![Sample our Humanities journals, sign in here to start your FREE access for 14 days]({"type":"image" , "src" : "/sda/5939/TOC-Subject-Sample-2021-Humanities.jpg"})
ABSTRACT
The cognitive science of religion sets out a naturalistic account of religion, in which religious phenomena are grounded in evolved cognitive and moral intuitions. This has important implications for understanding religious systems and the practice of theology. Religions, it is argued, are moral worldviews; theology, rather than a rational justification/explication of the truth of a religion, is an elaboration and/or defense a particular moral worldview, which itself is a particular construction of evolved cognitive and moral intuitions. The philosophical, social, and moral implications of this, which are far reaching, will be explored.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Guthrie, Faces in the Cloud; Boyer, Religion Explained; Atran, In Gods We Trust; Bulbulia, ‘The Cognitive and Evolutionary Psychology,’ 655–686; Norenzayan, Big Gods; Purzycki, Haque, and Sosis, “Extending Evolutionary Accounts,” 74–91; and Sosis, “Religion as Complex Adaptive Systems,” 219–36.
2. Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe, 21.
3. Boyer, The Fracture of an Illusion; Kahane, “Evolutionary Debunking Arguments,” 103–125; and Griffiths and Wilkins, “Crossing the Milvian Bridge,” 201–31.
4. Barrett, “Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology”; Clark and Barrett, “Reidian Religious Epistemology,” 639–; Visala, Naturalism, Theism; and DeCruz and DeSmedt, A Natural History.
5. Teehan, “The Cognitive Science of Religion,” 278.
6. Smart, Worldviews: Crosscultural Exploration.
7. What follows is a summary of the account presented in Teehan, “The Cognitive Science of Religion,” 275–78.
8. Teehan, “Religion and Morality.”
9. Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds; and Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe.
10. Boyer, Religion Explained; and Atran, In Gods We Trust
11. Kelemen, “Beliefs about Purposes,” 278–94.
12. It is important to note a distinction here: this is an account of the appearance of god-beliefs in the history of the species. It is not an account of how any particular person comes to believe in God. That is a complex, often idiosyncratic, process. However, the workings of these mechanisms prepares the human mind to be receptive to such beliefs. Keeping this in mind will help to avoid a common, but misplaced criticism of CSR.
13. See note 8 above.
14. Boyer, Religion Explained; Purzycki and Sosis, “Our Gods: Variations,” 77–93; and Purzycki “What Does God Know?” 846–9.
15. There is a debate within the field about just how morally concerned gods are, and when beliefs in such gods arose. See, for example, Johnson and Bering, “Hand of God” and Baumard and Boyer, “Empirical Problems,” for competing positions. Also, see Teehan, “Religion and Morality” for a detailed discussion of the debate.
16. Sosis, “Religious Behaviors, Badges, and Bans,” 61–88.
17. Rossano, “The African Interregnum,” 127–41.
18. Valdesano and DeSteno, “Synchrony and the Social Tuning,” 262–6; and Reddish, Bulbulia, and Fisher, “Does Synchrony Promote,” 3–19.
19. Irons, “Religion as Hard-to-Fake,” 290–309; and Shaver and Bulbulia, “Signaling Theory and Religion,” 101–17.
20. Hein, “Neural Responses to In-Group,” 149–60; and Cikara, Botvinick, and Fiske, “Us Versus Them,” 306–13.
21. Xygalatas, “Extreme Rituals Promote Prosociality,” 1–4; and Whitehouse and Lanman, “The Ties that Bind Us,” 674–95.
22. Greenberg, “The Causes and Consequences,” 189–212; and Greenberg “Evidence of Terror Management,” 308–18.
23. Becker, The Denial of Death.
24. Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core, 9.
25. Burke, Martens, and Faucher, “Two Decades of Terror Management,”155–95.
26. Greenberg, “Evidence of Terror Management Theory,” 308–18; and Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core.
27. Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski, The Worm at the Core.
28. This raises the question of whether religion by itself is functionally equivalent to a cultural worldview. That is, does it trigger same the psychological outputs as cultural worldviews, as revealed by TMT research. A recent special edition of Religion, Brain, and Behavior, 2017, 8(1), was dedicated to exploring the connections between TMT and religion. See especially, Jong, “The Religious Correlates” and Jackson “Testing the Causal Relationship” for experimental testing of this question, and Shults ‘Modeling Terror Management Theory,” for modeling and simulation exploration of mortality salience and religion.
