How Religion Works

Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion
Erscheinungsjahr 2003
ISBN: 978-90-04-13273-3
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, 276 Seiten, Format (B × H): 167 mm x 242 mm, Gewicht: 476 g

Recent findings in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology provide important insights to the processes which make religious beliefs and behaviors such efficient attractors in and across various cultural settings. The specific salience of religious ideas is based on the fact that they are 'counter-intuitive': they contradict our intuitive expectations of how entities normally behave.
Counter-intuitive ideas are only produced by a mind capable of crossing the boundaries that separate such ontological domains as persons, living things, and solid objects. The evolution of such a mind has only taken place in the human species.
How certain kinds of counter-intuitive ideas are selected for a religious use is discussed from varying angles. Cognitive considerations are thus related to the traditions of comparative religion.

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Autoren/Hrsg.

Pyysiäinen, Ilkka

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Kognitionspsychologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologie / Allgemeines & Theorie Psychologische Theorie, Psychoanalyse Behaviourismus
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Psychologische Disziplinen Religionspsychologie

Über Autor(innen)

Ilkka Pyysiäinen, Ph.D. (1993), University of Helsinki, is Academy Research Fellow at the Academy of Finland. He has published numerous articles and edited the volume Current Approaches in the Cognitive Study of Religion (Continuum, 2002).