................ ...............; N poormohammadi; ................. ................
Volume 11, Issue 2 , December 2023
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 ...
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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".
Gholam Hossein Khedri; Hossein Sokhanvar
Volume 10, Issue 1 , December 2021, , Pages 27-47
Abstract
researchers turn to biology and neuroscience to explore factors such as religious tendencies, including VMAT2, known as the "God gene" in order to explore the cause of religious tendencies. . The focus of this group is to provide a complete map of religious beliefs on the mechanisms of the brain and ...
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researchers turn to biology and neuroscience to explore factors such as religious tendencies, including VMAT2, known as the "God gene" in order to explore the cause of religious tendencies. . The focus of this group is to provide a complete map of religious beliefs on the mechanisms of the brain and its nervous system, and basically provide the genetic basis for those brain mechanisms. According to this approach, they introduce genetic markers and spiritual intelligence (SQ) along with other human intelligence and believe that spiritual transcendental neural bases are also built solely from these foundations.The aim of this article is to introduce and review the three main and common approaches of religious physiology, namely biological psychology, Cognitive science of religion (CSR) and biology. Then the threats and opportunities of these approaches will be explored for traditional theology (in the Abraham religions). It is a common assumption that this type of study is completely anti-religious, or at least they are faced to reduction due to its empirical and evolutionary approaches. However, the purpose of this article is to show that adherence to religious physiology and brain evolution can also provide responding to positivist criticisms of religions
