Religion and Science Freebook

A ROUTLEDGE FREEBOOK
Religion and Science

A FreeBook from Routledge
Introduction
1 - The Basic Question: Science or Religion or Science and Religion

from Religion and Science: The Basics
2 - Islam and Science from The Routledge Companion to Religion

and Science
3 - The Cognitive Sciences: A Brief Introduction for Science and

Religion from The Routledge Companion to Religion and Science
4 - Towards a Cognitive Science that Doesn't Alienate Everyone

Except Cognitive Scientists from Culture and the Cognitive Science
of Religion
5 - Religious Power and Knowledge from Science and Religion: One

Planet Many Possibilities
6 - Knowledge and the Objection to Religious Belief from

Cognitive Science from The Roots of Religion
7 - Intelligent Design as Science or Pseudoscience? from The

Intelligent Design Debate and the Temptation of Scientism
READ THE LATEST ON
RELIGION AND SCIENCE
WITH THESE KEY TITLES
VISIT WWW.ROUTLEDGE.COM
TO BROWSE FULL RANGE OF RELIGION TITLES
SAVE 20% AND FREE SHIPPING WITH DISCOUNT CODE LMT02*

*DISCOUNT CODE VALID UNTIL 1ST JANUARY 2018
Introduction
This FreeBook brings together a selection of chapters from across our

range of publishing in the field of Religion and Science.
Visit our website to view information on the books in full, or to purchase a
copy. Links are provided at the beginning of each chapter of this
FreeBook. If you have any questions, please contact us.
Note to readers: References from the original chapters have not been
included in this text. For a fully-referenced version of each chapter,
including footnotes, bibliographies, references and endnotes, please see
the published title. Links to purchase each specific title can be found on
the first page of each chapter.
As you read through this FreeBook, you will notice that some excerpts
reference previous chapters ? please note that these are references to the
original text and not the Freebook.
4
1
THE BASIC QUESTION
SCIENCE OR RELIGION, OR SCIENCE
AND RELIGION
This chapter is excerpted from

Religion and Science: The Basics
by Phillip Clayton.
© 2012 Taylor & Francis Group. All rights reserved.
Learn more
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

SCIENCE OR RELIGION, OR SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Excerpted from Religion and Science: The Basics
THE DEBATE THAT NO ONE CAN AVOID

It is hard to imagine any institutions in human culture and
existence today with deeper roots than religion and science.
Religion is so basic to human history that the human species has
been called homo religiosus, the religious animal. Indeed, some
scholars even connect the origins of our species, Homo sapiens
sapiens, to the first archeological signs of religious rituals and
practices. A huge proportion of the world?s population today is
identified with at least one of the major religious traditions of the
world.
It is equally impossible to imagine humanity without science.
By 1900, about three centuries after the dawn of modern science, it
was clear that this new means of studying the natural world and
organizing our beliefs about it was transforming humanity more
than perhaps any other development in the history of our species.
By the end of World War II, when much of Europe had been
reduced to rubble and Hiroshima to an atomic fall-out zone,
science had changed the face of the planet for ever. Today there is
virtually no aspect of human existence that does not depend in
some way upon scientific results and technological inventions.
From immunizations to heart surgery, from fertilizer to genetically
modified crops, from our cell phones to our computers, from roads
to airplanes, from the bananas on our table to our ?cash?in the
bank, existence without science has become inconceivable.
As we will see in the following pages, the impact of science
is not only limited to its products. The scientific mindset has
transformed humanity?s views of what knowledge is, how it is
obtained, and how knowledge claims are evaluated. Even people
whose central moral and religious beliefs are not determined by
science are still impacted by the growth of science, since others
will judge their knowledge claims in light of their agreement with
6
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

or divergence from scientific results.

Science and religion: compatibility or conflict? Should we
talk about ?science and religion,?or should it be ?science versus
religion?? By the time you finish this book, you will have a good
sense of the whole range of answers that have been given to this
question and the best arguments that are being made on both
sides. This should give you enough information to make up your
own mind and to defend your own positions in each of the major
areas of the debate.
Certainly the dominant message in our culture today is that
science and religion stand in deep tension. Nowhere is this
message clearer than in the debate between naturalism and
theism. Naturalism is the view that all that exists are natural
objects within the universe ? the combinations of physical mass
and energy that make up planets and stars, oceans and mountains,
microbes and humans. In normal usage, naturalism usually implies
the claim that real knowledge of these natural objects comes
through, or is at least controlled by, the results of scientific inquiry.
Cognate terms are materialism and physicalism. The former has
traditionally meant ?all is matter?; the latter technically means
reducible to the laws, particles, and forms of energy that physicists
study.
Theism is the belief in the existence of God, an ultimate
reality that transcends the universe as a whole. Passing over a few
exceptions, Jews, Christians, Muslims, and Hindus are theists. When
the term is used broadly, it includes pantheists, panentheists (?the
world is in God?), and polytheists ? hence most of the native African
religions and the world?s indigenous or tribal religions. Typically
God is described as a personal being, often with the qualities of
omniscience (all-knowing), omnipotence (all-powerful), and
omnibenevolence (all-good).
7
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

Based on the sacred scriptures of their particular tradition (the

Bible, the Qur?an, the Upanishads), theists often ascribe other
qualities to God, such as consciousness, love, justice, and
righteousness.
Theists usually defend specific ways of knowing, distinct
from science, through which humans are able to know something
of God and God?s nature. Traditionally, they have believed that God
created the world, providentially guides it, and reveals God?s self in
it. This means that God does things in the world (?divine action?),
carrying out actions that are either consistent with natural law or
that involve setting natural regularities aside (miracles).
At first blush, theism and naturalism appear to be
incompatible positions. Naturalists affirm that all that exists is the
universe (or multiverse) and the objects within it, whereas theists
claim that something transcends the universe. Naturalists generally
use science as their primary standard for what humans know,
whereas theists defend other ways of knowing as well, such as
intuition or religious experience.
So let us explore. Are the two positions incompatible? Or,
when one probes deeper, can one detect any deeper
compatibilities? The best way to find out is to arrange a debate
between a knowledgeable representative from each side and then
to see what emerges. As you know, good debates between
naturalists and theists in real life are hard to find; they often
deteriorate into name-calling and shouting matches. Fortunately, in
a book it is possible to imagine a calm and civil discussion between
defenders of the two positions:
A NATURALIST AND A THEIST IN DEBATE
Host: The definitions of your positions have already been
presented. So let me ask each of you to give a basic defense of
your position. Let us start with the theist.
8
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

Theist: Religion is one of the oldest and most notable features of

humanity. Some of the greatest wisdom and some of the most
ennobling ethical ideals are contained in the world?s religious
traditions. These ideals are intrinsically linked to metaphysical
beliefs, beliefs about the nature of ultimate reality. In my particular
case, for example, I believe that an infinite personal being exists,
one who is the Creator and ultimate ground of all finite things.
Naturalist: I don?t dispute the role that religions played in the
childhood and youth of our species. Indeed, although much evil has
been done in the name of religion, I concede that it has sometimes
also brought some good. But humanity in its maturity has invented
science and begun to guide its decision-making by scientific
results. If religion is to play any positive role today ? and at least
some of my naturalist friends believe it still can ? it must function
in whatever spaces are left over by the results of the various
sciences.
T: There is no reason to think that the advent of science spells the
death of religion. I advocate a more complex worldview, in which
both serve important functions. I agree that religion should not
compete with science in science?s own proper domain, but many of
the most important human questions lie outside the sphere of
scientific competence.
Host: Thanks for those opening statements. Here?s our next
question. Are there areas of human experience, outside the domain
of science, where religion provides knowledge?
T: Science describes what is but cannot tell us how we ought to act.
Hence, ethics and morality lie outside its sphere. Science can tell us
about the laws of nature and can explain the motion of physical
bodies in the universe, but it cannot tell us what came before the
universe or why it was created. Yet for many of us the meaning of
9
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

human life turns on questions like these, questions about the

ultimate nature of reality. Religion provides knowledge in these
spheres.
N: You wrongly set limits on science, for example, by claiming that
it has no moral implications. For example, there are values that
arise in the process of doing science, and these provide good
models for human interactions, for institutions, and for politics. To
know what kind of animal we have evolved to be tells us
something about how we should live if we are to be happy and
successful.
Hence science does provide some guidance for how humans
ought to live. Of course, many human decisions are not dictated by
physics or biology. In cases where there is great variability across
cultures and moral systems, and where the beliefs in question do
no damage, we can be relativists, allowing each person to choose
for himself or herself. Religion falls in this category. And on the
meaning question: I find meaning in the pursuit of knowledge
about the world, as well as in my family, friends, and hobbies. What
more meaning do I need?
Host: Okay, next question. Does anything exist beyond the natural
world taken as a whole?
N: I think such questions are meaningless. We can observe
empirical objects; we can measure them and make predictions
about their causal interactions with each other. Why would we
want to make truth claims about the existence of anything else? I
tend to think that all such metaphysical language is literally
meaningless ? sort of like the famous poem from Lewis Carroll?s
Alice in Wonderland: ??Twas brillig and the slithy toves did gyre and
gimble in the wabe . . .?
T: I think I can show that it?s impossible to argue against
10
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

metaphysics (in this case, belief in God) without doing metaphysics,

and therefore contradicting oneself. I also think that a number of
positive arguments can be given for affirming the existence of God.
I don?t actually share the view of a school called ?Intelligent
Design,?which claims that these arguments are scientific
arguments and can win in a head-to- head competition with
contemporary scientific accounts of the world. They are to me
instead philosophical arguments. But I think they are compelling
nonetheless. I affirm the classical proofs for the existence of God:
the ontological, cosmological, and teleological arguments. They do
not force belief in the existence of God, but they at least show that
it?s not unreasonable to believe in God.
N: Those classic arguments are no longer persuasive in the
scientific age. Some of them make assumptions about nature that
we no longer hold today. For example, the teleological argument,
the so-called argument from design, is no longer valid after Darwin.
It argues that God exists based on the fact that animals and plants
are matched to their environments; otherwise, it says, it would be
impossible to explain why organisms are so perfectly suited to
their surroundings. But Darwinism as a whole explains evolution
and adaptation in scientific terms.
T: I agree that modern biology has rendered certain forms of the
argument from design unconvincing. So let me give two arguments
drawn from the context of modern science, which I think are still
persuasive. The first is the ?fine-tuning?argument. We now know
that the fundamental physical variables had to fall within a very
narrow range for life to be possible, and in fact they do. This
suggests that we live in an ?anthropic?universe ? a universe
designed for life, or at least the only kind of universe in which life
could arise. As the cosmologist Edward Harrison writes somewhere,
?Here is the cosmological proof of the existence of God. The
11
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic

