ABSTRACT
The cognitive science of religion is a new eld of inquiry, and there can be no doubt that it is a major breakthrough in the study of religion. The present contribution is a critical review of the approach advocated by two prominent theoreticians, Pascal Boyer and Ilkka Pyysiäinen. I call their version of the cognitive science of religion the ‘standard cognitive science of religion model’ as it has so far been the dominant model. The basic tenets of the model have been succinctly presented by Ilkka Pyysiäinen:
One of the basic ideas in the cognitive science of religion is that religious thought and behavior are made possible by evolved cognitive capacities which are the same for all humans and which thus can explain certain recurrent patterns in religious representations. One important point is that the human mind is understood not as an all-purpose problem-solver but as a collection of sub-systems carrying out content-specic operations. The mind operates differently in such domains as folk biology, folk psychology and naïve physics. Religion is based on cognitive processes in which the boundaries between these ontological domains are violated. (2002: 1)1
This is a very different way of thinking about religion. It does not resemble anything from my student days. So, if religion is to be described and analyzed as a ‘violator of ontological domains,’ as I rephrase it, then this is certainly a critical view of religion, now ‘explained’ as a widespread case of mental disorder. Or maybe just as a result of a natural order, for as Pascal Boyer says:
Religious believers and sceptics generally agree that religion is a dramatic phenomenon that requires a dramatic explanation, either as
a spectacular revelation of truth or as fundamental error of reasoning. Cognitive science and neuroscience suggests a less dramatic but perhaps more empirically grounded picture of religion as a probable, although by no means inevitable by-product of the normal operation of human cognition. (2003: 123)
That is why Boyer has repeatedly promoted the notion of the ‘naturalness of religious ideas.’
