Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology

From Human Minds to Divine Minds

By Justin L. Barrett

Templeton Press

Copyright © 2011 Justin L. Barrett
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-59947-381-9

Contents

Preface,
Chapter 1: What Is Cognitive Science?,
Chapter 2: Features of Human Thought,
Chapter 3: The Cognitive Origins of Beliefs,
Chapter 4: How We Conceive of the World,
Chapter 5: How We Conceive of Humans,
Chapter 6: How We Conceive of the Divine,
Chapter 7: Cognition and Experiencing Religion,
Chapter 8: From Natural Religion to Theology,
Chapter 9: Cognitive Science and Natural Theology,
Author's Note,
Notes,
Glossary,
Bibliography,

CHAPTER 1

What Is Cognitive Science?

THE POINT IS ALMOST so obvious that it hardly needs stating: humans are distinctive because of their ability to think, reason, imagine, and learn—their cognitive abilities. When Hamlet trumpets the greatness of humans, it is the human mind that takes center stage:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action, how like an angel! in apprehension, how like a god! the beauty of the world, the paragon of animals; and yet to me, what is this quintessence of dust? (Hamlet, act 2, scene 2)

The words reason, faculty, action, and apprehension point to humans' ability to think and direct their actions apart from mere instincts. Shakespeare recognizes as well a tension between the marvels of the human mind and the less lofty biological ("paragon of animals") and physical ("quintessence of dust") nature. The great thinkers throughout the ages and the world's religious traditions have sought to embrace this tension in their treatments of human nature. In the Genesis creation story, humanity is presented as derived from the dust of the earth and yet above all animals, and ultimately separated from God by succumbing to the temptation of knowledge:

And the serpent said to the woman, "You will not surely die. For God knows that in the day you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil." So when the woman saw the tree was good for food, that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree desirable to make one wise, she took of its fruit and ate. (Gen. 3:4–6, NKJV)

It is the gifts of the mind that separate humans from the other animals, and on the basis of mental prowess humans vie to "be like God." In Buddhism too we see ambivalence about thought: it distracts and enslaves us to worldly concerns, and yet it is through disciplining our thought (such as meditative practice, vipassan?) that genuine wisdom or insight (paññ?) can be achieved. Understanding how humans think, then, may be critical in understanding distinctive features of human nature, how we may relate to the transcendent, and the key to human thriving.

In a direct hand-to-hand combat with a wolf, leopard, bear, Tasmanian devil, or ape, an average human would fare poorly. Without natural weapons such as claws or powerful teeth and jaws, and lacking impressive quickness and power, humans are not terribly formidable foes. Human babies, in particular, are relatively helpless. A two-year-old human is known as a "toddler" because of its clumsiness, but the same aged chimpanzee can swing from tree to tree, and the two-year-old wildcat or canine is already an adult, able to catch an antelope on the run and tear it to bits. Lacking impressive physical attributes, human survival and thriving are critically dependent upon the power of our minds.

The obvious importance and distinctiveness of human thought do not mean its scientific study—cognitive science—is so obvious. In fact, very well educated people do not even realize that cognitive science exists. In this chapter I give a brief explanation of what cognitive science is and what it is cognitive scientists do, laying the groundwork for an exploration of cognitive science as it relates to religious expression and theological issues. After all, how the human mind handles religious information may provide insights into the nature of revelation, how people understand scripture, and how they "read" the natural world for messages from the divine. Understanding the prerequisite kind of mind for being religious could also amplify accounts of the origins of religion for humanity and in individual lives. For religious ideas and practices to spread and persist, they must ride on cognitive equipment. It may be, then, that just how cognition supports religious thought and action might have practical implications for religious communities—for instance, how to successfully teach children, what impact changing a ritual might have on participants, and identifying which points of doctrine might be most subject to distortion. On the other hand, perhaps religious thought and practices are not just informed and shaped by human cognition, but can also change our thought-producing equipment in important ways: religious practice might impact human cognition beyond merely filling in content. Before turning to these big questions, an introduction to cognitive science is required.

Surveying the Terrain of Cognitive Science

Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary area of scholarship that considers what the human mind is and how it functions; how people think. Thinking includes everything from perceiving what is in the world around us to reflectively and abstractly reasoning about hypothetical worlds that are not around us. I am not including all human behavior as the object of cognitive science. A psychologist or a physiologist may study sneezing, yawning, or sleeping, but that isn't cognitive science. Cognitive science concerns imagining, recalling, watching, wondering, pondering, and deciding. Without denying or affirming animal thought (another fascinating matter), my focus here is on human thought. That said, in some cases the study of nonhuman animals provides special insights into the character of the human mind.

Recently my family and I had a Sunday supper with friends and afterward played a wonderful game that required each of us in turn to try to provide clues for everyone else to guess what was depicted on a card. The card could present a famous person, an occupation, a location, an object, an event, or any number of different things. A roll of a die determined the restricted range of clues that the player could provide. They could be a drawing, a wordless performance (think charades with sound effects), words all beginning with the same letter, or a comparison with two other things (for instance, one successful clue was "smaller than a swimming pool, bigger than a mattress" for the answer "waterbed"). This group effort was a race against time. Not only was the game a lot of fun, it was fascinating watching various types of human thought at work. The clue givers had to figure out what critical information would trigger the right association in the minds of at least one member of the audience within the constraints of the rule-types. The guessers had to try to infer a concept from the very strange and indirect clues—almost mind reading. One seemingly amazing instance was when my wife gave a two-second hula dance and then mimed opening a can with a pull-tab. The whole act lasted less than three seconds and in a heartbeat my daughter (correctly) answered, "Spam!" How? Cognitive scientists are interested in every step of interactions like these....