Keeping religion in mind

Authors

• E. Lawson Western Michigan University

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30674/scripta.67249

Keywords:

Cognitive science, Cognition and culture, Religion -- Definition, Language and religion, Linguistics, Cognitive psychology, Ritual, Learning

Abstract

The study of religion should continue to focus on the mind rather than being relegated to the emotions. As you study the mind, do not forget to study religion. Do not be so overwhelmed by socio-cultural factors that you forget about the key role that the mind plays in the formation of religious ideas and the practices they inform. And when you study the formation of religious ideas do not become too easily sidetracked into considering only emotive processes.  A cognitive approach to the study of religious ritual demonstrates that when you examine religious ideas and the practices they inform you are looking at a religious system in operation. The relationships among such ideas are systematic and orderly. If they were not we would be looking at a random array of ideas and practices. In such a situation anything would go. But in religious systems anything does not go. The judgments that religious ritual participants make about their own systems are informed by underlying principles that are part of their implicit knowledge. Perhaps, most significantly, such implicit knowledge does not seem to be acquired by instruction. So rather than looking primarily at social and cultural facts in order to explain their acquisition we also need to start looking more closely at how the human mind works; we need to be developing a new psychology of religion as a subdiscipline of cognitive science.