design. Take your choice: blind chance that requires multitudes of
universes, or design that requires only one.?
My second argument moves from the existence of natural
law to the existence of God. Natural laws are prior to the existence
of physical states of affairs; they are the mathematical regularities
that determine the motions of particles and specify the four
fundamental forces in the universe. But if laws precede the
existence of the universe, and laws are more mind-like than
body-like, then something like mind is the more fundamental order
of reality. This supports the idea that ultimate reality is God, not
matter.
And some of the traditional arguments for the existence of
God still remain valid in this age of science. One can only answer
the question, ?Why is there something rather than nothing??if there
exists an ultimate reality that contains the reason for its existence
within itself. God is such a being; therefore God exists (the
cosmological proof ). The existence of values and of our awareness
of moral obligation proves that there must be a highest good,
which is God or is grounded in God (the axiological proof ). Finally,
religious experience provides some evidence of the existence of
God (the argument from mysticism or religious experience).
N: I know that nothing would please you more than to draw me into
the morasses of your metaphysical debates. In truth, I find that
whole way of speaking a throw-back to a bygone era. You know the
standard criticisms of these arguments as well as I do. We could
debate the issues until we?re blue in the face, but there just isn?t
enough empirical evidence to decide the issue one way or the
other. These are the kind of old-style metaphysical disputes that
my friends and I are trying to break away from.
Let?s take your last comment about religious experience. In a
12
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

scientific age, shouldn?t we try to learn as much as we can from the

empirical study of religion? I don?t need to argue that all of your
sentences are literally meaningless, like the logical positivists once
did, but I do want to encourage you and your co-religionists to
learn everything that you can about religion by scientific means.
Did religious beliefs and practices help human beings in their
various clans and tribes to survive in hostile environments? If so,
how did this happen? Did religion increase group cohesion and
motivate people to obey the social mores necessary for their
survival? If so, you and I can agree that religion helped people to
adapt, at least in the earlier stages of human evolution.
Then we can discuss whether it is still adaptive today. If
religion no longer is, why do people continue to believe? Perhaps
religious belief is a by-product of mental and cognitive human
traits that are adaptive ? perhaps it?s something that our brains
produce when they are running in neutral, as it were. The brain?s
large prefrontal cortex functions to support generalizations and
abstract reasoning. Maybe when it has no sense data to work with,
it naturally produces the idea of God. Finally, can we agree that
there are contexts in which religion is maladaptive, cases where
religious practices decrease the fitness of a group? That question,
too, could be studied empirically.
Such questions are only the start. Scientists are now studying
how human biology shapes human feelings and desires
(evolutionary psychology). There are biological explanations for
why human beings believe certain things and disbelieve others. By
studying evolutionary history, we can reconstruct the ?cognitive
modules?around which human cognition is built. The cognitive
study of religion today is beginning to identify the ?commonsense
physics?and ?commonsense biology?that evolution has produced,
as well as why it?s intuitive for humans to detect agency in the
world . . . and in the heavens.
13
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

If we did turn to metaphysics, however, I would side with

Richard Dawkins inThe God Delusion. Evolution shows more
complex organisms arising out of simpler states of affairs. This
pattern suggests that the origin of all things was maximally simple.
Theism, by contrast, begins with a maximally complex being, God,
who then creates relatively simple processes. To my mind that puts
theists at a disadvantage when it comes to the evidence.
T: I am interested in the empirical evidence as much as you are, but
we interpret it very differently. If God exists, as I believe, is it
surprising that our brains would be naturally wired to produce the
idea of God? Wouldn?t we also expect that groups that are bonded
together by their belief in God would do better on this planet than
non-religious groups? Also, you should know that traditional
theism affirmed the doctrine of divine simplicity. So we are not at
all disturbed by Richard Dawkins?argument; it merely asks us for
what we already affirm.
Host: Thanks for that exchange; that was very helpful. What do the
two of you believe about the nature of humanity?
T: Everything that exists is God?s creation. We share many qualities
with the animals as a result. Still, humans uniquely reflect the
?image of God.?Some people read Genesis in a literal way; they
believe that God created humans as a ?special creation,?separate
from God?s creation of the animals. But others, like me, do not read
the Hebrew Bible as a literal guide to scientific matters. We are
happy to say that there was just the one creation of ?the heavens
and the earth?and that humans evolved from animals. Still, I affirm
that some unique human qualities have evolved through and out of
this process. They include the ability to consciously know God and
God?s self-revelation, to know that we are morally responsible
before others, to recognize our need for salvation and relationship
with God, and to commit our lives to God?s service. There is
14
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

evidence that science is now helping to establish how unique many

of the human capacities are.
N: Obviously I don?t share your views on God, but in general, would
say, naturalists are more skeptical about claims for human
uniqueness than you are. Evolution involves a process of many
small (and some larger) mutations to a genome, which lead to
differential survival rates of the offspring. It?s true that new
abilities evolve over time: the ability to move, sexual reproduction,
the emergence of a brain and central nervous system, the ability to
form mental representations of one?s environment, culture and
social bonding, and eventually the use of symbolic language. But it
is a mistake to use any of these emergent properties as grounds for
drawing an ontological divide and separating organisms into
fundamentally different kinds of living beings.
Host: Next question. Is religion necessary for making life
meaningful? Can religion alone produce the sense that we are ?at
home in the universe??
T: Here I think I am on especially strong ground. Science leads to
nihilism, the sense that the world is ultimately meaningless or even
absurd. On the assumption of naturalism, there is no purpose to our
lives, no final direction to cosmic history. Science also cannot serve
as the ground for values. One might choose to be moral, but one is
not really obligated to do so. By contrast, if the world is created by
a personal God who is good and who cares for creation, it?s a very
different picture. One gives alternate answers to the core
questions of existence. Now there is meaning, purpose,
directionality, and a real basis for distinguishing right from wrong.
N: Interestingly, I think I am on equally strong ground in answering
our host?s question. If physics were the only science, one might
well conclude that all that exists is ?matter (and energy) in motion?
15
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

as Thomas Hobbes wrote in the seventeenth century. But biology

studies organisms, and every organism has at least one purpose in
the world: to survive and reproduce. Some things are naturally
more valuable to a given organism given its biology and (in some
cases) culture.
T: But that?s hardly a robust defense of values! If the fundamental
value of nature is ?the survival of the fittest,?as Darwin wrote, then
? to also quote Thomas Hobbes ? the final state of man would be
?nasty, brutish, and short.?You might be able to show that treating
your genetic relatives is biologically good, as is doing nice things
for friends in the hope that they will reciprocate, but you could
never ground a universal altruism ? the call to love one?s enemies,
for example ? on the basis of biology alone.
N: That?s right; the call to universal love can be a cultural value, but
it can?t be derived from biology alone. But on the more general
point, you and I disagree. Biology gives rise to culture, with its
complex languages and symbol systems. The stories and the values
we live by are among these cultural products. As a naturalist, I don?t
have to reduce everything in the natural world to genes or to the
struggle for survival alone. I love my family and friends, pursue
projects for the good of society, and hope for world peace just as
much as you do; my values are as deeply embedded in who I am as
yours are in you. It?s just that I don?t think they need any grounding
outside of the natural and cultural worlds.
Host: Do miracles exist? Are the laws of nature ever suspended?
N: That one?s easy: no! As the Scottish philosopher David Hume
showed in his famous Dialogues concerning Natural Religion in the
eighteenth century, the reasons against believing that a miracle
has occurred, that natural laws have been suspended, will always
be massively greater than the reasons for affirming one. Not only
16
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

that; even the possibility of miracles occurring would make science

as we know it impossible. Imagine that a scientist would have to
say when she encountered an anomaly: ?Well, either my data is bad,
or my theories are incomplete ? or perhaps God has simply set
aside a few natural laws here in order to actualize some goals in
the world.?No science could be done in such a context. But since
there is no scientific evidence that miracles have ever occurred, I
rest easy on this one.
T: I think things are more complex than my friend describes. God
could easily be influencing the world in myriad forms without
being detected by microscopes or Geiger counters. Over the eons
God could have guided the course of evolution in many ways. Even
for those who don?t believe that God directly brings about physical
changes in the world, it is possible for God to subtly influence
human thought (and perhaps animals too), allowing them to carry
out God?s will. For me the most important point is that God is able
to work miracles in the world if and when God wishes. This
possibility follows directly from God having created the finite
world in the first place. The naturalist and I also disagree on the
empirical question of whether miraculous things have happened.
Haven?t most of us heard stories and testimonies about some
pretty miraculous events happening? Isn?t it possible that they
have? In the end, then, the most important thing for me is God?s
ability to act in the world.
Host: Our time is running out, and we must draw to a close. For the
last question, let me ask you if you think that science and religion
represent two opposing worldviews, or could they offer two
complementary ways of construing the one reality?
T: Some of my Jewish, Christian, and Muslim friends think that their
theism is incompatible with science; but I disagree, as you?ve
heard. It?s also true that many scientists tend to confuse the
17
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

scientific data and theories themselves with their own

anti-religious prejudices and secular worldview. When this occurs,
they confuse science with atheism. When religious people hear
scholars identifying science with atheism, is it surprising that they
conclude that they have to be anti-scientific?
Still, I personally am not convinced that science and religion
exclude each other. Accurate scientific knowledge of the natural
world does not exclude the existence of a supernatural God. In my
view, supernatural explanations supplement naturalistic ones.
There is no ultimate inconsistency. How could there be, if God is
the Creator of the heavens and the earth?
N: I too have many friends more radical than myself who affirm a
complete incompatibility between science and all forms of
religious belief. The media seems to love reporting on their views,
and pays less attention to more moderate naturalists such as
myself. I wouldn?t want to say that science excludes all religious
belief whatsoever. But I do think that my theist friend here, with his
robust supernaturalist claims, is going to have a harder time
reconciling his theology with science than, say, a Buddhist would
have.
Nevertheless, the theist shouldn?t derive too much comfort
from my willingness to admit a compatibility-in-principle between
science and religion. When it comes to concrete knowledge claims
about God, I think there simply isn?t enough empirical evidence to
warrant your doctrines. If you want to affirm ?ultimate mystery?or
stress the importance of living a ?spiritual?life, I can hardly
complain. But as soon as you begin making any more concrete
claims about God, I think you step beyond the empirical evidence.
T: I appreciate your open-mindedness. But your criterion, empirical
evidence, begs the question against my position. If a God exists
who is pure Spirit, then God will never be detected by the empirical
18
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

