Religion, Cognition, and the Brain Sciences: an introduction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.34019/2237-6151.2017.v14.26968Keywords:
Cognitive Science, Neuroscience, Psychology of Religion, Anthropology of Religion, Religious StudiesAbstract
While the popular opinion often presents an intractable conflict between religion and science, the academic study of religion shows how productive the intersection between religion and science can be, bringing together disciplines across the humanities, social sciences, and natural sciences to give fullest account for why the human brain operates as it does. Using scientific research to elucidate religious cognition is only part of the story, for religious cognition can also illuminate what scientific research might be missing in its laboratory assumptions. Building an experimental relationship opens up fascinating space to understand how humans evolved and what their potential is for further transformation.
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ATRAN, Scott. In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. New York:
Oxford University Press, 2002.
ATRAN, Scott, & HENRICH, Joseph. The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-
Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate
Deep Commitments to Prosocial Religion. Biological Theory, 5, p. 18-30, 2010.
BAER, Ruth A. Mindfulness Training as a Clinical Intervention: A Conceptual and Empirical
Review. Clinical Psychology: Science and Practice, 10(2), p. 125-143, 2003.
BARBOUR, Ian G. Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues. New York:
HarperCollins, 1997.
BARNARD, G. William. Entheogens in a Religious Context: The Case of the Santo Daime
Religious Tradition. Zygon, 49(3), p. 666–684, 2014.
Barrett, Justin L. Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Walnut Creek: AltaMira, 2004.
______. Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief. New York: Free Press,
2012.
BOYER, Pascal. The Naturlness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion. Los
Angeles: University of California Press, 1994.
______. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York:
Basic, 2001.
Bulkeley, Kelly. The Wondering Brain: Thinking about Religion with and beyond Cognitive
Neuroscience.
New York: Routledge, 2005.
______. Dreaming in the World’s Religions: A Comparative History. New York: New York
University Press, 2008.
BULBULIA, Joseph et al. The Cultural Evolution of Religion. In: RICHERSON, J., &
CHRISTIANSEN, Morten H. (Org.). Cultural Evolution: Society, Technology, Language,
and Religion. Cambridge: MIT Press, p. 381–404, 2013.
CARLSON, N. R. Physiology of Behavior. London: Pearson, 2012.
CHOMSKY, Noam. Aspects of the Theory of Syntax. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1969.
COHEN, Emma. The Mind Possessed: The Cognition of Spirit Possession in an Afro-
Brazilian Religious Tradition. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.
CORR, P. J. Understanding Biological Psychology. Oxford: Blackwell, 2006.
CZACHESZ, István. The Promise of the Cognitive Science of Religion for Biblical Studies.
The Council of Societies for the Study of Religion Bulletin, 37(4), p. 102–105, 2008.
CZACHESZ, István, & BIRÓ, Tamás (Org.). Changing Minds: Religion and Cognition
Through the Ages. Leuven: Peeters, 2011.
DAWKINS, Richard. The God Delusion. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
DECETY, J., & JACKSON, P. L. The Functional Architecture of Human Empathy.
Behavioral and Cognitive Neuroscience Reviews, 3(2), p. 71–100, 2004.
Fischer, Ronald et al. The Fire-Walker’s High: Affect and Physiological Responses in an
Extreme Collective Ritual. PLoS ONE, 9(2), p. 1–6, 2014).
GAZZANIGA, M. S., IVRY, R. B., & MANGUN, G. R. Cognitive Neuroscience, the
Biology of the Mind. New York: W.W. Norton, publishers, 2009.
GOULD, Stephen Jay. Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life. New
York: Ballantine, 1999.
GUTHRIE, Stewart. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1993.
IVERSON, J., & THELEN, E. Hand, mouth, and brain: The dynamic emergence of speech
and gesture. In: NÚÑEZ, R., & FREEMAN, W. J. (Org.). Reclaiming cognition: The
primacy of action, intention, and emotion. Thorverton: Imprint Academic, p. 19-40, 2000.
JAMES, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature. New York: Modern Library, 1909.
JOHNSTONE, R. A. The evolution of animal signals. In: KREBS, J. R., & DAVIES N. B.
(Org.). Behavioural ecology: an evolutionary approach. Blackwell, Oxford, p. 155–178,
1997.
KABAT-ZINN, Jon. An Outpatient Program in Behavioral Medicine for Chronic Pain
Patients Based on the Practice of Mindfulness Meditation: Theoretical Considerations and
Preliminary Results. General Hospital Psychiatry, 4(1), p. 33–47, 1982.
KRIPAL, Jeffrey J. Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 2007.
LAKOFF, George, and Mark Johnson. Metaphors We Live By. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1980.
______. Philosophy in the Flesh: The Embodied Mind and Its Challenge to Western
Thought. New York: Basic, 1999.
