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Vores tro og overbevisninger former vores handlinger, og nyere forskning tyder på, at det også former vores krop og sundhed. Tro har nemlig indflydelse på hjernen og på vores oplevelse af eget helbred.

This book consists of selected papers from the Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion and the Journal of Cognitive Historiography. Each chapter demonstrates a particular method or group of methods and how those methods advance our knowledge of the religious mind from the ancient past up to today.The cognitive science of religion (CSR) does not have its own methodology, and yet from the very beginnings of the discipline, methodology has defined it not only in relation to the general study of religion in the humanities but also to the sciences interested in the mind. CSR scholars are using a wide range of methodologies, borrowing mostly from the cognitive sciences and experimental psychology, but also from biology, archaeology, history, philosophy, linguistics, the social and statistical sciences, neurosciences, and anthropology. This multi-disciplinarity, in fact, defines the cognitive science of religion. Such multi-disciplinarity requires hard work and truly interdisciplinary teams, but also continual reflections on and debates about the methodologies being used. In fact, no CSR study worth its name can rely on only one methodology. Triangulation is standard, but often even more approaches are used.

This article provides a brief overview of Claire White's An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion for the benefit of readers who have not had access to the book but are interested in following the critical discussion raised in this issue.

ENGLISH ABSTRACT: The religion and media field has grown strongly as an academic subject in recent years, especially regarding studies of religion in contemporary mass media, TV, film, internet, social media etc., and in relation to popular culture. Scholars of religion have also begun to pay attention to the important role that media, mediation, and mediatization have played in the history of religions. It is this growing awareness that we wish to examine here. Our focus is not intended to signal the abandonment of interest in contemporary religion, media and popular culture; rather we wish to place this development in the deep and broad perspective of the study of religion. Media, mediation, and the more recent phenomenon of mediatization, are processes that are inseparable from the ways in which religion functions and is passed on from generation to generation. Thus, from a general study of religion perspective, we promote the argument that media and mediation processes are central aspects of how all religions function because all communication, including religious communication, can be seen as mediated. In this article, we reflect on and discuss the roles that media have played in the deep history of religions and continue to play in the present by bringing religion and media studies in conversation with cultural evolution and cognitive perspectives. DANSK RESUMÉ: Religion og medier er blomstret stærkt op som emnefelt i de seneste år, særligt med fokus på religion i samtidens massemedier, tv, film, internet, sociale medier m.m. og i relation til populærkultur. Samtidigt er religionsforskere blevet opmærksomme på at medier og mediering har spillet vigtige roller for religionshistorien og det er dén udvikling vi her vil gribe fat i. Dermed ønsker vi ikke på nogen måde at signalere en opgiven af interessen for religion, medier og populærkultur i samtiden, men snarere at vi ønsker at indsætte denne udvikling i et langt og bredt religionsvidenskabeligt perspektiv. Medier og mediering er uadskilleligt fra hvordan religion fungerer og videreføres fra generation til generation. Derfor anlægger vi det overordnede perspektiv her, at medier og mediering udgør centrale aspekter af hvordan alle religioner fungerer, da al kommunikation, inklusiv religiøs kommunikation, kan anskues som medieret. I denne artikel reflekterer vi over og diskuterer den rolle medier, mediering og medialisering har spillet i religionshistorien og i samtiden bl.a. med inddragelse af kulturevolutionære og kognitive perspektiver.

Introduktion to et JCSR temanummer

En antologi af tidligere udgivede artikler, essays og kapitler oversat til italiensk

Introduktion til et temanummer om Evolutionary Theories of Religion.