means that you employ. God can only be known through

metaphysical arguments, through the history of revelation (or
scripture), through the sense of moral obligation, or through
religious experience. If you rule out all four of those means in
advance, of course it becomes impossible for me to defend my
beliefs. If you include the appropriate paths to knowledge, then I
maintain that there is ample evidence that God exists. When one
looks across the world?s religions and considers how deeply rooted
religion is in human life, one realizes that there are some rather
significant grounds for religious belief.
N: Actually, I think that the different religious traditions offer very
different views of ultimate reality.
Host: That sounds like a great topic for us to come back to in later
chapters of this book. For now, thanks for agreeing to appear in this
book and to defend your views in such a clear and civil manner.
TAKING STOCK
What can we learn from this debate? First, it breaks at least one
widespread stereotype: the tendency to associate all naturalists
with science and all theists with an anti-scientific attitude. This is
the first assumption many make in any discussion of science and
religion; it is also one that is widely popularized in the media and
in large-market books. Many people tend to identify science with
an ultimate or ?metaphysical?naturalism; they then associate belief
in God with an anti-scientific attitude.
Yet our short debate has already shown that such easy
identifications are too simplistic. Our theist, at any rate, was
interested in the results of science. He accepted evolution and
incorporated it as part of his understanding of life on earth and of
human beings. He grounded his arguments for the existence of God
in data about the origin of the universe and its laws (cosmology).
19
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

His understanding of God and the created world drew significantly

from scientific results. Clearly, he saw science and religion as
compatible, though not identical.
Nor did the naturalist fit the stereotype of a scientific
naturalist, just as many scientists don?t fit the stereotype either.
She was not inherently antagonistic to religion or to broader
metaphysical positions. Of course, she did greatly value empirical
data and would not endorse any position that made the doing of
science impossible. She also tended to be skeptical about
metaphysical claims and did not herself believe in the existence of
God or a higher power. But she manifested a sort of healthy
agnosticism about such questions, rather than a virulent hostility
toward them. She might even have said, ?Whatever religious or
spiritual beliefs I end up affirming, I am concerned that they should
not be in conflict with empirical results, for I want to learn as much
as possible from scientific inquiry.?
Even this brief debate provides some sense of the range of
possible positions. As we will soon see, the range only increases as
we consider the vast differences between the world?s major
religious traditions. Some theists are deeply antagonistic toward all
science, and some scientists are hostile toward all religion. We will
look at the reasons that these two groups give for their views in the
next chapter. But sometimes the roles are reversed. Many theists
build the core ideas of their theism out of science. If this is true for
theists, it holds all the more for non-theistic traditions such as
Buddhism, as we will see in Chapter 3. Likewise, devotion to the
practice of science need not make one anti-religious. Many
scientists have pursued the practice of science out of deeply
religious ends.
It will be our goal in the following chapters to explore the
intricacy of the questions and the main answers that are being
given to them today ? to take this opening debate deeper, as it
20
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

were. Instead of black and white connections, we will find a world

of complex interconnections, of similarities and differences, of
shared partnerships and sometimes conflicting projects. Readers
will be encouraged to take their own positions on the various
debates and to construct the best arguments they are able to
construct. Sometimes you will resonate strongly with one or more
of the existing positions in a given debate. At other times you may
find yourself formulating and defending positions that no one has
ever advanced before. Like all philosophical topics, this one admits
of many different possible responses, which ? ideally ? will lead to
ever deeper and more adequate answers.
But first, before the wider plains of discourse open up, we
must cross the high mountains of the contemporary warfare
between science and religion. One battle so powerfully
exemplifies the two-sided case for the final incompatibility
between science and religion, and continues to receive so much
media attention, that it deserves a chapter of its own. I refer, of
course, to the dramatic duel between ?intelligent design?theorists
and the ?new atheists.?
QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

1. Who do you think won this debate? Why?
2. If there was not a black and white winner, what do you think was
the best argument that the theist brought? The best argument by
the naturalist?
3. Were there any points in the debate where their beliefs were
simply incommensurable ? points at which they really could find
no common ground on which to argue? See if you can identify two
or three of these points.
4. Clearly, this naturalist and this theist were working with some
21
Chapter 1
THE BASIC QUESTION

conflicting assumptions. Can you identify some of these

deeper-level assumptions? If the discussion partners brought them
to the surface, do you think they could give reasons to support
their own assumptions as more adequate than their opponent?s
assumptions? Can you state their assumptions and then come up
with some reasons of your own for or against their assumptions?
5. This was a remarkably civil debate: there was no name-calling,
and both speakers stayed beautifully on topic. Are debates
between naturalists and theists usually like this? If not, why not?
What are some of the factors that helped to keep the conversation
productive? To what extent are these factors present in ?real-life?
debates between science and religion? How could the real-life
debates be improved?
22
2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

The Routledge Companion to Religion and Science
edited by James W. Haag, Gregory R. Peterson and
Michael L. Spezio.
Learn more
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

Excerpted from The Routledge Companion to Religion and Science
In studying the relation between science and religion in the greater

Middle East and the Islamic World, using the traditional Eurocentric
division of science and religion, which was formulated in the
European Renaissance and Enlightenment, cannot yield accurate
conclusions and often leads to anachronistic or Eurocentric
analyses. Here we look at different scientific, philosophical, and
religious disciplines, discourses, and paradigms as integral parts of
a socio-intellectual environment, where different methods, ideas,
theories, and discursive strategies are exchanged, debated, and
developed in conjunction, while keeping an eye on debates on
sources of knowledge and on epistemic authority of scholars, ideas,
and methodologies. Moreover, analysis should pay close attention
to political and socio-intellectual debates of legitimacy, which
constitute particular dynamic distributions of social and
intellectual capital.
Themes of anal ysis
At the core of the debates between scholars of science, religion,
and philosophy, a number of themes are important in order to
analyze these debates without essentializing different disciplines
or focusing on the most violent or heated episodes of these
intellectual exchanges.
Perceptions of science and religion
Here we look at science not only as the product of the laboratory,
but rather as a social and intellectual practice, the position,
intellectual authority, and boundaries of which are defined
organically within the contemporaneous intellectual sphere.
Similarly, different social changes affect the perception of religion
and its role in society. Although the religious discourse depends on
a number of quasi-permanent texts, the understanding,
interpretation, and perception of these texts effectively change the
24
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

meaning and significance of religion.

The analysis of the perception of science and religion
involves investigating debates on the meaning of knowledge, its
different sources, and their degree of legitimacy.
The scientific and religious processes
As processes of intellectual production, both scientific and
religious practices formulate their own rules and methods, which
help grant them epistemic authority, social legitimacy, and
intellectual influence. However, these rules (such as the scientific
method of thinking and the rules of interpretation of religious
texts) are not permanent, but rather are organically connected to
the social and intellectual scene. As these rules and strategies
change, the perception of the discipline, whether scientific or
religious, changes, and their place in society and their intellectual
interactions change as well.
Epistemic authority and the socio-intellectual space
The socio-intellectual and political space available for different
disciplines and agents influences how they develop their
discourses, communicate their narratives, and formulate their
arguments. In turn, this affects their epistemic authority, leading to
organic changes in the entire intellectual scene. This space
depends on factors such as patronage, methods of communication,
socio-intellectual capital, and political and socio-economic context.
From t he?Cl assical Age?t o t he earl y modern period
This period is conventionally considered to have started with the
translation movement under the Abbasid Caliphate and ended with
the destruction of Baghdad by the Mongols.
Early translation movement
Throughout the eighth century, many scholars took to translating
25
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

various Greek, Persian, and Indian writings into Arabic, making

these works accessible to a larger group of students and scholars.
The Academy of Gundeshapur, which was established under the
Sassinid rule in the end of the fifth century,flourished under
Chosroes, and gave refuge to many Greek Nestorian scholars who
fled the Byzantine persecution and played a significant role in
leading this early translation movement and scientific debate.
In 813, al-Ma?mun became the Abbasid Caliph following the
regicide of his brother al-Amin. Under al-Ma?mun, the House of
Wisdom, which was established by his father al-Rashid, expanded
rapidly to become a huge library and school, and the center of a
rapid and expansive translation movement. This movement was led
by people such Hunayn ibn Ishaq, a Nestorian physician, translator,
and philosopher, and al-Kindi, a philosopher and mathematician
(Rosenthal 1975).
The translations allowed for the rapid circulation of ancient
works, aided by a fertile environment of theological and
philosophical debates, where Muslim scholars debated with
Christian and Jewish scholars, establishing the foundations of a
new Muslim theology or Kalam. The Mutazilites, who emerged as a
theological school in the eighth century, developed their
arguments using logic, Aristotelian, and neoplatonic ideas, and
were able to recruit al-Ma?mun himself in becoming the most
important school of theology (Hourani 1976).
Mihna
Under various socio-political and intellectual influences,
al-Ma?mun proclaimed the Mutazilite theology to be the official
theology of the Islamic Caliphate, and instituted a series of trials
where scholars of religion and of religious law were examined and
required to profess the new theology. This series of trials extended
over fifteen years, under two other caliphs after al-Ma?mun?s two
26
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

successors. The main points of debate concerned the Mutazilite

belief in absolute monotheism, which necessitated the finiteness
of the universe, the argument that the Scripture is created and
finite as well, and the rejection of anthropomorphic descriptions of
God.
The finiteness of the universe went against Aristotelian
cosmology, which was espoused by many philosophers and
scientists. Aristotelians believed in the infiniteness of the universe,
the permanence of cosmic movements, and the existence of God
outside the universe.
The creation of the Scripture caused most of the uproar. The
theological counterargument was largely an argument of
methodology and of sources of knowledge. While Mutazilites
proclaimed the creation of the Scripture based on logical and
philosophical theorizations, the opposing theological views, led by
scholars of prophetic traditions and headed by Ahmad ibn Hanbal,
refused to answer the question and argued that there was no clear
answer for it in the Scripture, which was the only legitimate source
of knowledge for them. Moreover, Mutazilites sought to interpret
the anthropomorphic descriptions of God in the Scripture, arguing
that they logically cannot be literal, while traditionists argued for
limited or no interpretation of the Scripture, and that the
conclusions of intellectual theorization are only secondary to what
was mentioned in the Scripture.
On this methodological level, peripatetic philosophers and
scientists and Mutazilite theologians were closer in position, as
they agreed on the meaning and sources of knowledge and were
able to hold more productive debates, which contributed to the
maturation of these disciplines. On the other hand, the popular
conviction of the traditionist, more orthodox theological position
put enormous pressure on Mutazilite theologians and philosophers
and contributed to the development of new schools of theology.
27
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

