Product Description
Can scientists study religion? Ilkka PyysiSinen says that they can. While the study of religion cannot be reduced to other disciplines, it must not ignore what other disciplines have learned about human thought and behavior. In this collection of essays, PyysiSinen shows how findings from cognitive science can offer new directions to debates in religion. After providing a historical and theoretical overview of the cognitive science of religion, PyysiSinen demonstrat… More >>
Magic, Miracles, and Religion: A Scientist’s Perspective
#1 by Thomas A. Lewis on February 10, 2010 - 12:31 pm
Pyysiainen writes the above sentence on page 48 of this intellectually agile book and it could almost be seen as the underlying thesis for the whole field of cognitive science of religion. This book is in a way an overview of the scientific study of religion (however consciously incomplete) and a looker forward into the future studies of what Pyysiainen calls TEB (Thought, Experience, Belief) complexes.
Religion truly does have some real magic: its intricate interweaving of psychology, culture, biology, ethics, and emotions into a web of memes that ride parasitically on our evolved mental predispositions. The fact that it indeed is “True Fiction” (the title of chapter 8 and in my estimation, the core of this book’s argument) is what makes religion such a delicious paradox to study.
Covered here are some core concepts in the cognitive science of religion such as agents, social causality, and counter-intuitiveness.
Listing the chapters may help clarify the truly wide scope of this book:
1. What is it Like to Be a believer?
2. A Cognitive-Scientific Perspective in the Study of Religion.
3. Breaking Boundaries.
4. Take the Buddha, for Example.
5. Religion: A Unique World, but in What Sense?
6. Explaining Miracles.
7. A New Theory of Magic.
8. True Fiction: The Philosophy and Psychology of Religious Belief.
9. Rituals: Why Indeed?
10. Singers of Tales.
11. Holy Book: The Invention of Writing and Religious Cognition.
12. Religion, Science, and Ideology.
13. `God’ as Ultimate Reality in Religion and in Science.
14. Religious Experience across Cultures.
15. Do Cultures Exist?
The dauntingly complex and tangled web that modern religion has evolved into requires a scientist’s method, a psychologist’s training, and an anthropologist’s eye to tackle and Pyysiainen seems to come equipped with all three. He brings the aforementioned qualities to bear here – a book that is a fascinating and rewarding read to the initiated layman and certainly a scholarly contribution to the field.
Rating: 5 / 5