The book under review here gives an account of the comparatively recently established (i.e. since the 1980s, p. 180) interdisciplinary “cognitive science of religion (CSR).” The authors define CSR as “the scientific study of religion as a natural evolved product of human thinking” (p. 13) concerned with rational arguments regarding “the existence and attributes of God” (p. 1). Its two authors, a couple teaching in departments of philosophy at the Vrije Universiteit, Amsterdam, The Netherlands (de Cruz), and Ghent University, Belgium (de Smedt), “examine the implications of CSR for natural theology” (p. 17), an idea promoted by Enlightenment philosophers, which “does not explicitly presuppose the existence of God” but appeals “to observations and intuitions shared by all” (p. 11).

Acknowledgments and an introduction (pp. xi–xvii) precede the nine chapters of the book followed by sparse notes (pp. 201–06), the bibliography (called “References,” pp. 207–39), and a general index (pp. 241–46). Chapters 1–3 clarify some basics of “Natural Theology” (1, pp. 1–17), the “Naturalness of Religious Beliefs” (2, pp. 19–39), and “Intuitions about God's Knowledge” (3, pp. 41–60). Chapters 4 – 8 discuss the five most common arguments attempting to vindicate the existence of God, namely “the argument from design” (4, pp. 61–84), “the cosmological argument” (5, pp. 85–108), “the moral argument” (6, pp. 109–30), the “argument from beauty” (7, pp. 131–54), and the “argument from miracles,” notably the resurrection of Jesus [Christ] (8, pp. 155–78). In the final chapter, titled “The Natural History of Religion and the Rationality of Religious Beliefs” (9, pp. 179–200), the authors draw conclusions from their extensive interdisciplinary investigations. They find that “prior assumptions about the existence of God mediate to an important extent the perceived reliability of cognitive faculties that are involved in the formulation of natural theological arguments” (p. 198) and state in closing that “theists and nontheists end up with very different conclusions about what we can gather from evolutionary origins of religious beliefs and … about the intuitions that underlie natural theological arguments. Nontheists start from the assumption that the natural world is all there is and attempt to explain religious beliefs by appeal to everyday, natural cognitive processes. … By contrast, theists begin with the supposition that God is responsible for the design of reality, including human minds. … Taking into account their respective outlooks, it seems that both theists and nontheists reach reasonable conclusions and are justified in holding them” (p. 198–99).

These somewhat trivial findings are the result of wide‐ranging experimental and philosophical explorations—most of which are not original, several quite inconclusive and questionable—stitched together in a patchwork fashion to make a case. The argumentation lacks stringency and cohesion, despite the clearly structured chapters that always tell what is coming next and always close with a “Summary,” making one wonder if the authors had unintelligent, inattentive readers in mind or if they had to reassure themselves again and again of the route taken in the bewildering maze of studies from evolutionary biology, developmental psychology, philosophy, theology, sociology, and so on they cite and draw upon, some only poorly understood. Inconsistency is noticeable in their language too, not only in the subtitle of the book which speaks of “The Cognitive Science of Theology” instead of “Religion.” The authors, although concerned about terminological precision when quoting particular studies, do not properly discern and sufficiently differentiate religious phenomena like “God,” “faith,” “truth,” and “resurrection.” “God” is always a masculine‐gendered personal entity; “faith” or “belief” (like “belief in God” and “belief in germs,” p. 170) stand for as broad a spectrum of meanings as assumption, guess, trust, confidence, conviction, illusion, meaning; “truth” stands for “consensus,” namely for what is accepted by all and what everyone can agree upon, whereas the “resurrection” (i.e., “the bodily resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth”, p. 156) “recounts that someone died … but became alive again” (p. 163).

Methodologically the authors apply a “moderate naturalism” which they claim to be “neutral with respect to metaphysical assumptions” when investigating “the cognitive processes that underlie religious beliefs” and “the relationship between the psychological origin of a belief and its justification” (p. 5). They do so in a straightforward positivistic manner leading them to pass numerous judgmental statements regarding “right,” “justified,” or “correct” and “false,” “wrong,” or “incorrect” beliefs (see pp. 27, 28, 37, 49, 52, 57, 100, etc.), oftentimes without any noticeable critical assessment. Holding that “the cognitive science of religion” is a strict scientific pursuit they are blind to historical and theological arguments, which they obviously misperceive as mere guesswork instead of valuing these as representations of accumulated, seasoned, and well‐tested insights providing “thick descriptions” (Clifford Geertz) of human experiences complementing or challenging experimental finds.

While the book provides readers with interesting insights into cognition studies of various kinds and related philosophical arguments, it does not cultivate genuine interdisciplinarity. Merely appealing to a broad range of topic‐related studies in other fields, each with methodologies and terminologies of their own requiring explanation for nonexperts, and mainly quoting only briefly from secondary sources, however authoritative, does not make a book interdisciplinary; rather, it is the authors’ hermeneutical effort to bridge the “two cultures” (C. P. Snow) that does. Less accumulation of material and more thoroughgoing reflection along systems‐theoretical lines would have served ardent students much better than what they have to deal with now.