The Mihna/ trial was terminated in 848 with an apparent

victory of the traditionist views, but with dissemination of the
debate to the far-reaching corners of the empire. This debate
contributed to shaping scientific theories and religious doctrines
over the following three centuries.
Maturation of science, philosophy, and theology
The late ninth to early tenth centuries witnessed the rapid
weakening of the Abbasid central authority in Baghdad and the
establishment of numerous kingdoms and principalities in the east
of the empire, which owed only nominal loyalty to the Abbasid
Caliph and competed together for more influence. In the west, a
Shiite Caliphate was established in 909 in North Africa and
consolidated its empire in 969 by occupying Egypt and
establishing Cairo as the capital. Soon after, they controlled Arabia
and the Levant, threatening nominal Abbasid control over the
region of Iraq.
The political decline of the central authority allowed for the
existence of multiple centers and metropoles, where sovereigns
patronized scientific and philosophical inquiries and where
different theological views developed under the protection of
sympathetic rulers. Meanwhile, the travel culture, seasonal
religious travels, and the Arabic language facilitated the movement
of scientific, philosophical, and theological productions across
these political borders.
Rapid progress in scientific inquiry and discovery took place
in various courts spearheaded by the likes of Rhazes (medicine),
Sijzi (astronomy), and Khawarizimi (mathematics), who worked for
different courts and rulers in Persia and Iraq. Al-Farabi, a student of
al-Kindi, developed Aristotelian and neoplatonic philosophical
inquiry.
Brethren of Purity, a secret society of philosophers and
28
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

scientists, appeared on the intellectual scene during the tenth

century and espoused Shiite theology as based on Pythagorean
philosophy and cosmology. In their collection of fifty-two treatises,
they theorized for the Isma?ili Shiite theology adopted by the
Fatimids, whom they supported and to whom they paved the road
intellectually. Abu Hayyan al-Tawhidi, who admired the work of the
Brethren of Purity, developed neoplatonic philosophy and
introduced aesthetics to Islamic theology and science. In 972,
al-Azhar mosque was inaugurated in Fatimid Cairo and became the
beacon of Isma?ili Shiite theology. The Fatimids established
another?House of Wisdom?in Cairo in 1004; a huge library that
hosted many scholars in various disciplines, paralleling the Abbasid
establishment.
In 912, a new school of theology broke off from the
Mutazilite school under the guidance of Al-Ash?ari. The Asharites
drew their positions between those of the Mutazilites and those of
the traditionists, claiming the supreme authority of the Scripture
but allowing for limited interpretations. Asharites were
occasionalist theologians, who rejected Aristoltelian physics and
cosmology, which are based on inherent movements, infinity, and
absolute regularity of the universe, and argued for continuous
creation and the role of divine providence in maintaining the
universe (Halevi 2002). This theology gave impetus to the work of
physicists and astronomers such as al-Biruni (973?1048), who was
involved with his famous contemporary Avicenna (980?1073), the
spearhead of Aristotelian philosophy and science, in numerous
debates, argued for the movement of the Earth, and was
sympathetic to heliocentric cosmology. One of Biruni?s most
significant discoveries was the calculation of the diameter of the
Earth, which was 16 kilometers less than modern calculations.
The Asharite theology supported and was inspired by atomist
physics, which developed Epicurean views and argued that matter
29
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

is made of small particles, which moved freely and randomly and

coalesced to form different earthly and cosmic bodies. To the
Asharites, this view allowed for the continuous creation and divine
will holding the universe from disintegration. Al-Ghazali
(1058?1111), who was a prominent Asharite theologian, wrote?The
Incoherence of Philosophers,?attacking peripatetic philosophers
such as Avicenna and al-Farabi and arguing for limited
interpretation of the Scripture.
Mongolian invasion, Sunni revivalism
Through the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, Crusaders attacked
the Levant contributing to the fall of the Fatimid caliphate and the
establishment of the Sunni revivalist Ayyubid states in Egypt and
the Levant. In Andalusia and Northern Africa, the Almoravids and
Almohads, which espoused the Sunni doctrine and Ashari theology,
controlled the region and sponsored the exile of many scholars and
philosophers, and the persecution and conversion of many
non-Muslim scholars, many of whom fled to the East. The wars of
the Reconquista forced many Jewish scholars to flee and
threatened the intellectual environment of Andalusia. In the East,
the Mongolian invasion in the thirteenth century put an end to the
Abbasid Caliphate in Baghdad and destroyed the House of Wisdom.
The economic decline, the political instability, and the
destruction of many centers of scientific inquiry affected the
intellectual environment severely. However, scholars such as
Averroes (1126?98) and Maimonides (d. 1204) continued to add to
philosophical, scientific, and theological inquiry. Averroes argued
against Al-Ghazali?s ?Incoherence?and theorized for the
interdependence of philosophy, science, and theology.
Maimonides??Guide for the Perplexed?was widely read and
studied in different scholarly circles throughout the Middle East.
30
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

The post-classical period

With the establishment of new, strong empires such as the Mamluk
empire in Egypt and the Levant and the Illikhanid empire in Iraq,
Persia and central Asia, another era of socio-economic prosperity
and relative political stability began. The socio-economic and
political development allowed for more codification of the rules
governing different scientific practices and legal proceedings in
search of more predictability and a more institutionalized
intellectual environment. In the Mamluk empire, the appointment
of four chief judges representing the four schools of law limited
the space for free legal interpretation to serve the rapidly growing
commercial and social structures. Also, the establishment of large
state- or elite-sponsored madrasas gave certain theological views
precedence over others and allowed for more uniformity of
jurisprudence and theology. The huge hospitals run by the court
physicians; the observatories run by court-appointed astronomers;
building projects funded by the state and the elites; and the chairs
for teaching medicine, philosophy, mathematics, and logic,
sponsored in the different madrasas by the courts and political and
military elites, led to more standardization and to the production
and propagation of certain ideas at the expense of others
(Rapoport 2003). However, none of these institutions acquired an
irrevocable legitimacy or an unquestionable authority, and the
debates on authority and legitimacy remained active throughout
the medieval and early modern period.
The educational institutions and structures were required to
produce efficient employees to fill the ranks of the bureaucracy,
the judiciary, the hospitals, and the madrasas. Under this pressure,
more people were educated, but towards more practical concerns
of daily functioning of the empire and the society, and less
attention was given to methodological debates or ground-breaking
31
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

discoveries. The old debates continued, but to a lesser extent, and

gave way to a more homogeneous intellectual environment
focusing on direct and practical concerns in philosophy, theology,
and law, and on application and practice in the sciences (Makdisi
1961).
Epidemics, famines, wars, and economic decline after the
discovery of new trade routes changed the intellectual
environment. The relation between science and religion changed
as well, with scientific disciplines spearheaded by?crafts?such as
medicine and astronomy, while more theoretical endeavors fell to
the background; and with religious studies centered around the law
and jurisprudence, with less interest in the bigger questions that
had occupied the intellectual space before.
As the balance of power changed in Europe to the detriment
of the Ottoman empire, political and financial elites in the Middle
East became interested in sponsoring scholars and scientists from
Europe, who traveled across the Ottoman empire in the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, working as physicians,
geographers, botanists, and instructors of the elite?s children.
Furthermore, the development of expatriate European
communities in the Middle East, with their schools and
missionaries, allowed for the movement of new European sciences
to the Middle East. The new scientific practices, many of which had
strong connections to some medieval theories, moved smoothly
within the Middle Eastern intellectual environment, and there
seemed to be little intellectual friction between the old and new
scientific practices on the one hand, and the large religious
educational and intellectual institutions on the other.
Debat es in pre-modern scient if ic discipl ines
Physics
Aristotelian physics was the most prominent and widely accepted
32
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

view on matter and the material world. This theory relied on the
presence of four main elements, which constituted the entire
material universe in the sub-lunar sphere. Outside the sub-lunar
sphere, celestial bodies were formed of a different, more superior
element, and moved in perfect circles around the Earth. This
theory, as espoused and developed by many Islamic philosophers,
such as Avicenna and Averroes, implied the eternity of the universe
and that the entire cosmological formation has existed since
eternity and is infinite in nature (Averroes 2001).
Coming into contact with the religious notions of
instantaneous creation, philosophers and scientists were inspired
to develop the Aristotelian principles and the theological doctrines
in different directions. Averroes, who was a judge, a physician, and
a philosopher, argued that instantaneous creation contradicts the
main tenets of Islamic creed, as it implies a change in the will of
God, who is unchanging and permanent. Some Mutazilite
theologians argued that instantaneous creation is necessary to
ensure the uniqueness of the Deity and argued, still in line with
Aristotelian theory, that this theory does not imply the eternity of
the universe by necessity.
Al-Ghazali found the Epicurean atomist theory to provide a
more plausible understanding of the world. According to the
ancient and medieval atomist theory, all beings are made of
infinitely small indivisible particles called atoms, which coalesce to
form different beings. Muslim Epicurean physicists believed that
these atoms have an inherent continuous random movement,
which would not allow them to stay in form save for the will of
God, who can keep bodies intact. This view was adopted by schools
of occasionalist theology, which also claimed a continuous act of
creation by God in the form of preserving bodies from inevitable
disintegration. On the other hand, other Epicurean scientists, along
with many theologians and religious scholars, such as Imam Fakhr
33
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

