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This chapter explains how the Cognitive Science of Religion can serve as a powerful new method for exploring the making of representations in a religion and the cognitive processes by which an initiate apprehends a religion's symbol system. Following Dan Sperber's approach (Explaining Culture), all religions may be described in terms of the interplay of representations over time: public representations in the media of sacred spaces, physical images, performed rituals, and words uttered and recorded in text; and private representations in the minds of individual adherents. A fortiori, the negotiation of representations in Mithraism can have been no different. An appendix draws on Lucian's treatment of audience response in his essay On the Dance to show how the negotiation of representation worked in a comparable situation in antiquity.

This chapter introduces the reader to the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), especially to those aspects of this new field that are relevant for a deeper understanding of the cognitive theories used in this book. CSR is a research programme which draws on a growing body of knowledge from the cognitive and evolutionary sciences to explain human religiosity. It is a pluralistic movement, comprising different schools and currents; what they have in common is the effort to achieve explanatory and testable theories, as well as a multilevel analysis of religious phenomena. The survey of the schools and currents in CSR provides a basis for suggesting a ‘socio-cognitive approach’ to early Christian rituals, relying on cognitive theories of ritual that operate at both a social and a cognitive level. Three perspectives on ritual emerge from the discussion, described by the keywords ‘action’, ‘cooperation’, and ‘religious knowledge’.

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 explores the phenomenon of iconoclasm from the perspectives of cognitive science. It argues that iconoclasm engages the same cognitive and ritual dynamics as iconism, only from an oppositional standpoint. These dynamics include the attribution of mind and agency to all things called gods in ancient West Asia and associated ritual practices that generate a conceptual fluidity between artifacts and living things. Iconic sacrificial cult is identified as a cognitively optimal expression of these natural, evolutionarily successful human tendencies toward anthropomorphic projection and conceptual fluidity. Iconoclasm is identified as a mode of transmission for non-optimal aniconic traditions, the long-term success of which depend on memorable violence against images.

It is commonly assumed that the cognitive and evolutionary explanations of religion make the truth of theism more improbable than not. Here, two interrelated questions will be examined. First, what is the relationship between the cognitive study of religion and evolutionary psychology? This chapter will examine how general critiques of evolutionary psychology have been treated by CSR scholars seeks, and suggest that little consensus currently exists over this matter. Second, what, if any, are the implications for theism if the cognitive study of religion is explicitly grounded in evolutionary psychology? It will be argued that the answer hinges on the religious implications of the evolutionary perspective in general. It is suggested that evolutionary theory is compatible with theism, but that some formulations of evolutionary psychology may conflict with some specifically Christian doctrines, such as certain accounts of original sin and some other aspects of theological anthropology.

This chapter focuses on a gap in existing cognitive scientific explanations of religion: although they may explain various religious beliefs, they are weak at explaining religious experiences—including the very perception-like experiences that believers often take as grounding their belief in God. The account argues that cognitive science of religion (CSR) to date provides neither the full-blown concept of a deity nor dedicated cognitive resources for arriving at the perception of one. The gap is not inevitable, however: it is shown how certain religious experiences could indeed qualify as direct perceptions of God, on a traditional model of perception. Moreover, one can explain how humans acquired the conceptual and computational resources to perceive supernatural beings by supposing that human beings have actually interacted with such beings in evolutionarily significant ways throughout history. The chapter closes with some epistemic implications of looking at CSR in this “reformed” way.

This chapter sets forth the basic thesis of the book, viz., that the development of counterintuitive doctrines like No-self and the Trinity can be understood in terms of social identity processes. It begins with the observation that both doctrines exemplify the concept of “theological correctness” in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). That is, both doctrines, despite being central to the identities of their respective traditions, are curiously irrelevant to the daily lives most of their adherents. The category of theological correctness foregrounds the distinction between what can be called the cognitive and ideological dimensions of religious ideas. It suggests, moreover, that an explanation for the development of doctrines like consubstantiality and No-self is to be found at the “ideological” level of group dynamics. In order to provide the theoretical background of this thesis, the chapter gives an overview of both the cognitive science of religion and social identity theory.

