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The cognitive approach to religion is a “naturalness” thesis because cognitive scientists believe that religion is a by-product of the process of ordinary human cognition. Thus, cognition operates in a manner that religious representations emerge naturally as an aspect of ordinary thinking. Central theories in cognitive science are reviewed to help explain why religion people believe what they shouldn’t.

This introductory chapter gives an overview of the purpose of the book: to describe and discuss scientific accounts of religion and to assess their implications on society. It also gives a background on scientific accounts and religion, and how evolution affected these two disciplines. The chapter ends by presenting religious views on Cognitive Science, Darwinian accounts, and Coevolutionary accounts.

This chapter explores how cognitive science accounts for the existence of religion, by focusing on the works of Pascal Boyer (writer of Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought). It begins by giving an overview of some of Boyer’s work, then relating theology to cognitive science of religion. It presents theological accounts on the development of religion, and how Boyer’s account on the development of religion can be adopted into it. Lastly, it suggests some of the ways Christianity can benefit from this adoption, both practically and theologically.

This chapter explores why belief in superhuman agents (gods) is historically and culturally common by engaging the natural properties of human thinking to function in ordinary natural and social environments. It starts by explaining what belief is, and its two kinds: reflective (provides fair representations of what someone believes in) and non-reflective (operates without conscious awareness in nature). It discusses why people believe in gods, and how god concepts arise. It also talks about the advantages of having these concepts; how they are connected to fortune, misfortune, and morality; and why people believe in a particular divine.

Taking embodiment seriously impacts the way religion is theorized in the discipline of cognitive psychology and in other religious studies disciplines, including theology. This chapter describes new avenues of research that follow from adopting an embodied perspective. An embodied perspective also transforms the way we think about traditional topics concerning religious knowledge. The often argued parallel between ordinary perceptual experience and certain religious experiences commonly described as religious perceptions is analyzed and an appreciative critique of William Alston’s 1991 book Perceiving God is offered. Arguments for conceiving of religious experience as a form of perception are strong but the argument as currently framed is seriously flawed psychologically. Reframing the argument in terms of an embodied-relational model strengthens it and supports the argument in this book that reason is on the side of those who choose a religiously lived life.

This chapter examines the cross-cultural religious phenomenon of demonic seduction in dreams. The prevalence of these kinds of strangely intense, sexually tinged dreams has elicited fear and condemnation from religious authorities throughout history. This chapter looks at demonic seduction in the context of scientific research on big dreams. The discussion includes a detailed case study (“Sana,” a young Muslim woman in contemporary Jordan, possessed by a jinn), references to other religious traditions around the world, and theories from cognitive science and the psychology of religion. Special attention is given to the psychological notion of the unconscious and its role in dreaming and religious experience. The argument is developed that religious beliefs about demonic seduction in dreams have a basis in real psychological experience and legitimate biological concerns about potential threats to procreation.

This chapter examines the cross-cultural religious phenomenon of prophetic visions in dreams. The widespread occurrence of these kinds of visually intense, future-oriented dreams has prompted both positive and negative attention from religious authorities throughout history. This chapter looks at prophetic vision in the context of scientific research on big dreams. The discussion includes a detailed case study (Perpetua, a young Christian woman in second-century C.E. Carthage who kept a dream diary while awaiting execution in a Roman coliseum), references to other religious traditions around the world, and theories from cognitive science and the psychology of religion. Special attention is given to the power of visual imagery in certain kinds of religious experience. The chapter argues that religions are naturally drawn to the anticipatory powers of dreaming, in which the human mind’s natural capacities for forethought are boosted by the brain’s innate tendency to generate spontaneous visionary experiences during sleep.

To appreciate the risks and benefits of anthropomorphism, it is important (1) to appreciate the genius and limitations of human cognition, (2) to compare ultimacy models to see what difference anthropomorphic modeling techniques make, and (3) to entertain the possibility of an apophatic approach to ultimate reality that relativizes and relates ultimacy models. An apophatic approach to ultimate reality relativizes ultimacy models but also implies a disintegrating metric that serves to relate ultimacy models to one another. Degree of anthropomorphism is an important component of this disintegrating metric. Comparative analysis helps manifest internal complexity in the idea of anthropomorphism by distinguishing three relatively independent dimensions: Intentionality Attribution, Rational Practicality, and Narrative Comprehensibility. Educational efforts stabilized in cultural traditions can confer on people the desire and ability to resist one or more dimensions of the anthropomorphic default modes of cognition to some degree.

This chapter develops a social practical account of religious experience that integrates experience and meaning and addresses the criticisms that experience is too subjective and private to serve as a fit object for scholarly inquiry. Drawing from the pragmatist philosophy of Robert Brandom, this chapter argues that experiences are social practical affairs, in that they are perceptual events that require that the experiencer be socialized into a linguistic community. This view of experiences should lead to the rejection of the claims of perennialists, that there are universal and/or nonconceptual mystical experiences. Turning to the insider/outsider problem, this chapter argues that insiders do have a distinctive position in relation to their own experiencers, but that the asymmetry between the insider and outsider is not absolute. Furthermore, in many cases, the outsider can have superior knowledge about the experience. This chapter concludes with an assessment of the possible compatibility of neuroscience, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology with a social practical theory of religion.

This chapter focuses on an old and a new approach to analyzing the seven deadly sins: Thomas Aquinas’s medieval theology, and contemporary cognitive science. As different as the two perspectives might seem, they share a common indebtedness to Aristotle, and they entangle more compellingly than one might have expected. Certain themes occupy and key problems vex both theology and science. The chapter first sets out the Aristotle connection, then engages in comparative analyses of Aquinas and science for each of the deadly sins. Although there is no single, definitive text for contemporary cognitive science that has the authority of the Summa Theologica, a recent issue of Scientific American provides a helpful window onto recent work by psychologists and neuroscientists that relates to the deadly sins.

The introduction explains that big dreams are the “black swans” of dream research—rare but highly impactful experiences revealing new aspects of brain/mind functioning with important relevance for the study of religion. The basic idea that religions originate in dreaming has a long history, and this book will put the hypothesis to the test by using new scientific information about sleep and dreaming. Much of the evidence presented in the book comes from the Sleep and Dream Database (SDDb), a digital archive and search engine designed to facilitate empirical studies of dreaming. An outline of the book’s four sections is presented: Part I looks at the evolutionary context of human sleep, Part II describes research on the form and content of ordinary dreaming, Part III examines scientific research on the four prototypes (aggressive, sexual, gravitational, mystical) of big dreaming, and Part IV looks at big dreams in religious experiences.