scholarly journals Mentalizing Mistakes: Distinguishing Mentalizing Ability from Bias in God Beliefs

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marjaana Lindeman ◽  
LeRon Shults

The claim that religions are by-products of evolutionary adaptations has been at the center of the cognitive science of religion since its inception nearly three decades ago. It has been argued that religious beliefs are manifestations of evolved hyperactive agent detection and other mentalizing biases, whose development required pan-human mentalizing abilities. Much of the current research on the cognitive underpinnings of religiosity seems to rest on the assumption that not only mentalizing biases but also mentalizing abilities give rise to god beliefs in the minds of contemporary individuals. However, this presupposes that the higher capacity an individual has for mentalizing the more likely he or she is to make mentalizing mistakes. We illustrate the conceptual confusion that results from this way of framing the discussion and point to empirical evidence that challenges this notion.

2004 ◽  
Vol 27 (6) ◽  
pp. 752-753
Author(s):  
Harvey Whitehouse

Atran & Norenzayan (A&N) survey a substantial body of theory and evidence on which there is broad agreement in the cognitive science of religion. Some parts of their argument (for instance, concerning the causes of costly commitment to religious beliefs) are more speculative and remain a focus of lively debate and further research.


Studia Humana ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 34-44
Author(s):  
Hans Van Eyghen

Abstract It is widely acknowledged that the new emerging discipline cognitive science of religion has a bearing on how to think about the epistemic status of religious beliefs. Both defenders and opponents of the rationality of religious belief have used cognitive theories of religion to argue for their point. This paper will look at the defender-side of the debate. I will discuss an often used argument in favor of the trustworthiness of religious beliefs, stating that cognitive science of religion shows that religious beliefs are natural and natural beliefs ought to be trusted in the absence of counterevidence. This argument received its most influential defense from Justin Barrett in a number of papers, some in collaboration with Kelly James Clark. I will discuss their version of the argument and argue that it fails because the natural beliefs discovered by cognitive scientists of religion are not the religious beliefs of the major world religions. A survey of the evidence from cognitive science of religion will show that cognitive science does show that other beliefs come natural and that these can thus be deemed trustworthy in the absence of counterevidence. These beliefs are teleological beliefs, afterlife beliefs and animistic theistic beliefs.


2020 ◽  
Vol 76 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Sayyed M. Biabanaki

The cognitive science of religion (CSR) is an emerging field of cognitive science that gathers insights from different disciplines to explain how humans acquire and transmit religious beliefs. For the CSR scholars, the human mental tools have specific biases that make them susceptible to acceptance and transmission of religious beliefs. This article examines the characteristics of these biases and how they work, and shows that although our innate cognitive tendencies make our minds generally receptive to religion, they do not explain the emergence and endurance of specific religious beliefs in a particular culture. We will also show that although advocates of CSR study religion as a ‘natural’ phenomenon, and seek to discover the natural causes of the formation, acceptance, transmission and prevalence of religious beliefs, their efforts do not lead to decrease the validity of religious beliefs and rejection of ‘non-natural’ explanations of religious beliefs.


Philosophy ◽  
2010 ◽  
Vol 85 (4) ◽  
pp. 465-483
Author(s):  
Robin Attfield

AbstractAlvin Plantinga, echoing a worry of Charles Darwin which he calls ‘Darwin's doubt’, argues that given Darwinian evolutionary theory our beliefs are unreliable, since they are determined to be what they are by evolutionary pressures and could have had no other content. This papers surveys in turn deterministic and non-deterministic interpretations of Darwinism, and concludes that Plantinga's argument poses a problem for the former alone and not for the latter. Some parallel problems arise for the Cognitive Science of Religion, and in particular for the hypothesis that many of our beliefs, including religious beliefs, are due to a Hypersensitive Agency-Detection Device, at least if this hypothesis is held in a deterministic form. In a non-deterministic form, however, its operation need not cast doubt on the rationality or reliability of the relevant beliefs.


Studia Humana ◽  
2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (4) ◽  
pp. 64-73
Author(s):  
Konrad Szocik

Abstract Cognitive approach towards the study of religion is a good and promising way. However, I think that this approach is too narrow and it would be better to use some basic concepts of CSR as a starting point for further, not cognitive explanation of religious. I suppose that religious beliefs should be explained also by their pragmatic functions because they were probably always associated with some pragmatic purposes at the group or at the individual levels. To develop further this last approach, the good explanatory way is the evolutionary study of religion.


Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 466
Author(s):  
Walter Scott Stepanenko

Recent work in the cognitive science of religion has challenged some of the explanatory assumptions of previous research in the field. Nonetheless, some of the practitioners of the new cognitive science of religion theorize in the same skeptical spirit as their predecessors and either imply or explicitly claim that their projects undermine the warrant of religious beliefs. In this article, I argue that these theories do no additional argumentative work when compared to previous attempts to debunk religious belief and that these recent debunking efforts are very much motivated by methodological commitments that are shared with canonical research. I contend that these argumentative strategies put debunkers very much on an epistemic par with religious apologists: both advocate responses to the cognitive science of religion that are primarily motivated by methodological commitments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 21 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 280-308
Author(s):  
Declan Taggart

Abstract Theory of mind, the theory that humans attribute mental states to others, has become increasingly influential in the Cognitive Science of Religion in recent years, due to several papers which posit that supernatural agents, like gods, demons, and the dead, are accredited greater than normal knowledge and awareness. Using Old Norse mythology and literary accounts of Old Norse religion, supported by archaeological evidence, I examine the extent to which this modern perspective on religious theory of mind is reflected in religious traditions from the Viking Age. I focus especially on the extent to which superperception and superknowledge were attributed to Old Norse supernatural agents and the impact of this on expressions of religion; how the attribution of theory of mind varied with circumstances and the agents to which it was being attributed; and the extent to which features of religious theory of mind common in other societies were present in the historical North. On this basis, I also evaluate the usefulness of Old Norse historiography to Cognitive Science of Religion and vice versa.


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