al-Din al-Razi, argued for a single moment of instantaneous

creation, where bodies were formed and where a continuous
progressive process of disintegration begins, leading to the
eventual end of the world.
Medicine
Unlike other fields, where multiple theories competed, medicine
remained largely dependent on the humoral theory founded by
Hippocrates and Galen, and its development at the hands of
Rhazes, Avicenna, Maimonides, Ibn al-Nafis, and others.
The intellectual authority of this theory proposed a
considerable challenge to a certain corpus of prophetic traditions,
where Muhammad suggested some remedies and behaviors
concerning plague, leprosy, and other diseases.
Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyah, a famous scholar of prophetic
traditions and of jurisprudence who believed
in?non-interpretation,?showed such confidence in the Galenic
tradition that he presented compelling interpretations
of?medical?prophetic traditions so that they correspond to the
rules and conclusions of the humoral theory. He argued that
Muhammad?s?medical?commandments are not transcendent and
are based on his specific experience in the deserts of Arabia.
People of the cities, like Cairo and Damascus, should devise their
own medicine along Galenic principles.
The religious perception of the purity of the soul inspired Ibn
al-Nafis to question Galenic anatomy, which presumed that the
right and left halves of the heart are connected through minute
perforations. Starting from Galen?s assumption that the soul lies in
the left half of the heart, Ibn al-Nafis argued that polluted blood
cannot be mixed with the soul and that a separate circulation must
exist involving the right side of the heart to purify the blood in the
lungs before it reaches the left side and mixes with the soul. This
34
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

theory was the precursor for the discovery of the pulmonary

circulation.
Astronomy
In the introduction of his?Incoherence,?al-Ghazali addressed a
certain disagreement around the phenomena of lunar and solar
eclipses, which were explained by the regular movement of the
Moon and the Sun around the Earth. In one of his famous traditions,
Muhammad advised his followers to pray to God at the moment of
eclipse. This tradition was seen as a sign of direct divine
intervention leading to eclipses, which require or recommend
prayers. Al-Ghazali accepted the astronomical explanation and
warned against rejecting these findings. He refuted the conclusions
based on Muhammad?s tradition and considered the command for
prayer unrelated to the nature of the event, arguing that Islam
ordered people to pray at noon and at dusk; none of which is out of
the ordinary or cannot be explained by astronomy.
The circular movement of the planets described by
astronomers inspired a number of mystic and Sufipractices and
doctrines, such as the Mavlavi Sufism, which viewed the eternal
circular movement as a sign of perfection and full devotion to the
Lord. Religious stories about prophets, who were chosen by God to
travel to the heavens, such as Idris/ Enoch, were reconsidered in
view of the astronomical findings, and some religious scholars
located the different sites of heaven in relation to the planetary
positions. Also, planets, their movements and size inspired other
similes, which compared particular planets with the most
prominent angels.
On the other hand, the rejection of astrology by some
religious scholars gave impetus to some astronomers?rejection of
astrology. In fact, the religious and legal debate around the
legitimacy and permissibility of astrology fueled and reflected a
35
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

scientific debate in astronomy and physics, where some

Aristotelian astronomers rejected astrology based on the different
nature of bodies in the celestial and sublunar spheres, which
renders any interactions between them illogical. Brethren of Purity,
who espoused Pythagorean theological views, rejected Aristotelian
physics relying on the validity of astrology, which implies that all
bodies are made of the same elements.
As shown previously, the relations between different
scientific and religious disciplines in the medieval and early
modern period cannot be described along a strict division of
science and religion. Instead, different religious and scientific
practices engaged in common debates and inquiries, and provided
mutual inspiration leading to changes in the entire intellectual
sphere, reformulating their own identities, authorities, and roles in
society.
From t he ninet eent h-cent ury Nahda t o t he cont emporary period
The arrival of the French expedition on Egyptian shores
represented one of the first and most violent assaults on the heart
of the Ottoman Middle East, and was considered by many scholars
to be a turning point in the modern history of the Middle East,
signaling the beginning of a new era in the region. Peter Gran,
among others, argued that the Ottoman Middle East witnessed a
vibrant intellectual life during the eighteenth century, which
preceded the changes happening in the aftermath of the French
expedition. At the intellectual level, the French expedition led to
two main effects, which cannot be fully understood through the
prism of East?West encounters.
In a trial to legitimize the presence of French troops and to
lessen public disdain, Bonaparte assembled a council of the most
prominent sheikhs of the country to aid the French authorities in
running the affairs of the region. This change in social and political
36
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

role gave al-Azhar, the most prominent religious university in the

region, a leading place and allowed its scholars to attain higher
positions in the state apparatus, and to claim the respect and the
deference of the political power due to their religious authority.
The second important effect of the French expedition was
the attempt of the colonial power to impress the local population
through a public display of technology, which had a major impact
on the intellectual environment in the region, and would play a
significant role in the perception of science in the Middle East. The
interactions between science and religion in the Middle East in the
modern and contemporary periods can be traced through the
following main stages.
The Nahda/ awakening period (nineteenth century)
The Nahda signifies the period of rapid state-sponsored
modernization in the Middle East, which took place variably
throughout the nineteenth century. In Istanbul, long-standing
imperial bureaucratic and technical elites were responsible for the
introduction of European science, technology, and educational
system without much contact with the standing religious elites,
which were not an influential part of the imperial administration
and played an increasingly marginalized role throughout the
nineteenth century. In Cairo, on the other hand, the religious
scholarly elite was the only educated elite to be trusted by the
modernizing authorities. Aided by European residents of the
region, these scholars, who graduated in al-Azhar, were responsible
for founding the new educational system, and for the introduction
of modern science and technology. Here the interactions between
modern scientific and religious discourses were far more
pronounced at the socio-political level (Findley 1980).
Rifa?ah Rafi?al-Tahtawi, who was a graduate of al-Azhar and
appointed by Muhammad Ali to accompany the first mission of
37
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

young cadets training in Paris, represents an interesting and pivotal

position in this debate. Al-Tahtawi learned principles of
mathematics, astronomy, and natural philosophy from a number of
French professors and tutors, and engaged in translating a large
number of books while in Paris. On his return, he led the translation
of dozens more books, established a school of translators under
the auspices of the ruler, and became the spearhead of an
educational reform.
Al-Tahtawi insisted on linking modern science to the Islamic
Middle Ages, highlighting the role played by Muslim scientists in
the European Renaissance. In this manner, al-Tahtawi was
presenting a genealogical identity for modern science, which
enhances its connections to the Islamic heritage not from an
intellectual point of view but from an identity perspective. In this
sense, introducing modern sciences from Europe at the hands of
European technicians and scientists was integrated in a historical
tradition and was, in fact, a return to what is originally Islamic.
Similarly, the translated text books of the new Egyptian technical
schools, such as the schools of medicine and engineering,
presented the process of modernization as a revival of Islamic
sciences at the hands of enlightened rulers (Livingston 1996).
On the other hand, al-Tahtawi and his colleagues
perceived/ presented science not as an episteme but as a techne
through highlighting the significance of technological
achievements and improvements in daily life, regardless of the
theoretical and paradigmatic traditions underlying these
technological achievements. Science was perceived as a neutral
technical practice, which was coincidentally attached to certain
intellectual and social practices in Europe. While these practices
contradicted contemporaneous religious views, technical
knowledge was instrumental to a powerful nation and was viewed
as perfectly separable from its ideological and theoretical
38
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

underpinnings.
Early twentieth century and the popularization of science
During this period, the intellectual elite changed radically in its
identity, training, and aptitude. The new elite was formed of
graduates of European-style schools, missionary schools, as well as
universities in the main European intellectual centers. This allowed
for the appearance of many journals, magazines, and newspapers,
which engaged in the popularization of sciences. Many of these
publications addressed direct technical needs of their readerships,
such as methods to manufacture glue, or to treat acne. Other
magazines specialized in a particular kind of technical knowledge,
such as the famous?mamlakat al-Nahal/ The Kingdom of
Bees,?which presented the reader with scientific methods in
apiculture (Elshakry 2008).
At the same time, al-Azhar Magazine(1929), along with other
publications, featured the writings of a number of religious
scholars and scientists of religious background, who insisted on the
genealogical connection of modern science to the Islamic middle
ages. Writings on the scientific interpretation of sacred texts
gained popularity, where religious scholars argued that the Quran
should be viewed as a book of nature as well as of religion, and
that it contains, albeit in hidden and cryptic language, references to
modern scientific facts, which prove the divine nature of the text.
The religious intellectual elites of the period encountered
evolution, which constituted a scientific theory and a
socio-political discourse, as Darwin and Huxley?s writings were
translated to Arabic. Religious authors argued that Darwinism was
not based on scientific facts and that it was refuted by most
scientists in Europe, and evolution was portrayed as a political
ideology that was forced on science. In that sense, evolution was
rejected by many religious scholars through emphasizing a
39
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

particular perception of science and technology, only enhancing

and solidifying the authority and legitimacy of science in society.
Science and its technical products became an essential part of
intellectual life, and debates on the origin of science and the
compatibility of Western sciences with Islam gave place to
questions about what is scientific and what is political (Atighetchi
2007).
The 1950s and 1960s and the nationalist projects
The middle decades of the twentieth century witnessed the rise of
nationalist and pan-Arabist projects. With an agenda of national
independence, nationalist projects espoused a second renaissance
whereby the Arab center of the Middle East would use modern
science to overcome the setbacks suffered during the Ottoman
period. This approach led to massive increases in the number of
college graduates and massive propaganda about the importance
of modern science and technology in achieving the main national
projects. At the same time, the rapidly decreasing margin of free
press and the nationalization of many print houses dramatically
reduced the number of journals and publications, which had
formerly contributed to the popularization of science (Aishima and
Salvatore 2009).
In 1961, Nasser added new scientific faculties to al-Azhar,
where curricula of religious sciences were added to the curricula
taught in similar faculties in other universities. This project
emphasized the view of science as a technology, which is
completely devoid of any ideological meaning or intellectual
attachment, and is totally compatible with religious belief.
Curricula of medicine, biology, and physics were stripped from
evolution, taxonomy, and the Big Bang theory, which were deemed
either non-scientific or unnecessary for the development of
science as technical knowledge.
40
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

