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Author: Robert N. McCauley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199341540
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
A comparison of the cognitive foundations of religion and science and an argument that religion is cognitively natural and that science is cognitively unnatural.
Author: Robert N. McCauley
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199341540
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 352
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Book Description
A comparison of the cognitive foundations of religion and science and an argument that religion is cognitively natural and that science is cognitively unnatural.
Author: Lorin Friesen
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780987978516
Category : Christianity
Languages : en
Pages : 450
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Book Description
One does not normally relate neurology, cognitive theory, and Christian theology. We have been taught that psychological models of personality should replace outdated theological notions, while neurology uses solid, empirical data from the brain to re-examine psychological models. This book presents the thesis that these three fit together quite well, and that the resulting structure is consistent with the thinking of math and science. The starting point is a cognitive model known as mental symmetry. This model began as a list of seven 'spiritual gifts' from the Biblical book of Romans, was expanded into a system of cognitive styles through an extended study of biographies and then mapped onto brain regions, and has been tested with several decades of observation and analysis of human personality. A cognitive model makes it possible to ask how the mind could function and to work out the steps that are required to get all aspects of the mind to function in an integrated manner. It appears that embodiment causes the mind of the child to function in a manner that is fragmented and incomplete, as described by Piaget's cognitive stages. This book analyzes the process of reprogramming the childish mind so that it functions in a more complete manner. Interaction between different aspects of the mind will naturally cause a concept of God to emerge, and the type of divine concept that forms will depend upon how the various aspects of the mind are functioning and interacting-regardless of whether such a God actually exists or not. If the mind functions in an integrated manner, then the concept of God that forms is that of a Christian Trinity. Incarnation can be analyzed as an internal struggle to integrate abstract technical thought with concrete technical thought, illustrated by the deep relationship between math and science. Far from being an incomprehensible mystery, it appears that a concept of incarnation will naturally emerge when the most rational aspects of human thought are integrated. Similarly, the Christian 'prayer of salvation' can be analyzed from a purely cognitive perspective as a method of mentally viewing a concept of God indirectly through a concept of incarnation. The conflict between science and religion can also be seen from a cognitive perspective as a struggle between two incompatible methods of defining belief, reinforced by the system of thought that each side sets up in order to preserve its method of defining belief. If one distinguishes between the structure of the mind and how the mind interacts with the external environment, then it is possible to analyze life-after-death as existence as a disembodied mind, and one can also explain the spiritual and angelic realms as the same mind being placed within a different environment. The final section of this book contains a 70 page overview of the latest findings in neurology, covering all the major cortical and subcortical regions of the brain, and quoting from almost a hundred recent papers. It is shown that there is a detailed correspondence between the personality traits that were discovered using the theory of mental symmetry and the functions of different brain regions. This volume is a significant clarification and expansion of the previous book, God, Theology, and Cognitive Modules, that was written in 2012, and this cognitive model has been presented at several academic conferences since the publication of that book.
Author: Justin L. Barrett
Publisher: Templeton Press
ISBN: 9781599473819
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology is the eighth title published in the Templeton Science and Religion Series, in which scientists from a wide range of fields distill their experience and knowledge into brief tours of their respective specialties. In this volume, well-known cognitive scientist Justin L. Barrett offers an accessible overview of this interdisciplinary field, reviews key findings in this area, and discusses the implications of these findings for religious thought and practice. Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of minds and mental activity, and as such, it addresses a fundamental feature of what it is to be human. Further, as religious traditions concern ideas and beliefs about the nature of humans, the nature of the world, and the nature of the divine, cognitive science can contribute directly and indirectly to these theological concerns. Barrett shows how direct contributions come from the growing area called cognitive science of religion (CSR), which investigates how human cognitive systems inform and constrain religious thought, experience, and expression. CSR attempts to answer questions such as: Why do humans tend to be religious? And why are specific ideas (e.g., the possibility of an afterlife) so cross-culturally recurrent? Barrett also covers the indirect implications that cognitive science has for theology, such as human similarities and differences with the animal world, freedom and determinism, and the relationship between minds and bodies. Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology critically reviews the research on these fascinating questions and discusses the many implications that arise from them. In addition, this short volume also offers suggestions for future research, making it ideal not only for those looking for an overview of the field thus far but also for those seeking a glimpse of where the field might be going in the future.
Author: Claire White
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351010956
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 341
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Book Description
In recent decades, a new scientific approach to understand, explain, and predict many features of religion has emerged. The cognitive science of religion (CSR) has amassed research on the forces that shape the tendency for humans to be religious and on what forms belief takes. It suggests that religion, like language or music, naturally emerges in humans with tractable similarities. This new approach has profound implications for how we understand religion, including why it appears so easily, and why people are willing to fight—and die—for it. Yet it is not without its critics, and some fear that scholars are explaining the ineffable mystery of religion away, or showing that religion is natural proves or disproves the existence of God. An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion offers students and general readers an accessible introduction to the approach, providing an overview of key findings and the debates that shape it. The volume includes a glossary of key terms, and each chapter includes suggestions for further thought and further reading as well as chapter summaries highlighting key points. This book is an indispensable resource for introductory courses on religion and a much-needed option for advanced courses.