Engelsk summary: “Why, Wherefrom (and When) Did Religion Appear?” This article presents my reflections on the evolution of religion from the perspective of the cognitive science of religion and the neurobiology of religion. Two important features of the brain were crucial to our evolution, i.e. the expansion of the emotional and subcortical areas on the one hand and the cortex on the other. The former was essential to the development of viable social systems and the latter to the development of stone tool technologies and material culture. Furthermore, the growth of the brain was apparently due to the growing complexity of human social structures that culture brought with it. A key feature of the brain is that it is incomplete in human infants and is first fully matured after two decades of social and cultural life: the unfinished animal that becomes completed through a particular culture. Looking closer at the neuropsychological evidence of our brains and behavior, I have identified four key human features, namely, a finely honed social cognition, a drive to communicate and cooperate, a self-deceptive brain and a superstitious brain prone to unusual mental and/or emotional experiences. These traits, I argue, are prerequisites for religious behavior. In looking through the archaeological records, there is good reason to look beyond our species into the deep hominin past. A likely candidate that seems to have evinced proto-religious behavior is Homo heidelbergensis (between 600,000 and 400,000 years ago).Dansk Resumé: I denne artikel præsenterer jeg med udgangspunkt i den kognitive og den neurobiologiske religionsvidenskab mine refleksioner over religionens evolution. To aspekter af hjernen er afgørende for vores evolution. Den ene er udvidelsen af de emotionelle og indre dele af hjernen og den anden er udvidelsen af hjernebarken. Førstnævnte var en nødvendig forudsætning for udviklingen af levedygtige social systemer og sidstnævnte for udviklingen af stenredskaber og anden materiel kultur. Hertil kommer at hjernens udvikling hang kausalt sammen med den voksende social kompleksitet og den kulturelle udvikling, som denne kompleksitet førte med sig. Hjernen har den særlige egenskab, at den ikke er fuldt udviklet ved fødslen og først er “moden” efter to årtiers sociale og kulturelle liv, hvor også hjerneskallen først er vokset endelig sammen (for kvinder 18 år for mænd 21 år). Således bliver det ufærdige dyr færdiggjort inden for en specifik kultur. Når man ser på de seneste landvindinger inden for neuropsykologien, er der fire kendetegn, som jeg mener, er konstituerende for mennesket. Disse er: en finudviklet social kognition, en kommunikations- og samarbejdsdrift, en bedragerisk hjerne samt en overtroisk hjerne med tendens til ualmindelige mentale og/eller emotionelle oplevelser. Disse egenskaber er en nødvendig forudsætning for religiøst adfærd. Når man ser på de arkæologiske vidnesbyrd i jagten på det religiøse menneske, skal man gå betydeligt længere tilbage end Homo sapiens, ja, man skal langt tilbage i homininlinjen. De første proto-religiøse træk synes at komme til syne med Homo heidelbergensis (mellem 600.000 og 400.000 år siden).

This chapter focuses on the growing empirical knowledge about the interaction between bodily actions, human thinking, and the cultural embeddedness of human cognition. An approach to ritual based on this expanded view of cognition produces important perspectives and insights for the study of religions. Embodied cognition is a very diverse field and the chapter therefore draws on what is called the ‘4E approach’, i.e. cognition as embodied, embedded, extended, and enactive. Humans are enmeshed in a vast dynamic network of other bodies and minds stretching across the planet and back to the beginnings of time. We are biocultural creatures, in a most concrete sense. What is needed is a systematic, scientific study of brain, body, and behaviour in religious rituals. This chapter will sketch out some of the available evidence and the theories that have been developed to understand the evidence.

During the last decade or so, empirical knowledge about interactions between bodily actions, human thinking, and the cultural embeddedness of human cognition has been accumulating. As any young science, the cognitive science of religion has been rapidly adapting to this new knowledge which has led to an expanded view of cognition. The brain, body, and mind have often erroneously been thought to be more or less independent organs. They are enmeshed, however, not only internally (embodied) but also externally in a vast network of other brains, bodies, and minds (encultured). Thus, mental representations, mental and emotional states, unconscious reactions, and background emotions are socially oriented and often socially caused states. This paper will introduce readers to recent advances in the cognitive science of religion with emphasis on ritual behavior, place, and pilgrimage.

Although the author is sympathetic to Norenzayan's book, he takes issue with three crucial problems, namely the issues of causality, atheism, and hunter-gatherer cultures. He argues that assigning Big Gods a causal role in the development of large-scale, complex societies is highly problematic, that attempts to explain atheism are also based on misplaced causal assumptions, and that evidence on hunter-gatherers collected on the basis of evolutionary theories should be more critically analyzed.

Redaktionen af et temanummer i Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 4 (1) 2016: 1-90 med en række bidrag som respons til en targetartikel skrevet af Jonathan H. Turner med titlen "Using Neurosociology and Evolutionary Sociology to Explain the Origin and Evolution of Religions". Der er kommentarer fra Justin L. Barrett, Lloyd Black & Richard Sosis, Ronald Fischer, Stewart Elliott Guthrie, Henrik Høgh-Olesen, Niels N. Johannsen, Radek Kundt, Aiyana K. Willard & Adam Baimel, efterfulgt af respons fra Turner med titlen "The Problem with Too Much Fidelity to the Modern Synthesis When Explaining the Origins and Evolution of the Social Universe.

