ABSTRACT
James noted that truth is always inextricably bound to life because people do not use truth in an abstract and disembodied sense. Naturalistic explanations of the sort we see in the cognitive science of religions risk bypassing the meaning and experience entailed in religious belief when they bypass what belief is about in favor of cognitive mechanisms. This chapter is about developing an approach to scientific truth that avoids this bypass, which means developing claims that fit with the lives of believers. A culturally informed approach is necessary to accomplish this task. I provide a brief exploration of the notion of culture in psychology and anthropology, since both these perspectives come to bear on the cognitive science of religion. I argue that culture involves meaning systems and cannot be reduced or equated with the notion of nation or broad categorical variables. Detailed understandings of meanings wrapped up in language and narratives, are important, and researchers ought to avoid causal stories without these meanings. I thereby take an approach to culture that is antagonistic to the idea that it is layered over top of more fundamental aspects of humans. Such a culturally informed approach is ideal because it does not treat the meaning of religious belief as secondary.
