Document Type : Original Article
Authors
1 ....................................................
2 Assistant Professor, University of Religions and Religions
3 .............................
Abstract
Cognitive science of religion (CSR) is a new field of cognitive science that was established in the 1990s when a group of cognitive science researchers focused on projects about religion. The three fundamental questions of this field in the most general state are: 1. How are religious ideas represented in our brain? 2. How are religious ideas acquired? And 3. Which practices institutionalize these ideas? Most scientists of the cognitive sciences of religion considered religious beliefs and behaviors to be a by-product of the cognitive powers of the human mind. "Cognitive neuroscience of religion", as a sub-branch of cognitive science of religion, seeks to identify the neural correlates of religious beliefs, emotions, actions and experiences with brain imaging methods. In this article, in the first step, we introduce the "two main approaches in the cognitive neuroscience of religion", which include the "inefficient brain activity" approach and the "normal output of the brain nervous system" approach. In the second stage, we will discuss "various models of explaining religious experience" in cognitive neuroscience. These models include "God's halmet", "altered states of consciousness", "neuro-physiological relaxation response", "neurocognitive-cultural process", "recruitment of all brain regions", "social cognition region of the brain" and "combination of hierarchical predictive coding model"(HPC) and complexity drop model of supernaturality (CDMS). In the third stage, we show that the introduction of cognitive neuroscience to the explanation of religious experience faces limitations and challenges that need to be resolved. These four challenges are: "conceptual diversity and complexity", "particularity of mental matter", "semantic challenge", and "ontological challenge".
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