Throughout the 1950s, Sayyid Qutb, who would become an

inspiration for many Islamist movements, argued in his exegesis,
entitled?In the Shades of the Qur?an,? for the necessity of
perfecting the use of modern technology for the benefit of the
nation, and assured that the Islamic spiritual life as described in the
Qur?an is the guarantee for a balanced society, where science
would truly blossom without the destructive influences of
materialist politics, morality, and ideology. Qutb argued strongly
against the scientific interpretation of the Qur?an, then not in
vogue, because it strips the sacred text from its true meaning and
puts it in danger by comparing it with ever-changing scientific
production (Nettler 1994).
The 1980s and the rise of contemporary Islamist projects
The rise of Islamism in the 1980s and 1990s has been analyzed by
many scholars, who present different theories explaining its
reasons, mechanisms, and development. In the matter of science,
this period did not present new ideas or conceptions as to the
interactions of science and religion. Instead, it accentuated the
previously described phenomena.
At the socio-intellectual level, this period allowed for a
larger sphere of communication for different religious scholars and
intellectuals, which benefited from a tolerant/ supportive state
policy, and led to the further spread of particular interpretations of
religion and perceptions of science.
The technical dimension of science was emphasized along
with stressing the importance of the identity of the practitioner,
who was increasingly classified according to his/ her religion and
religiosity. The literature on scientific interpretation and on
prophetic medicine spread widely and became a staple of popular
culture, taking the form of prime-time TV shows and extensive
publications. Medicine occupied the center of the science?religion
41
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

interactions, owing to its direct and plausible utility and its

engagement with the personal choice of the patient, where
religiosity plays a significant role (Salvatore 2000, Ragab 2012).
At the same time, the importance of religious law, even if not
applied by the state, but rather at individual level, increased
dramatically. Religious authorities were sought to legalize and
agree on different new technologies such as in vitro fertilization
(IVF), organ transplantation, blood transfusion, cloning, stem-cell
research, etc. This led to a further increase in the importance of
medicine and biology in this debate, as most of these fatwas or
legal opinions were related to medical and biological technology
(Atighetchi 2007).
The new discourse relied mainly on two main notions: the
benefit of the nation, and the preservation of religious morality.
The benefit/ manfa?ah of a particular technology was the main
reason for its legality and acceptance, while its connection with, or
facilitation of, the spread of?Western moral decadence?was the
main reason for its refusal. In this context, organ transplantation
was accepted by most scholars on the basis of its benefit for
Muslims, while IVF was heavily criticized and viewed as a possible
threat to tracing ancestry, before it was finally believed that its
benefits outweighed its risks.
As above, the perception of science as a technical practice,
unconnected to any intellectual structure, helped its rapid
introduction and acceptance and shaped the debates around
science and religion from the early nineteenth century. With this
perception, intellectual society was able to produce a new
scientific discourse, which is stripped of any controversy, and can
even acquire an Islamic identity based on the religion of the
practitioner. This perception gave science an uncontested
legitimacy and promoted re-reading the religious texts in quest of
interpretations that will accommodate modern technologies. With
42
Chapter 2
ISLAM AND SCIENCE

a rapidly developing communication space, this new

sciento-religious discourse gained popularity and played a role in
shaping the intellectual make-up of new scientists and
practitioners of science, who became more dependent on the
opinions of religious scholars, and played a role in enhancing the
position of religious legal opinion in legitimizing modern
technology.
43
3
THE COGNITIVE SCIENCES
A BRIEF INTRODUCTION FOR
SCIENCE AND RELIGION
#

The Routledge Companion to Religion and Science
edited by James W. Haag, Gregory R. Peterson and
Michael L. Spezio.
Learn more
Chapter 3

A BRIEF INTRODUCTION FOR SCIENCE AND RELIGION
Cognit ive science f or science and rel igion: a way in

The core focus of cognitive science is to relate the activities of
mind, which are never directly observable from a third-person
perspective, to those measures that are directly observable,
measurable, and sometimes quantifiable from the crucial
third-person perspective. Because the activities of mind either
exist for us only as traditional language needing replacement
(Churchland and Churchland 1998) or as influential, albeit
invisible, perhaps emergent, transformations of information
(O?Connor 2000; Clayton 2004), cognitive science begins by
acknowledging the inferential nature of its work.
Cognitive science, comprised of psychology, neuroscience,
computer science, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy (Miller
2003), is thus central to future interdisciplinary scholarship and
decision-making around science and religion, for two primary
reasons. First, any perspectives from within religious communities,
religious studies, and philosophy that would turn toward public or
private decision-making about moral action, education, the
environment, the law, and medicine must have a conception of
human nature and/ or human agency, which necessarily includes
the mind. Second, cognitive science is the science that seeks to
relate the psychological functions of information processing (in
thought, emotion, intention, volition, valuation, agency) to the
physically measurable signals from the human body (measures
from the brain, heart, skin, eyes, breath, bodily posture, bodily
movements). Without implying any reduction of psychology to
biology or to computer science, cognitive science is the science
concerned with testing hypotheses about the invisible processes of
mind using the visible measures of the body, whether that body is
organic and alive, or manufactured and computerized. Indeed,
cognitive science is itself an interdisciplinary science because it is
45
Chapter 3

not only concerned with associating measurable internal processes

in a carbon or silicon body with behavior, but it is centrally
concerned with how the mind links these two. This concern with
the mind is why experimental psychology is a core part of cognitive
science. It is not true, as many students and even some
psychologists say, that psychology is the science of behavior. As
Noam Chomsky stated at the beginning of the cognitive turn in
psychology, saying that psychology is the science of behavior is
like saying that?physics is the science of meter reading?(quoted in
Miller 2003). Cognitive science is impossible to do in any complete
fashion without models of mental processes, since without such
models, the measurables (such as brain activity and behavior) have
no meaning.
What follows takes up the views of cognition in cognitive
science and the methods of cognitive science, prior to turning
toward a brief introduction of major loci in cognitive science.
Throughout, there is a heavy influence of experimental fields,
particularly cognitive psychology, social psychology,
information-processing models of mind, and experimental
cognitive, affective, and social neuroscience. Less attention will be
given to cognitive linguistics, anthropology, and phenomenology
(see especially Zahavi 2001; Thompson 2007; Gallagher and Zahavi
2008), not because they are less important, but because of space
limitations.
Cognit ion and cognit ive science
The information-processing topics actively engaged by cognitive
science are: sensation, perception, attention, memory, language,
emotion, intuition, problem-solving, expertise, reasoning,
decision-making, and social judgment and interaction. Cognition in
these areas, according to current frameworks in experimental
cognitive science, is best described as the functions, or processes,
46
Chapter 3

or systems of the mind (Anderson 2010: 1?3). Thus cognition

includes both explicit (conscious, aware) processing, and implicit
(subconscious, subliminal) processing, and all mental aspects of
emotion, feeling, etc. To say that a process is a?cognitive?process
does not mean, then, that one is aware of, or conscious of, the
thoughts involved in that process. Cognitive processes can be, and
most of the time are, implicit and unconscious, and the
term?cognitive?can apply to emotions just as well as to language,
since both involve information processing.
Until recently, however, emotion was often spoken ofas
opposed to cognition. This is no longer recommended practice,
since cognitive science has recognized the critical information
content in emotional processing (Davidson 2003; Adolphs and
Spezio 2007; Goldstein 2011: 300: 13?15). While it may be true
that not all cognition involves emotion, it is also true that not all
cognition involves, say, language. Thus it makes as little sense to
speak in terms of cognition versus emotion as it does to speak in
terms of cognition versus language. Emotion, as understood in
cognitive science, is a cognitive process because it involves mental
processes, functions, and transformations. These mental processes
include activation of organized conceptual schemas in the
mind.?Feelings?are different from emotions, since they are the
conscious awareness of emotions.?Affect?refers to bodily
responses that are part of emotion. When the phrase?cognition and
emotion?is used in cognitive science, it can mean both a cognitive
scientific approach to emotion and a joining of cognition and affect
(Oatley 1999: xvii?xviii). These understandings fall under an
embodied or ?grounded?cognition framework, most recently
championed by Barsalou and coworkers (Barsalou 2008). In this
way, cognitive science seeks to avoid conflict between?head and
heart,?and increasingly recognizes two characteristics of
information processing in mind: (1) information processing that is
47
Chapter 3

ostensibly non-emotional may in fact have implicit emotional

attributes, and carry implicit representations of goals and
motivations; and (2) information processing is often strongly
influenced by the embodied, enacted experiences by which the
information was first learned, in each specific modality (vision,
hearing, touch, taste, language, etc.) (ibid.: 618?19).
Another area of potential confusion relates to the
terms?top-down?and ?bottom-up?processes in mind. Top-down
processes are those that formed during evolution or learning and
that link stimulus processing to context, whereas bottom up
processes are those that depend primarily or wholly on basic
stimulus properties, ignoring context (Anderson 2010: 56?57;
Goldstein 2011: 300: 61?64). Consider the paradigmatic example
of Pavlov?s dogs (Pavlov 1927). When the dogs salivate upon
smelling or seeing the food, it is a bottom-up response. However,
when, after the dogs learn that the sound of a bell accompanies the
presentation of their food, they salivate to the sound of the bell
alone, it is a top-down response. Top-down processing is either
explicit (conscious) or implicit (unconscious), controlled or
automatic. Bottom-up processing is generally unconscious and
automatic. Top-down processing, understood as linking stimulus
processing to context, occurs in the cerebral cortex of the brain,
but it also occurs in the amygdala, the hippocampus, and other
subcortical regions of the brain. There are other uses of the terms
bottom-up and top-down in the literature, such as when top-down
is identified with conscious processing, and bottom-up is identified
with unconscious processing; or when top-down is identified with
processing in the cerebral cortex of the brain, and bottom-up is
identified with processing in?lower,?subcortical regions; or when
top-down is identified with controlled processing, and bottom-up
is identified with automatic processing. However, when considered
in light of how the terms are used in relation to their original
48
Chapter 3

