ABSTRACT
According to cognitive science of religion (CSR) people naturally veer toward beliefs that are quite divergent from Anselmian monotheism or Christian theism. Some authors have taken this view as a starting point for a debunking argument against religion, whereas others have tried to vindicate Christian theism by appealing to the noetic effects of sin, or the Fall. In this chapter, we ask what theologians can learn from CSR about the nature of the divine by looking at the CSR literature and what it identifies as commonalities across religions. We use a pluralist, nonconfessional approach to outline properties of the divine. We connect our approach to Hick’s religious pluralism, Ramakrishna’s realization of God through multiple spiritual paths, and Gellman’s inexhaustible plenitude.