This chapter addresses theoretical critiques that have been raised and challenges with which comparison is confronted. It first demonstrates that comparison has been used in service of different and contradictory agendas—affirmative or critical of religion—and is therefore not tied to any specific ideological framework. It discusses the most common objections: that comparative studies decontextualize and essentialize religious phenomena. It then engages with postcolonialist and postmodernist critiques of the comparative method and their insistence on acknowledging difference. Turning to the opposite side of the academic spectrum, the chapter reviews the relation of naturalistic approaches (such as the cognitive science of religion) to comparison and their focus on universals and sameness. Acknowledging the critiques and challenges and recognizing their limitations sets the stage for the reflections about comparative methodology in Chapter 3.

This chapter provides an introduction to the field of cognitive science and outlines the program of a cognitive turn in New Testament Studies. The chapter explains the background and significance of the cognitive turn in psychology and other disciplines and also discusses basic research questions concerning the human mind. The question is raised how the human mind manages a variety of cognitive tasks efficiently, and theories of modularity as well as different accounts of situated cognition are introduced. Following a brief outline of the Cognitive Science of Religion, the final part of the chapter considers what the program of a cognitive turn in New Testament Studies can promise.

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 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.

The topic of this chapter is a body of work from various branches of the cognitive sciences suggesting that the tendency to distinguish qualitatively between bodies and minds—between physical objects subject to mechanical causality and agents capable of free will, planning, and intentionality—is a human cognitive universal. It develops reliably and early in human beings, a genetic inheritance shaped by the powerful adaptive pressures of social living. In addition, there is good evidence that this distinction between objects and agents reliability kicks off mind-body dualism, afterlife and soul beliefs, a perception of “meaning” in the world, and concepts of supernatural agency that share broad features across cultures and throughout history. These universals create suspicion of any claim that the early Chinese were strong mind-body holists. Relevant cognitive universals include Theory of Mind, concepts of psychological interiority, and basic supernatural, afterlife and soul beliefs.

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.

Humans use natural and supernatural explanations for phenomena such as illness, death, and human origins. These explanations are available not just to different individuals within a society, but to the same individual, coexisting within a single mind. This chapter proposes that understanding the coexistence of qualitatively different explanations is fundamentally a cognitive–developmental endeavor, speaking to general questions of knowledge acquisition, socialization, and the interaction of cognition and culture. The chapter first reviews research demonstrating that coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations is not a short-lived, transitional phenomenon that wanes in the course of development, but is instead evident (and widespread) among adults. It then speculates on the psychological origins of coexistence and discusses implications for metacognition. Finally, directions are proposed for future research to inform understanding of how individuals incorporate natural and supernatural explanations across content domains, development, and cultures.

This chapter discusses whether scientific attempts to explain religious beliefs cast doubt on theistic belief. Five different ways of ‘casting doubt’ are distinguished, and it is argued that work in the cognitive science of religion (CSR) does not cast doubt on theistic belief in two of these ways. However, some work in CSR does cast doubt to some extent by way of undermining at least one argument for theism, namely, C.S. Lewis’s Argument from Desire. However, it is also argued that CSR does not undermine the cosmological and design arguments. Although CSR does cast some degree of doubt on theistic belief, it by no means follows that theistic belief is unjustified, or that it is not highly justified.

Building on foundations from the cognitive science of religion, this chapter synthesizes theoretical insights and empirical evidence concerning the processes by which cultural evolutionary processes driven by intergroup competition may have shaped the package of beliefs, rituals, practices, and institutions that constitute modern world religions. Five different hypothesized mechanisms are presented through which cultural group selection may have operated to increase the scale of cooperation, expand the sphere of trustworthy interactions, galvanize group solidarity, and sustain group-beneficial beliefs and practices. The mechanisms discussed involve extravagant displays, supernatural monitoring and incentives, ritual practices, fictive kinship, and moral realism. Various lines of supporting evidence are reviewed and archaeological and historical evidence is summarized from early China (roughly 2000 BCE–220 BCE), where prosocial religion and rituals coevolved with societal complexity. Published in the Strungmann Forum Reports Series.