|  Dr Justin Barrett of Oxford University's Centre for Anthropology & Mind and Professor Roger Trigg of Oxford's Ian Ramsey Centre have teamed up to begin a new £1.9 million project on the natural foundations of religion. The Cognition, Religion, and Theology project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation and aims to develop the cognitive science of religion field – a rapidly-developing area of interdisciplinary research – by providing training, web resources, and research funding for scholars wanting to become involved in cognitive science of religion research. The project seeks to support scientific projects that promise to yield new evidence regarding how the structures of human minds inform and constrain religious expression including ideas about gods and spirits, the afterlife, spirit possession, prayer, ritual, religious expertise, and connections between religious thought and morality and pro-social behavior. Additionally, we desire to stimulate scholarship that explores the philosophical and theological implications of findings from the evolutionary and cognitive sciences as applied to religion. Does scientific evidence support or challenge specific theological propositions or worldviews? How do intellectual movements capitalise on natural predispositions?
The research team consists of
• Dr Justin Barrett (experimental psychologist : Primary Investigator, Centre for Anthropology and Mind),
• Prof Roger Trigg (philosopher: Co-Investigator, Ian Ramsey Centre)
• Dr Emma Cohen (Anthropology)
• Dr Nicola Knight (Anthropology), and
• Dr David Leech (Theology)
• Ms Ann Cowie (Programme Administrator)
In addition to research by the project team, major elements of the project include
• a workshop to be held in Oxford in summer 2009
• a one-year cross-training course in hypothesis-testing in the area of the cognitive science of religion (2009-2010)
• web-based resources for identifying pressing scientific and philosophical needs of the field and instruments for addressing these needs
• virtual poster-sessions in the cognitive science of religion and theology
• a grant competition for focussed projects in cognitive science of religion (£800,000 to award in total, first round of awards to be made summer 2008) and
• a project-ending conference in summer 2010 for presenting research findings.
The Cognition, Religion, and Theology Project is coordinated with Prof Harvey Whitehouse's Explaining Religion project funded by approximately 2 million Euros by the European Commission.
Project Discussion Points:
Why do people believe in gods?
Why do people believe in God?
Does the naturalness of religious beliefs mean that they've been explained away and you shouldn't believe in God?
Relevant books in this area by the research team
Justin Barrett's book Why Would Anyone Believe in God? summarises much of this research demonstrating the naturalness of religious belief. He is currently writing a second book focussing more closely on how children acquire religious beliefs. The title of this forthcoming book is Born Believers.
Articles by Justin Barrett on this subject (pdf files):
i) Cognitive Science of Religion: What is it, and Why is it?
ii) Is the Spell really broken? Bio-Psychological Explanations of Religion and Theistic Belief
Emma Cohen's recent Oxford University Press volume The Mind Possessed , uses insights from the cognitive science of religion to explain why Afro-Brazilian religionists think about spirit possession the way they do. Contrary to what “common-sense” might tell you, people do not simply believe what authority-figures tell them. Rather, natural mental structures push people into holding certain ideas about the relationship between minds and bodies and what happens when a spirit “mind” takes over a human body—ideas that their theological experts do not teach. Consequently, these ideas populate spirit possession cults, and even modern popular culture, well beyond Brazil.
Roger Trigg's latest book is Religion in Public Life: Must Faith be Privatized? |
