LESSONS FOR RELIGIOUS EDUCATION FROM COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

Abstract

Recent work in the cognitive sciences provides new neurological/biological and evolutionary bases for understanding the construction of knowledge (in the form of sets of ideas containing functionally useful inferences) and the capacity for imagination (as the ability to run inferences and generate ideas from information) in the human mind. In recent years, a growing number of scholars are making use of cognitive science to understand and explain religious beliefs and behaviors in terms of these evolved cognitive capacities and structures of mind. Based on a literature review of cognitive studies of religion, this article examines relevant themes from cognitive science studies of religion toward drawing pedagogical lessons for religious education.

Notes

Although some ground work was done in this area earlier (Sperber 1974; Guthrie 1980), Pascal Boyer's Tradition as Truth and Communication (1990), and E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley's Rethinking Religion (1990) are generally pointed to as marking the beginning of the cognitive science of religion as a notable movement.

For a usefully succinct primer on evolutionary psychology see Cosmides and Tooby (1997), “Evolutionary Psychology: A Primer” (www.psych.ucsb.edu/research/ cep/primer.html).

The “similarity” here refers to basic cognitive capacities such as the ability to infer intentions in another person based on their actions, or the capacity for some level of abstract thinking. Individuals naturally exhibit these basic human cognitive capacities in varying degrees and varying culturally and individually particular forms and styles.

For example, many cognitive science theorists, almost all of whom are white males, seem thoroughly embedded in Western modernist epistemological assumptions with little or no apparent awareness of sociopolitical power dynamics in their own knowledge construction practices.

Theories of emotions follow as similar pattern—physiology comes first, leading up to instinctual emotions and finally conscious feelings (cf., Damasio 1999; Stern 1985).

Justin Barrett is an important exception to this generalization, arguing (2004) on the basis of cognitive science that belief in God makes more sense than non-belief. And D'Aguili and Newburg (2001) take a careful agnostic position. But these are exceptions.

Of course, functionality of a belief for enhancing one's ability to live well is essentially what makes a belief true in a pragmatist perspective. This may bear further consideration and development, but is beyond the scope of this article.

Barrett (2004) argues that a sense of the supernatural really is ubiquitous throughout the world. Although sophisticated Buddhist philosophers may argue against any supernatural assumptions in Buddhist philosophy, the vast majority of Buddhists exhibit beliefs in the supernatural in their everyday practice. Whitehouse (2004) makes the same case. Barrett also contends that sophisticated Western scientific thinkers deny their intuitive sense of the supernatural only by conscious and sustained effort.

I note that this article may easily, and correctly, be seen as a reasoned effort to convince the reader to view religion and religious education in certain ways based on cognitive science reasoning. It is in the nature of modern scholarship to engage in such discourse. It is in the nature of post-modern discourse to be aware of (and consciously engage in) such irony.