meanings for mental processing, these additional uses tend to

create confusion.
It is critically important for the interdisciplinary scholar to
keep in mind that implicit top-down processing and explicit,
conscious top-down processing are known to interact, albeit in
complex ways not yet understood. Implicit top-down processing is
highly influential in a wide range of human behavior thought to be
under strong conscious control (Hassin et al. 2005), from
stereotyping others (Olsson et al. 2005), to deciding who to vote
for (Todorovet al. 2005; Spezio et al. 2008), to judging what is or is
not moral (Greene 2007; Murphy and Brown 2007; Woodward and
Allman 2007). Similarly, conscious control processes can act as
gates for implicit processes (Ochsner and Gross 2005; Wageret al.
2008) and can integrate them for adaptive behaviors (Coanet al.
2006; Slagteret al. 2007; Lutzet al. 2009b).
Cognitive science, admittedly, has specialized uses
of?cognition?and?cognitive? that often differ from the way these
terms are used in philosophy (e.g. cognitive versus non-cognitive
theories of morality), theology, and religious studies. Several of
those uses and their meanings have been explored in this section.
Another aspect of the specialized use of cognition in cognitive
science is that any claim regarding cognition should be testable via
experimentation or observation. The next section reviews several
methods used in such testing.
Met hod in cognit ive science
To test the claims made by theories and models in cognitive
science, complex concepts, such as memory, attention, reasoning,
emotion, etc., require?operationalization.? To operationalize
generally means to define a concept in a way that can be
quantified. So cognitive scientists proceed from a given model of
mental processing to predictions about behavior that follow from
49
Chapter 3

the model, to an experimental test to determine if the predictions

are in fact observed. Most cognitive scientific approaches use (1)
measures of behavior, including performance accuracy, reaction
time, and self-report questionnaires; (2) measures of physiological
responses, such as heart rate or skin conductance; and (3)
measures of brain response. In addition to these measures,
cognitive scientists also combine behavioral measures with
interventions into neural or physiological systems. One example is
the use of transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to temporarily
impair the processing in a given brain area, followed by measuring
the behavioral changes, if any, that result (for detailed
introductions to these methods see Huettel et al. 2008; Purves et
al. 2008).
A brief introduction to functional magnetic resonance
imaging (fMRI) is helpful for the interdisciplinary scholar, since so
much of what is claimed in the popular literature is based on fMRI
data or related techniques. The physiological signal measured by
fMRI has complex relationship with the neural
information-processing signals in the brain. The physiological
measure yielded by fMRI is the blood oxygenation level-dependent
(BOLD) signal, which varies with the amount of deoxygenated
blood in a brain region. Yet information processing in the brain,
according to prevailing theories in cognitive science, occurs in
terms of electrical signals from cells called neurons, and
assemblies of neurons, not in terms of bloodflow.
Until very recently, neuroscience lacked a good
understanding of which neural signals most closely corresponded
to the BOLD signal. Recently, Nikos Logothetis (2003; see also
Logothetis and Wandell 2004) and Martin Lauritzen (Lauritzen
2001; Caesar et al. 2003) showed that the BOLD signal is caused
not by action potentials of neurons, but by smaller electrical
potentials at the junctures, called synapses, between neurons in
50
Chapter 3

the brain. This means that the BOLD signal can differ depending
only on differences in circuit organization, even for circuits in the
same general area of the brain and under circumstances that yield
identical numbers of action potentials.
Another aspect of brain-activity measurement by fMRI is that
measured BOLD signal changes due to cognitive processing are of
the order of 0.1 to 1 per cent of the total measured signal (Raichle
2003). Thus one must always keep in mind that the BOLD signal is
generally a contrast in signal between two or more measurements,
each conducted under some set of defined conditions. What this
means is that reported fMRI activations, or areas where the brain
looks to be?lit up?by bright spots, are not the result of the neural
circuitry in those areas going from an?off? state to an?on?state.
Rather, activations are typically the result of a brain area going
from giving a signal of, say, 10 to a signal of 10.05, in a statistically
significant manner. BOLD activations are almost always differential
activations between conditions. This means that the given region
may have been activated in all conditions, but more so in some
than in others.
When inferring the information processing that associates
with a given brain area?s activation, it is important to keep in mind
that whether or not a brain area is activated during a given
information-processing condition does not by itself establish that
the brain area is, or is not, required for the information processing
function under investigation (Cacioppo et al. 2003). Observed brain
activation could be (1) due to a failure to control for all key
contextual variables in contrasting task conditions; or (2) the result
of activity in another circuit in another area entirely, which actually
carries out the information-processing function. Conversely, failure
to observe brain activation could arise even in the presence of
differences in neural activity, if the differences are in different
neural circuits that differ substantially in synaptic organization
51
Chapter 3

(Logothetis and Wandell 2004). Activation maps resulting from

fMRI experiments reported in any one paper are best interpreted as
hypothetical associations between information processing and
brain activity. These hypotheses require corroboration using other
methods.
Finally, one should avoid reverse inference when interpreting
neuroimaging results. Reverse inference is bad logic, and it is
practiced when one assigns a cognitive role to a given brain
activation in experiment A based wholly on evidence from
experiment B, where experiments A and B are unrelated and used
unrelated behavioral tasks. For example, if a number of
experiments with fear-related stimuli (such as pictures of snakes or
spiders) show activation in the amygdala in response to those
stimuli, and in my experiment I see activation in the amygdala to
images of puppy dogs, I would be using reverse inference if I
inferred from this that puppy dogs caused my participants to be
afraid. It would be like saying: fear stimuli activate the amygdala;
puppy dog images activate the amygdala; therefore puppy dog
images are frightening. It may be that my participants find puppies
frightening, but I would need more data to support it, such as
participant self-report of puppy fear, or puppy-induced
fear-potentiated startle (Davis 5. 1993), for example.
It should be emphasized that this account of fMRI
methodology in no way undermines its usefulness, when handled
appropriately, as a central method in formulating models in
cognitive science. The fact is that fMRI allows what was once
thought to be impossible: a non-invasive view into brain
processing during complex behavior in human participants. Its
limitations do not call into question the fMRI neuroimaging
literature in general. Indeed, it should be obvious that any
scientific methodology will have limits, and that such limits should
be acknowledged. Similar issues exist for other methods in
52
Chapter 3

cognitive science (electroencephalography, TMS, the lesion/ deficit

method, computational modeling, etc.).
Cognit ive science and rel igious experience
Having an introduction to the theoretical and methodological
considerations of cognitive science allows a more careful
assessment of how cognitive science may illuminate
understandings of religious experience. For a more in-depth
introduction to the context and careful thought required for
relating religious concepts and cognitive science, see Peterson
(2003).
Research into the experimental cognitive science of
meditation and contemplative practice, mystical experience, and
religiosity has been increasing. This area can be divided into
studies that investigate (1) mystical, or peak, experiences; (2) the
effects of meditation in typical participants; (3) the effects of
long-term contemplative practice and extreme expertise in
meditation (Barinaga 2003); and (4) the sources of religious belief
and religiosity. This latter category currently has a limited number
of peer-reviewed publications relating to experimental cognitive
science (Harriset al. 2009; Kapogiannis et al. 2009), and tends to
downplay the importance of established methodology and
conceptual frameworks in the psychology of religion (Emmons and
Paloutzian 2003), and the richfield studies by scholars in religious
studies.
Two of the major laboratories conducting studies of mystical,
peak experiences are led by Andrew Newberg at the University of
Pennsylvania and Mario Beauregard at the University of Montreal.
Newberg was among the first researchers to use neuroimaging
methods to investigate peak experiences, or what he and Eugene
d?Aquili termed?absolute unitary being?(d?Aquili and Newberg
1999). Newberg and his group have published several papers
53
Chapter 3

about this unique religious experience, implicating the functional

disconnection between the superior parietal cortex and those
cortical areas involved in perception and spatial orienting
(Newberg et al. 2001, 2003). Due to the lack of spatial and
temporal resolution, and to the caveats regarding the
interpretation of bloodflow measures already described, this
interpretation requires caution (see the extended discussion in
Runehov 2007: 137?200). What is beyond doubt is that those who
report engaging in meditative practices and experiencing peak
moments show differential activation of specific brain regions,
when compared with rest.
More recently, Beauregard?s group reported results with a
rare group of cloistered Carmelite nuns, who nonetheless visited
the laboratory for an MRI scanning study. The most prominent
finding from this work is that Beauregard observed differentially
higher activation in brain regions associated with social and
emotional processing, and significantly different patterns of
activation in these areas, when comparing recall of intense
spiritual intimacy with God (?mystical union?according to the
reports) with recall of intense personal intimacy with a friend or
family member (Beauregard and Paquette 2006). This finding
should put to rest any notion that the spiritual union reported by
the nuns is reported out of social conformity or a desire to appear
more spiritual than one actually is. More importantly, the findings
suggest that the nuns?experience was not simply an increase in
social intimacy, or simply a more intense recruitment of networks
for social intimacy. The differential patterns of activation suggest
non-overlapping neural networks involved in spiritual union and
personal intimacy in this group of cloistered nuns.
This may differ from the pattern observed in everyday
religious practitioners, as suggested by the work of Schjoedt and
co-workers (Schjoedt et al. 2009). They claimed, using data from an
54
Chapter 3

fMRI experiment, that when a group of young lay Christians

engaged in free, personal prayer (compared with when they
silently expressed wishes to Santa Claus), prayer simply activated
networks comparable with a?normal?(their term) interpersonal
interaction. However, the authors?interpretation relies in part on
reverse inference. In Schjoedt et al. (2009), personal, free prayer
elicited greater activation in areas such as the temporoparietal
junction, that have in past experiments been associated with tasks
requiring active thought about another person?s mind (Saxe and
Kanwisher 2003; Bedny et al. 2009). However, there is no way to be
sure that the activations seen in Schjoedt et al. (2009) were the
result of information processing about another person?s mind,
because that experiment did not directly test whether the
participants did this.
In another investigation comparing neural activations during
ritualized prayer (e.g. the Lord?s Prayer) with those occurring while
expressing wishes to Santa Claus, Schjoedt et al. (2008) found
activation of the caudate head, a major subcortical brain area
strongly associated with learning, specifically with prediction
errors relating to reward. That is, the caudate head generally shows
increased activation when the actual reward delivered is higher
than the expected reward (Bray and O?Doherty 2007; O?Doherty et
al. 2007; Valentin and O?Doherty 2009). Yet, while Schjoedt et al.
(2008) concluded that prayers are rewarding, based on the
activation they saw in the caudate, the authors did not explicitly
test whether the prayers were rewarding to their participants.
Further, they did not suggest an explanation of exactly what kind of
prediction error elicited the activation. The key question is, what
kind of reward could the participants have been receiving,
throughout their prayers, that constantly differed from what they
expected? Additionally, the caudate is known to show some
sensitivity to the type of reward (Valentin and O?Doherty 2009),
55
Chapter 3

