follow a careful critique of the former. Thus, I criticise that the cognitive science of religion is excessively dependent on evolutionary psychology and overemphasises a reductionist explanation of religion as merely a by-product of evolutionary adaptation whilst this study almost precludes any non-reductionistic model of mind such as ‘connectionism’ and ‘enactionism’ as well as any holistic interpretation of religion and theology. Finally, I conclude that theology of nature is a proper method for establishing a relationship between the cognitive science of religion and theology.Contribution: The article explores a critical accommodation of and response to the cognitive science of religion which has challenged religion and theology. It can not only expand transdisciplinarity of theological discourse, but also enrich the discourse of science and religion.

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) has over 30 years of history. However, the language of CSR is still unfamiliar to contemporary scholars studying religion in Korea. This unfamiliarity must be resolved so that important advances in CSR can be carefully reviewed in the Korean academic community. This study analyzes how CSR deals with the concept of religion and its implications. First, CSR raises new research questions based on the achievements of classical religious studies. Second, it explores the evolutionary origins, cognitive mechanisms, and cultural success factors, not of religion per se, but of thoughts and behaviors considered religious, which do not contradict the lessons provided by debates on the concept of religion in classical religious studies. Third, even in naturalistic approaches to religion, where CSR belongs, there are controversies regarding the concept of religion between the cognitive byproduct model and adaptationist model. Fourth, the standard CSR model shows that several research questions in the study of religion can be empirically explored when the privileged value attributed to the concept of religion is reserved. Although CSR inherits the debates over the concept of religion from classical religious studies, it differs in its exploration of the evolutionary and cognitive factors that explain why religion is difficult to define as an autonomous system.

Naturalistic explanations for religious beliefs, in the form of the cognitive science of religion (CSR), have become increasingly popular in the contemporary sphere of philosophy and theology. Some claim to provide proof that theism, or religion more generally, is falsified, whilst others suggest that their theories are compatible with holding religious beliefs. In the following, I focus on the CSR of Justin L. Barrett, in order to argue that this particular naturalistic explanation can be seen to be compatible with both theism and atheism. Although Barrett is a proponent of his CSR’s compatibility with theism, and his work appears to imply that he is an incompatibilist when it comes to atheism and CSR, it is not immediately clear whether: (i) his CSR is definitely compatible with theism; and, (ii) why it should be seen as incompatible with atheism. I investigate these questions, utilising and extending research and tools from David Leech and Aku Visala, to argue for the conclusion that Barrett’s CSR is compatible with both theism and atheism, despite what his work implies. I consider the impact this has on the broader sphere of CSR, naturalistic explanations, and different religious worldviews.

This study examines the religious/spiritual practices of 106 African American women when addiction is present. Stratified sampling was based on addiction status: no addiction (n=58); addiction to one of either alcohol, marijuana, or cocaine (n=22); and addiction to two or more of the substances (n=26). Using items from the Religiosity Scale to assess belief in God, religious behaviors, commitment and connection, analyses revealed that the majority of the women (84%) believe God exists and is active in their lives. However not all demonstrated formal religious behaviors or have a commitment or connection to religious activities. Women addicted to two or more substances were more likely to report religious behaviors, commitment, and connection such as regular personal religious-based reading/studying and having a feeling of religious commitment compared to women with no or only one addiction. Women with co-occurring addictions may utilize religious-based practices in an attempt to alleviate their emotional pain. Further exploration of religious/spiritual practices and co-morbid substance addiction is needed, as this research may be vital to implementing effective interventions with this population.

Reformed epistemology (RE) involves a view of knowledge of God which Kelly James Clark and Justin Barrett have brought cognitive science to bear on. They argue that the cognitive science of religion (CSR) indicates that we have a ‘god-faculty’, a notion employed by Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga contends that if there is a God, then we have a specialized god-faculty. Clark and Barrett, by contrast, focus on the empirical evidence and point to a different, less specialized faculty. This difference is significant for how RE and CSR relate. The paper argues that a dilemma arises for those who bring RE and CSR together. A choice must be made between two interpretations of the god-faculty. ‘God-faculty 1ʹ is a specialized system for forming theistic beliefs. Findings in CSR indicate that there is no such system. ‘God-faculty 2ʹ is an unrefined tendency to form beliefs in superhuman agents. This thesis has empirical support in CSR. However, this faculty is unable to deliver the epistemic goods needed for the immediate, non-inferential knowledge of God RE describes. This shows that those who combine central contentions in RE with current research in CSR face a dilemma from which it is hard to escape.

Over time, more psychologists have become contributors to the cognitive science of religion (CSR), but when are they doing CSR and when are they doing psychology of religion? Does it matter? This chapter sketches contemporary scientific reflections on notions of death and the afterlife to illustrate the subtle differences between CSR and the psychology of religion. The two kindred scientific approaches overlap considerably, but giving attention to their central differences will assist scholars in finding complementarity, thereby improving both schools of inquiry and their contributions to each other. After developing this thesis, the chapter describes the organization and flow of The Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Science of Religion as a whole. It begins with general theoretical and methodological foundations, and then considers specific applications of CSR to substantive topics, such as beliefs in gods, sacred texts, sacred objects, and ritualized behaviors, before turning to how these domains of cultural expression are sometimes joined (or not) into religious systems. The handbook ends with comparisons between CSR and two other neighboring approaches (evolutionary studies of religion and neuroscience of religion) and, finally, considers the implications of CSR for philosophy of religion, religious education, and theology.

In a 2008 paper, Justin Barrett outlined five conditions meant to be jointly sufficient for an agent-concept to elicit faith and religious commitment. In other words, he outlined five requirements for an entity to be a god. His table of criteria was intended as a solution to the so-called Mickey Mouse problem, the problem of explaining why people believe in god(s), but not in other entities, such as Mickey Mouse. Barrett was criticized in a 2010 paper by Gervais & Henrich, who claimed the table yields false positives: some god-concepts meet all five criteria but are not the object of faith and religious commitment, such as Zeus, as well as any god-concepts of every extinct religion. In this paper, I argue along similar lines, but beyond. I show that some of the false positives Barrett’s table allows for don’t even stand for gods of any genuine religion, extinct or not.

Over the past 15 years or so, the number of empirical projects in the cognitive science of religion (CSR) has grown exponentially and so too has the amount of attention paid to the field, including questions about what the cognitive science of religion is, how it conceptualizes religion and what it explains. The aim of this chapter is to contribute to these discussions by outlining the main objectives of CSR and the assumptions underlying the field. In particular, CSR has often been criticized for not engaging in extensive debates about what religion is. In this chapter I focus extensively on how CSR scholars construe religion and why they have eschewed these definitional debates in favor of engaging in empirical research. In what follows, I discuss how CSR conceptualizes religion, and how this differs from other approaches. Next, I consider how this conceptualization of religion shapes how scholars study it. Finally, I consider the question of how CSR actually explains religion.