Et bidrag om religion, kognition og kultur i evolutionistisk perspektiv ved en Engelsberg konference om "Religion" afholdt i Avesta, Sverige i 2014. Bidraget er genudgivet i en anden udgave af bogen ved et andet forlag.

Beskrivelse af redaktørskifte på Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion - Dimitris Xygalatas træder ud og Kristoffer L. Nielbo indtræder som medredaktør sammen med undertegnede.

With the rise of the comparative sciences in the middle of the nineteenth century, major evolutionary schemes were posited. During the first decades of the twentieth century, these theories were rejected in anthropology, sociology, and the historical sciences. Evolutionary approaches, however, continued in isolation, but grew stronger toward the 1970s. In the historical and social sciences, evolutionary theories gained importance in relation to the Axial Age. The cognitive science of religion, founded in 1990 by scholars of religion, developed hypotheses conceived within evolutionary frameworks. These hypotheses are being tested in the laboratory, in the field, in simulation models, and in the development of historical databases.

Værket er andet bind i et to-binds værk med titlen Religionsforksningen før og nu, der beskriver religionsvidenskabens tilblivelse, udvikling og nutidige teoretiske retninger. Begge bind beskriver og spejler også dansk religionsvidenskab og danske religionsforskere, før og nu. Dette bind er, med en enkelt undtagelse, forfattet af danske religionsforskere, de fleste ansat ved et af de tre universiteter i København, Aarhus og Odense, hvor der findes institutter eller afdelinger for religionsvidenskab.

Redaktionen af et temanummer i Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 3 (1) 2015: 1-83

Kommentar til en "target article" af Dominic Johnson med titlen "What are atheists for? Hypotheses on the functions of non-belief in the evolution of religion.

Nathaniel F. Barrett has written a sustained argument for why the ecological approach is better than the social constructivist approach in understanding value-rich religious experience. He posits t...

En kort artikel om hjerneskanningseksperimenter med bøn udført af forfatterne som begge har tilknytning til Religion, Cognition and Culture Research Unit (RCC) om MINDLab.

Bidraget undersøger hvordan, hvornår og hvorfor religion er opstået. Med udgangspunkt i nyere neurologi, arkæologi og kognitiv religionsvidenskab kapitlet begrunder sin hypotese om at vi er intelligente aber som er meget følelsesladet, nemt forskrækket, meget overtroisk og ekstremt sensitiv til sociale normer og virtuelle virkeligheder. Vi er som art forsynet med et nervesystem som er sårbar overfor indflydelse fra artsfællerne og deres symbolske verdener. Disse egenskaber danner grundlaget for religiøs adfærd.

This introduction to the special issue on narrative discusses various ways of approaching religious narrative. It looks at various evolutionary hypotheses and distinguishes between three fundamental aspects of narrative: 1. the neurobiological, psychological, social and cultural mechanisms and processes, 2. the many media and methods used in human communication, and 3. the variety of expressive genres. The introduction ends with a definition of narrative.

Et interview med mig udført af Kirstine Munk.

Bogen drejer sig om religionens, kognitionens og kulturens oprindelse. Den består af 21 kapitler foruden introduktionen, skrevet primært af religionsforskere med enkelte bidrag fra andre discipliner. Alle bidrag gøre op med den tidligere evolutionspsykologis og kognitionsvidenskabs biproduktshypotese.

It has often been said that the origins of religion, cognition and culture are beyond the ken of modern man. And yet, it is the most interesting, challenging and provocative of topics in the natural and human sciences. Perhaps our origins are no longer as murky today as in previous centuries. The past twenty-five years have startled the world with major advances in a number of disciplines and sciences: evolutionary psychology, cognitive archaeology, neuroscience, ethology, developmental psychology, social psychology, cognitive linguistics, palaeoanthropology and genetics. These advances have significantly impacted on comparative religion and have led to the establishment of a burgeoning new field called the cognitive science of religion. This new field has succeeded in casting new light on age-old problems. Efforts to discover and explain the evolutionary origins of Homo sapiens sapiens have led to a wide variety of hypotheses attempting to discover what is particularly human about human beings. We have witnessed such memorable ideas as the grandmother hypothesis, the aquatic ape, man the tool-maker, man the hunter, woman the gatherer, crossing symbolic thresholds, the speaking ape, social intelligence, the great hominid escape, mankind's epistemic hunger, the hybrid mind, and so on. All of these attempts to understand the origins of humanity have raised fundamental questions about the complex relationships between cognition and culture. Are they two sides of the same coin? Or is culture epiphenomenal to other more basic processes? And how does religion fit into the picture?.