LEVY, Gabriel. Judaic Technologies of the Word: A Cognitive Analysis of Jewish Cultural
Formation. New York: Routledge, 2012.
LUTZ, Antoine et al. Altered Anterior Insula Activation during Anticipation and Experience
of Painful Stimuli in Expert Meditators. NeuroImage, 64, p. 538–546, 2013.
MCCAULEY, Robert N., & LAWSON, E. Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and
Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990.
______. Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2002.
MCRAE, Ken, & MICHAEL, Jones. Semantic Memory. In: REISBERG, Daniel (Org.). The
Oxford Handbook of Cognitive Psychology. New York: Oxford University Press. p. 206–
216, 2013.
NEWBERG, Andrew. Principles of Neurotheology. Surrey: Ashgate, 2010.
NORENZAYAN, Ara. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict.
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013.
PINKER, Steven. The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature. New York: Penguin, 2002.
PYYSIÄINEN, Ilkka. Cognitive Science of Religion: State-of-the-Art. Journal of the Cognitive Science of Religion, 1(1), p. 5–28, 2012.
RAKIC, P. Neurogenesis in adult primate neocortex: an evaluation of the evidence. Nature Reviews Neuroscience. 3(1), p. 65–71, 2002.
REDDY, Sheethal et al. Cognitive-Based Compassion Training: A Promising Prevention Strategy for At-Risk Adolescents. Journal of Child and Family Studies, 22(2), p. 199–207, 2009.
RICARD, Matthieu, LUTZ, Antoine, & DAVIDSON, Richard. Mind of the Meditator. Scientific American, 311(5), p. 38–45, 2014.
SCHACTER, Daniel L. et al. Psychology. New York: Worth, Incorporated, 2011.
SCHJØDT, Uffe, STØDKILDE-JØRGENSEN, Hans, & GEERTZ, Armin W. Highly Religious Participants Recruit Areas of Social Cognition in Personal Prayer. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 4(2), p. 199–207, 2009.
SCHULTZ, W. Neuronal reward and decision signals: from theories to data. Physiological Reviews, 95(3), p. 853-951, 2015.
SHARIFF, Azim F., & NORENZAYAN, Ara. The Origin and Evolution of Religious Prosociality. Science, 322 (5898), p. 58–62, 2008.
SLONE, D. Jason, & VAN SLYKE, James (Org.). The Attraction of Religion: A New Evolutionary Psychology of Religion. London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2015.
SOSIS, Richard, & BULBULIA, Joseph. The Behavioral Ecology of Religion: The Benefits and Costs of One Evolutionary Approach. Religion, 41(3), p. 341–362, 2011.
SPERBER, Dan. Explaining Culture: A Naturalistic Approach. Oxford: Blackwell, 1996.
SWANN, William et al. When Group Membership Gets Personal: A Theory of Identity Fusion. Psychological Review, 199(3), p. 441–456, 2012.
TART, Charles T (Org.). Altered States of Consciousness: A Book of Readings. New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc., 1969.
TAVES, Ann. Religious Experience Reconsidered: A Building-Block Approach to the Study of Religion and Other Special Things. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009.
THAGARD, P. Mind: Introduction to Cognitive Science. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2005.
TOMASINO, Barbara et al. Meditation-related Activations Are Modulated by the Practices Needed to Obtain It and by the Expertise: An ALE Meta-analysis Study. Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, 6, p. 1–14, 2012.
WATTS, Fraser, & TURNER, Leon. Evolution, Religion, and Cognitive Science: Critical and Constructive Essays. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2014.
WHITEHOUSE, Harvey. Inside the Cult: Religious Innovation and Transmission in Papua New Guinea. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.
______. Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. Walnut Creek: Alta Mira, 2004.
WHITEHOUSE, Harvey, & LANMAN, Jonathan. The Ties that Bind Us: Ritual, Fusion, and Identification. Current Anthropology, 55(6), p. 674–695, 2014.
WINKELMAN, Michael. Shamanism: The Neural Ecology of Consciousness and Healing. Westport: Bergin & Garvey, 2000.
XYGALATAS, Dimitris. The Burning Saints: Cognition and Culture in the Fire-walking Rituals of the Anastenaria. New York: Routledge, 2012.
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Published
2017-03-03
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MOREIRA MAIA SILVA, T. .; SOARES DOS SANTOS, L. . Religion, Cognition, and the Brain Sciences: an introduction. Sacrilegens , [S. l.], v. 14, n. 1, p. 90–109, 2017. DOI: 10.34019/2237-6151.2017.v14.26968. Disponível em: https://periodicos.ufjf.br/index.php/sacrilegens/article/view/26968. Acesso em: 22 dec. 2024.
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