Abstract
The following paper intends to point out how the concepts in use have significantly influenced and directed research in the cognitive science of religion – especially regarding the treatment and analysis of emotions and their relation to human religiosity. To exemplify this, the positions of the main cognitive researchers will be analysed and their concepts of religion highlighted. For contrast and comparison I will also highlight the way religiosity and emotionality are conceptualized and analysed in the costly signalling theory of religion, which can be considered an evolutionary alternative to cognitive approaches. In a more general discussion I will argue that the choosing of concepts and categories is a methodological act in the human sciences, comparable to the choice of experimental method in the natural sciences. However, as historical and anthropological comparative studies have well shown, it has become highly questionable whether the central concepts of the cognitive approach do signify something universally existent. Thus, because cognitive approaches have borrowed their conceptual tools from fields and conceptual systems which have fallen under severe criticism, they cannot afford to ignore the criticisms which have been raised concerning the usage of such concepts.
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