Author: Todd Tremlin
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 019988546X
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 243
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Book Description
Around the world and throughout history, in cultures as diverse as ancient Mesopotamia and modern America, human beings have been compelled by belief in gods and developed complex religions around them. But why? What makes belief in supernatural beings so widespread? And why are the gods of so many different people so similar in nature? This provocative book explains the origins and persistence of religious ideas by looking through the lens of science at the common structures and functions of human thought. The first general introduction to the "cognitive science of religion," Minds and Gods presents the major themes, theories, and thinkers involved in this revolutionary new approach to human religiosity. Arguing that we cannot understand what we think until we first understand how we think, the book sets out to study the evolutionary forces that modeled the modern human mind and continue to shape our ideas and actions today. Todd Tremlin details many of the adapted features of the brain -- illustrating their operation with examples of everyday human behavior -- and shows how mental endowments inherited from our ancestral past lead many people to naturally entertain religious ideas. In short, belief in gods and the social formation of religion have their genesis in biology, in powerful cognitive processes that all humans share. In the course of illuminating the nature of religion, this book also sheds light on human nature: why we think we do the things we do and how the reasons for these things are so often hidden from view. This discussion ranges broadly across recent scientific findings in areas such as paleoanthropology, primate studies, evolutionary psychology, early brain development, and cultural transmission. While these subjects are complex, the story is told here in a conversational style that is engaging, jargon free, and accessible to all readers. With Minds and Gods , Tremlin offers a roadmap to a fascinating and growing field of study, one that is sure to generate interest and debate and provide readers with a better understanding of themselves and their beliefs.
Author: D. Jason Slone
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
ISBN: 1350033707
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 311
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Book Description
The Cognitive Science of Religion introduces students to key empirical studies conducted over the past 25 years in this new and rapidly expanding field. In these studies, cognitive scientists of religion have applied the theories, findings and research tools of the cognitive sciences to understanding religious thought, behaviour and social dynamics. Each chapter is written by a leading international scholar, and summarizes in non-technical language the original empirical study conducted by the scholar. No prior or statistical knowledge is presumed, and studies included range from the classic to the more recent and innovative cases. Students will learn about the theories that cognitive scientists have employed to explain recurrent features of religiosity across cultures and historical eras, how scholars have tested those theories, and what the results of those tests have revealed and suggest. Written to be accessible to undergraduates, this provides a much-needed survey of empirical studies in the cognitive science of religion.
Author: Barbara Herrnstein Smith
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300166230
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 190
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Book Description
In this important and original book, eminent scholar Barbara Herenstein Smith describes, assesses, and reflects upon a set of contemporary intellectual projects involving science, religion, and human cognition. One, which Smith calls "the New Naturalism", is the effort to explain religion on the basis of cognitive science. Another, which she calls "the New Natural Theology", is the attempt to reconcile natural-scientific accounts of the world with traditional religious belief. These two projects, she suggests, are in many ways mirror images -- or "natural reflections"--Of each other. Examing these and related efforts from the perspective of a constructivist-pragmatist epistemology, Smith argues that crucial aspects of belief - religious and other - that remain elusive or invisible under dominant rationalist and computational models are illuminated by views of human cognition that stress its dynamic, embodied, and interactive features. She also demonstrates how constructivist understandings of the formation and stabilization of knowledge - scientific and other - alert us to simularities in the springs of science and religion that are elsewhere seen largely in terms of difference and contrast. In Natural Reflections, Smith develops a sophisticated approach to issues often framed only polemically. Recognizing science and religion as complex, distinct domains of human practice, she also insists on their significant historical connections and cognitive continuities and offers important new modes of engagement with each of them--Jacket.
Author: Pascal Boyer
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 046500461X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 406
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Book Description
Many of our questions about religion, says the internationally renowned anthropologist Pascal Boyer, were once mysteries, but they no longer are: we are beginning to know how to answer questions such as "Why do people have religion?" and "Why is religion the way it is?" Using findings from anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary biology, Boyer shows how one of the most fascinating aspects of human consciousness is increasingly admissible to coherent, naturalistic explanation. And Man Creates God tells readers, for the first time, what religious feeling is really about, what it consists of, and how it originates. It is a beautifully written, very accessible book by an anthropologist who is highly respected on both sides of the Atlantic. As a scientific explanation for religious feeling, it is sure to arouse controversy.
Author: Scott Atran
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521438711
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 378
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Book Description
Inspired by a debate between Noam Chomsky and Jean Piaget, this work traces the development of natural history from Aristotle to Darwin, and demonstrates how the science of plants and animals has emerged from the common conceptions of folkbiology.
Author: Mark Graves
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1317095863
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 257
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Book Description
Does science argue against the existence of the human soul? Many scientists and scholars believe the whole is more than the sum of the parts. This book uses information and systems theory to describe the "more" that does not reduce to the parts. One sees this in the synapses”or apparently empty gaps between the neurons in one's brain”where informative relationships give rise to human mind, culture, and spirituality. Drawing upon the disciplines of cognitive science, computer science, neuroscience, general systems theory, pragmatic philosophy, and Christian theology, Mark Graves reinterprets the traditional doctrine of the soul as form of the body to frame contemporary scientific study of the human soul.