En analyse af bøn som religionsfænomenologisk kategori.

The purpose of this essay is, among other things, to correct the misunderstandings that some evolutionary psychologists have promoted about Clifford Geertz. It is indeed unfortunate that generations of cognitive scientists of religion have simply accepted unwarranted claims about Geertz's attitude towards cognition and psychology. Furthermore, this blind acceptance goes hand in hand with the equally faulty idea that cognition has nothing much to do with culture, except that cognition came first. In this chapter, I will briefly introduce Clifford Geertz. The bulk of the chapter will consist of a detailed analysis of Geertz's understanding of cognition and culture followed by a brief description of criticism from evolutionary psychologists Tooby and Cosmides. The final section will indicate how Geertz's ideas mesh well with contemporary cognitive, social and affective neuroscience. Introduction to Clifford Geertz Clifford Geertz was not only a significant figure in anthropology; he was one of the great intellectuals of the latter half of the twentieth century. He was born on 23 August 1926 and died on 30 October 2006. After the war, he studied literature at Antioch College in Ohio from 1946 to 1950, which left an indelible influence on his literary style. He also studied philosophy and was greatly inspired by John Austin, Gilbert Ryle and Kenneth Burke. He then moved on to graduate school at Harvard, studying under Clyde Kluckhohn at an interdisciplinary department called “Social Relations”. Here Geertz met anthropology, psychology and sociology.

This study used functional magnetic resonance imaging to investigate how assumptions about speakers’ abilities changed the evoked BOLD response in secular and Christian participants who received intercessory prayer. We find that recipients’ assumptions about senders’ charismatic abilities have important effects on their executive network. Most notably, the Christian participants deactivated the frontal network consisting of the medial and the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex bilaterally in response to speakers who they believed had healing abilities. An independent analysis across subjects revealed that this deactivation predicted the Christian participants’ subsequent ratings of the speakers’ charisma and experience of God’s presence during prayer. These observations point to an important mechanism of authority that may facilitate charismatic influence, a mechanism which is likely to be present in other interpersonal interactions as well.

This essay sketches out a biocultural theory of religion which is based on an expanded view of cognition that is anchored in brain and body (embrained and embodied), deeply dependent on culture (enculturated) and extended and distributed beyond the borders of individual brains. Such an approach uniquely accommodates contemporary cultural and neurobiological sciences. Since the challenge that the study of religion faces, in my opinion, is at the interstices of these sciences, I have tried to develop a theory of religion which acknowledges the fact. My hope is that the theory can be of use to scholars of religion and be submitted to further hypotheses and tests by cognitive scientists.

En genudgivelse af en artikel med samme titel (udgivet i Historia Religionum, 11 (2), 2010, s. 21-37). Baseret på et konferencebidrag i 2009 ved European Association for the Study of Religion i Messina, Italien. Artiklen giver et alternativt bud på hvad kognition er og hvordan hjerne, krop og kultur påvirker hinanden.

After discussing evidence of irreligion and the rise of the so called "New Atheism", the authors refute the claim that this poses a problem for the cognitive science of religion and its hypothesis that religion is natural. The "naturalness hypothesis" is not deterministic but probabilistic and thus leaves room for atheism. This, the authors maintain, is true of both the by-product and adaptationist stances within the cognitive science of religion. In this context the authors also discuss the memetic or "unnaturalness" hypothesis, i.e. that religion is a "virus of the mind". The authors criticize accounts of atheism offered by cognitive scientists of religion as being based on unfounded assumptions about the psychology of atheists, and object to the notion that the natural aspects of religion by corollary make atheism unnatural. By considering human cognition in a semiotic framework and emphasizing its natural ability to take part in semiotic systems of signs, atheism emerges as a natural, cognitive strategy. The authors argue that to reach a fuller account of religion, the cognitive (naturalness) and memetic (unnaturalness) hypotheses of religion must be merged. Finally, a preliminary analysis of the "New Atheism" is offered in terms of semiotic and cognitive dynamics.