29. While I will be elaborating on this point from within a pragmatist perspective, it is worth noting that this ‘pragmatic’ take on the value of religion is anticipated by Spinoza, Theological-Political Treatise, albeit working from a very different metaphysics and epistemology than that of pragmatists such as Dewey and James.
30. Johnson and Kruger, “The Good of Wrath,” 159–76; and Johnson and Bering, “Hand of God,” 219–33.
31. My point here is that competing theological systems cannot be evaluated outside the assumptions and commitments of some MWV. There is, in this sense, no objective perspective from which it can be argued that, e.g. a Protestant theology of justification is superior to a Catholic theology of justification. This is because a theology is true in a pragmatic sense if it effectively adjusts a MWV so that it can effectively fulfill its functions. However, as one reviewer pointed out, an individual within, say, a Catholic MWV may come to find the theology which supports that MWV lacking, and conclude that a Protestant theology to be more convincing, and so change MWVs – and this is true. In effect, the Catholic theology has failed to successfully adjust the Catholic MWV to the needs of that individual. It may be the case that an individual’s MWV includes commitment to a standard of rationality, or to a moral value, that is inconsistent with a theological argument for their MWV. Such a judgment about the truth of a particular theology could fairly be said to be ‘non-sectarian’ however that judgment is still grounded in commitments particular to aspects of a MWV.
32. See Teehan, “Cognitive Science, Evil” for a more detailed discussion of this point as it relates to varying theological responses to the problem of evil. See, also, Braddock, ‘Debunking Arguments’ and Van Eyghen, “Is Supernatural Belief,”; and Teehan, “Cognitive Science and the Limits,” for related discussions.
33. Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief; and Clark and Barrett, “Reidian Religious Epistemology,” 639–75.
34. Barrett, “Theological Correctness,” 325–39; and Slone, Theological Incorrectness.
35. Barrett, “Theological Correctness,” 325–39
36. Clark and Barrett, “Reidian Religious Epistemology,” 665.
37. Ibid.
38. Smith, The Early History.
39. See Teehan, In the Name of God, for a developed argument for this position.
40. Barrett, Why Would Anyone Believe, 123.
41. Teehan, “The Cognitive Bases,” 325–348.
42. James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 487.
43. Ibid., 483
44. Ibid., 484.
45. Ibid., 511.
46. Ibid., 512.
47. Ibid., 509–13.
48. Ibid., 515–6.
49. Ibid. James is also admirably honest in stating that no ‘overbelief’ can lay claim to anyone’s allegiance, but they do make a claim on the indulgence of others, see 513.
50. Ibid., 498–502.
51. Ibid., 519.
52. James, “The Will to Believe.”
53. James, Varieties, 509–10.
54. Ibid., 515.
55. Ibid., 507.
56. Ibid., 515.
57. MWVs can take numerous forms. As noted, science can serve as a MWV; so too can political ideologies, such as communism, Nazism, even capitalism. Ethnic or national identities also often constitute MWVs. Humanism is a prime example of a non-religious MWV. A good case can be made that democracy ought to be treated as a MWV; see Dewey, “Creative Democracy.”
58. Solomon, Greenberg, and Pyszczynski, Worm at the Core, 9.
59. Nietzsche, The Antichrist, sec. 2.
60. Peirce, “The Fixation of Belief.” Peirce also identified a fourth method – science – which he recommends if one were interested in the truth. Given that our discussion is focused on the pragmatic value, rather than the truth value of MWVs, we will bracket discussion of this option here.
61. Teehan, In the Name of God; see also, Whitehouse and Lanman, “The Ties that Bind Us.”
62. Harris, The End of Faith; and Hitchens, God is Not Great.
63. Shults, Theology After the Birth, 18–22.
64. Ibid., 19
65. Ibid., 47
66. Wildman, In Our Own Image, 53.
67. Ibid., 55.
68. Shults, Theology, 56.
69. Ibid.
70. Ibid.
71. Tetlock, “Thinking the Unthinkable,” 320–24; and Ginges “Sacred Bounds on Rational Resolution,” 7357–60.
72. Dewey, “Creative Democracy,” 224–30.
73. In a recent work, American Immanence, Hogue has argued that the serious global problems we are now facing call for a political theology that is committed to democracy – a view that captures the ultimate conclusion this article is working to develop.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
John Teehan
John Teehan is Professor and Chair in the Department of Religion, Hofstra University, NY. His research has focused on the evolved processes involved in religious and moral cognition, and the philosophical implications of this research. He is the author of In the Name of God: The Evolutionary Origins of Religion, Ethics, and Violence (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), in addition to numerous articles on these topics.