In recent years one could observe the rise and then a slow diffusion of the cognitive science of religion. There is nothing new about approaching religious behaviors by methods available to modern science, but in cognitive science many saw an opening to religion that previously was not available. In Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy, the editors present us with a collection of contributions that combine the relatively new field of experimental philosophy with an already somewhat fatigued field of cognitive studies of religion and apply it to religious behaviors by also considering religious thought. The central idea behind this book is to utilize cognitive approaches to religion to offer the field of experimental philosophy the methodological and conceptual resources to establish an experimental philosophy of religion.
In the first article, John S. Wilkins covers some important methodological issues by differentiating between naturalistic explanations of cognition as they relate to modern science and to religious behaviors. Religious beliefs, Wilkins argues, can produce effects that are adaptive regardless of their truth content. Scientific reasoning can offer cognitive science explanations of why some religious beliefs are adaptive but it does not confirm those beliefs. Cognitive science of scientific process also finds evolved mechanisms, but those mechanisms are also given as explanations of themselves validated through their technological effectiveness.
John Teehan presents a survey of literature from cognitive science of religion to consider implications of cognitive approaches to belief in God for that belief, especially in relation to morality and evil. Teehan at first expresses astonishment that some authors, like Justin Barrett, concluded that naturalization of religious behaviors does not present a challenge to those beliefs. Teehan states that the reaction of religious believers to cognitive science of religion is analogous to what happened after Darwin when some theologians proposed that evolutionary biology is how God creates. One theological response to cognitive science of religion is to see those processes as, in the case of some types of Christian theology, God's way of being known by human beings. Teehan's thesis is that to develop a concept of God compatible with the findings of cognitive science of religion that concept must be dynamic and evolve with our insight into those processes. If that is even possible it will then also be a revision of the concept of God beyond the so‐called “classical theism.” An interesting feature of this critique is that if accepted, it would have much wider consequences than just for religious concepts. If all cognitive processes are a product of evolutionary processes, which seems to be the case, then those processes apply to modern science as well. This means that our modern scientific knowledge is as dependent on our evolved capacities as is every other kind of knowledge and it therefore does not have any kind of privileged view into how things “really are.”
Jason and Jon Marsh explore the question of how can there be a diverse set of religious traditions making truth claims that seem to contradict one another. They pose what they call the explanatory challenge so that there can be a philosophical experimental approach to their reflection on the origins of diversity. Versions of theism that do not respond well to this challenge are, predictably, those with exclusivist truth claims regarding a specific concept of God.
Cristine H. Legare, Rachel E. Watson‐Jones, and Andre L. Souza discuss reasoning about ritual efficacy in their article. This topic is historically very important for cognitive science of religion since one of the first attempts to present a cognitive approach to religion was by Lawson and McCauley in 1993, and this article presents a useful overview of recent psychological research on perceptions of ritual efficacy. The authors examine ritual as means of controlling otherwise uncontrollable and dangerous circumstances by exploring causal cognition of ritual behaviors.
Kelly James Clark discusses whether unbelief has rational superiority over religious belief. Clark states that apparent bias for inferential reasoning among some philosophers and psychologists is not warranted given how relevant intuitive thinking is, even for those philosophers who dismiss it. Clark's argument is relevant but it is also self‐limiting in insisting on defending the rationality of religious reasoning. Because of that his argument loses some of its appeal for those who do not find that problem as relevant as a more general question of evolution of cognitive capacities that produce scientific reasoning, as well as religious behaviors.
One of the editors of this volume, Helen De Cruz, together with Johan De Smedt, writes on natural theology in philosophy of religion and presents experimental philosophical research that quantitatively measures “the role of religious belief in evaluating natural theological arguments.” These authors establish a correlation between religious belief and perception of strength of natural theological arguments for religious belief. This is quite predictable but it is also interesting to see their methodological proposal for experimental philosophy because through this article the relevance of the potential of the wider field of experimental philosophy can be gauged.
Benjamin Grant Purzycki and Rita Anne McNamara present an ecological theory of concepts of God's minds by placing focus on “how religious thought corresponds to features of natural and social environments.” Situating religious beliefs in local contexts and paying attention to when and where people express religious beliefs is shown to be of great importance and without considering that context those beliefs become unintelligible. Religious beliefs are about norms to which people are expected to conform. This article has a very extensive bibliography that is informative beyond just the content of this article.
Claire White, Robert Kelly, and Shaun Nichols write about research in claims of remembering past lives. The authors present research on the role of memory in claims of remembering of past lives, specifically on the sense of personal identity and mechanisms that produce it.
K. Mitch Hodge writes on the fear of death and coping with loss of those close to us. Interestingly, Pascal Boyer, one of the founders of the field of cognitive science of religion, in his book Religion Explained dismisses fear of death as one possible source of religious behaviors. This stands out as unusual since thinking about death and possible persistence of individuals after death was, and still is, often given as a possible explanation for the origin of religious behaviors in general. Hodge's article brings this question back by presenting a philosophical case for religious ways of coping with the death of those close to us.
Overall, this interesting and valuable volume presents a series of topics that the readers of Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science will find helpful for keeping track of developments in the field of cognitive science of religion. However, there is no unifying theme or major contribution to experimental philosophy that stands out from this book; it reads at times more as a dialogue between analytic philosophers of religion and experimental psychologists to get their terminology straight and their research programs on track. There is too much emphasis on rationality of religious belief and on logical consistency of “classical theism” to make this book exciting, but there are enough reports on valuable research to make this book a must read for anyone interested in recent developments in cognitive science of religion.