Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Belief, Ritual, and Experience

by Edited by Jensine Andresen

• ISBN13: 9780521801522
• ISBN10: 0521801524
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Religion in Mind summarizes and extends the last decade's advances in the cognitive study of religion. Its aim is to use empirical research from psychology and anthropology to understand different components of religious belief, ritual and experience. The book examines cognitive dimensions of religion within a naturalistic view of culture, while preserving a respect for the phenomenology of religion and drawing together teachers of religion, psychologists of religion and cognitive scientists. Expert contributors focus on phenomena such as belief-fixation and transmission; attributions of agency; anthropomorphizing; counterintuitive religious representations; the well-formedness of religious rituals; links between religious representations and emotions; and the development of god concepts. The work encourages greater interdisciplinary linkages between scholars from different fields and will be of interest to researchers in anthropology, psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, and cognitive science and also to the general reader interested in religion and science.

Table of Contents

Notes on contributors	vii
Introduction: towards a cognitive science of religion	1	(44)
Jensine Andresen
PART I: BELIEF ACQUISITION AND THE SPREAD OF RELIGIOUS REPRESENTATIONS	45	(68)
On what we may believe about beliefs	47	(23)
Benson Saler
Cognition, emotion, and religious experience	70	(24)
Ilkka Pyysiainen
Why gods? A cognitive theory	94	(19)
Stewart Guthrie
PART II: QUESTIONING THE ``REPRESENTATION'' OF RELIGIOUS RITUAL ACTION	113	(78)
Ritual, memory, and emotion: comparing two cognitive hypotheses	115	(26)
Robert N. McCauley
Psychological perspectives on agency	141	(32)
E. Thomas Lawson
Do children experience God as adults do?	173	(18)
Justin L. Barrett
PART III: EMBODIED MODELS OF RELIGION	191	(97)
Cognitive study of religion and Husserlian phenomenology: making better tools for the analysis of cultural systems	193	(14)
Matti Kamppinen
Why a proper science of mind implies the transcendence of nature	207	(30)
Francisco J. Varela
Religion and the frontal lobes	237	(20)
Patrick McNamara
Conclusion: religion in the flesh: forging new methodologies for the study of religion	257	(31)
Jensine Andresen
Index	288