which was not addressed at all by the authors. So the brain

activations seen when contrasting prayer and wishes to Santa Claus
might have arisen for other reasons,including reasons pertaining to
whether the participants actually believed they were engaged with
the presence of another person, or not. This interpretation would
indicate an effect of belief, not reward.
In another study by Schjoedt et al. (2010), in which they
focus on the sources of religious belief and religiosity, charismatic
Christian and secular participants were asked to listen to short
intercessory prayers for healing, spoken by persons described to
the participants as?non-Christian,? ?Christian,?or?Christian known
for healing powers.?In fact, all the prayers were spoken by
non-charismatic Christians. The main reported finding involved
brain activations from the Christian group that resulted from a
contrast between listening to the non-Christian speaker versus the
Christian known for healing powers. There was a widespread
increase in brain activation when listening to the non-Christian,
relative to listening to the Christian with healing powers, including
in areas that other, unrelated experiments have associated
with?executive control,?or a system involved in managing
cognitive conflict and critical thinking. Again, there was no direct
test of critical thinking among participants in the experiment. Yet
the authors interpreted these activations as arising due to
the?power of charisma?to reduce processing involved in critical
thinking among charismatic Christians who believe they are
listening to a charismatic healer. An equally parsimonious
interpretation is that charismatic Christian participants engaged in
increased critical thinking when trying to understand why a person
described as non-Christian would give an impassioned intercessory
prayer in exactly the same fashion as the?Christian with healing
powers.?That is, the?control?condition in this experiment actually
involved a significant contextual conflict to which Christian
56
Chapter 3

participants may have been especially sensitive.

In sum, these studies report brain regions being activated
during a religiously relevant task, and quickly conclude that the
task involves exactly the same cognitive processing that unrelated
experiments associate with that brain region, under very different
cognitive conditions (also see Harris et al. 2009 on?the?neural
correlates of religious beliefs). These interpretations depend in
part on reverse inference, which is problematic, although the data
are quite interesting.
By far the most peer-reviewed work applying cognitive
science to the study of meditation and contemplative practice has
focused on the efficacy of such practice on health outcomes
(Kabat-Zinn et al. 1992; Kabat-Zinn et al. 1998; Davidson et al.
2003), mental processing ability (Lutz et al. 2009b; Slagter et al.
2009), and compassion (Lutz et al. 2009a), both in relatively
inexperienced and in expert meditators. In this sustained research
effort, consistent findings show that meditation enhances
attentional performance through what is thought to be an
increased ability to disengage attention from task-irrelevant
stimuli, memories, emotions, and processes (Lutz et al. 2008;
Slagter et al. 2009). Importantly, the effort here is motivated
primarily not by the discovery of ultimate states or mystical
experiences, but by a focus on (1) discovering practices that
facilitate mental and physical well-being; and (2) working using the
expertise of contemplative adepts to discover new properties of
consciousness. This latter project rests on claims from extremely
experienced contemplative practitioners, generally those with
Eastern practices, that Western notions of consciousness as
fleeting or unstable are wrong, and that, within meditation,
conscious states, including qualia, can be held for minutes or hours.
If such claims are replicable in the laboratory, it would enable a
new way to study the neural contributions to consciousness.
57
4
TOWARD A COGNITIVE
SCIENCE THAT DOESN'T
ALIENATE EVERYONE
# EXCEPT COGNITIVE
SCIENTISTS

Culture and the Cognitive Science of Religion
by James Cresswell
Learn more
Chapter 4
TOWARD A COGNITIVE SCIENCE
THAT DOESN'T ALIENATE EVERYONE
EXCEPT COGNITIVE SCIENTISTS
Excerpted from Culutre and the Cognitive Science of Religion
Abst ract
This introductory chapter discusses the phenomena that
preoccupies this book: religious belief taken for granted as
self-evident truisms. A challenge to studying these phenomena is
that researchers are ?speaking a different language? than the
participants in the studies. There seems to be an impasse, and this
chapter is about looking to William James as inspiration for how to
overcome it. James was against an abstract notion of belief where
something can be separated from a belief about the thing. Belief is
misunderstood when we separate it from a thing that we have a
belief about because belief necessarily involves knowledge about
something. He was also against a disembodied notion of belief.
Experience includes how our senses entwine with happenings in
life. The flow of human experience includes continual relation
among ideas and the body, which means that it does not make
sense to abstract belief from the concrete materiality of the world.
This chapter outlines how an impasse between researchers and
participants emerges because the former take an abstract and
disembodied approach to belief. The quarrel with research is not
with the dismissal of religious belief as an accident, but the
underlying presuppositions of what religious belief is. This chapter
thereby outlines how the impasse emerged and presents what we
can do to move forward.
Int roduct ion
Blake Wenner was a student for whom I supervised a research
project on the topic of religious doubt. He was interested in
examining how Christian believers developed and reconciled
doubts. His desire to do this research came from his own
experience where he saw belief held together by dubious
rationalizations and thinly veiled self-interest. He recruited and
interviewed participants who were Christian believers and what
59
Chapter 4
they said, for him, was disappointing. Instead of participants

explaining their rationale for reconciling doubts to fortify beliefs,
they often had no clear rationale as to how religious belief was
sustained. The participants talked about the dealing with religious
doubt as a simple act of belief that just fit with life. For example:
Participants described belief, but they did not spend a lot of time
wondering why they believed. They illustrated how belief, like in
this quote above, is a simple thing that becomes a matter of trust
and not one worthy of preoccupation. It was just taken for granted
as a truism, and participants did not know why they believed per se
because they simply trusted. Blake did not get what he was looking
for, and the question is, ?Why??
Blake is typical of researchers in a way that helps us
understand why he did not get what he was looking for. It was like
he was speaking a different language than his participants. He was
talking about beliefs grounded in careful rationale, and they just
didn?t talk in these terms. They were talking about a life that imply
included belief. While Blake?s engagement was kindly agnostic,
60
Chapter 4
there are similar instances of researchers or academics whose tone

is not so nice. Some academics shout at religious people that they
are irrational and ignore evidence (e.g., Dawkins, 2006; Dennet,
2006). Religious people shout back that a researcher just does not
?get it.? Researchers and believers can come from such different
perspectives that they are living in different realities. It is as if the
two parties are in different worlds, and my point is that this
divergence is the central problem.
This book is about this impasse and how to overcome it by
expanding the way we approach the psychology of religion. While
there are many kinds of psychological research, I am going to focus
in on just one: the cognitive science of religion (CSR; Barrett, 2007).
CSR is a field within psychology, but its impact is far ranging as it
informs a substantial amount of public and academic discussion
(e.g., Ball, 2012; Krakovsky, 2012). CSR is a good approach to
engage because it represents the discipline of psychology well as
cognition has been identified as central to the discipline of
psychology (e.g., Thagard, 2005). As such, I seek to explicate an
approach that accommodates both religious believers and
psychologists by way of a provocative discussion of CSR. To
identify and move beyond this impasse, I am going to look to the
past by discussing one of the founders of modern psychology:
William James. He had a vision for psychological research that is
quite different from CSR, and looking back to him reveals a way of
approaching the psychology of religion that can surmount the
impasse (see Cresswell et al., 2017). This introductory chapter
outlines James?ideas and serves as the context for the remainder
of the book. It will first address belief as James described it and
then show how it is bypassed in CSR. From there, I will return to
James and discuss truth as a springboard for the rest of the book.
61
Chapter 4
Wil l iam James and t he bypass of bel ief

René Descartes has arguably been one of the most influential
thinkers who has shaped our understanding of what things like
belief mean. He influenced Immanuel Kant such that they both
shared very similar ideas about things like belief (for a sustained
discussion see Taylor, 1989). Both Kant and Descartes have left us
with a heritage that treats belief as abstract and disembodied (see
Harré, 2002). To refer to belief as abstract is to say that it is not
necessarily tied to what is happening in life because it is an
ethereal mental property. It involves conceiving of belief as not
necessarily tied to the actual happenings of life because it belongs
to the realm of subjective mind. To say that belief is disembodied
refers to Descartes?famous split between the mind and body. He
treated the mind as abstract in its ethereal nature, and this
abstractness meant that is was not necessarily tied to the body or
anything physical. The body is not tied to belief because it is
abstracted from it. William James took a contrary approach.
Belief in relation to something: against abstract belief
James was critical of the notion of an abstract belief (James,
1996/ 1912). An abstract and disembodied approach to belief
involves a separation of something from a belief about the thing.
He was against the idea that we can sensibly talk about belief
being separate from something in the way that an abstract and
disembodied approach implies. Belief is misunderstood when we
separate it from a thing that we have a belief about because belief
necessarily involves knowledge about something. That is, belief
involves knowing about something because we cannot have a
belief about nothing. The about is crucial if we want to understand
how belief works in life. Consider the following conversational
excerpt as an illustration.
62
Chapter 4
This is a discussion where a participant talked about a belief that

one should pray for someone when that person bothers one. The
first use of knowledge shows up in ?you know,? and this is a
common conversation filler (turn 1; ten Have, 2002).
Grammatically, it imputes knowledge to Blake and implies
something about which there is shared knowledge. When
participant 1 says ?you know,? it is about something, and this thing
is the act of praying for someone. The action and potential
someone to ?pray for? are absolutely necessary or the belief to
make sense. Without connection to this wider context, Blake would
have no sense of what the participant means. This word ?know? is
refined in turn 5 to show us how believing in praying to forgive
someone involves knowledge about God. Turn 5 shows us how
belief works in life as connected to a thing ?out there? beyond
one?s own thoughts: God. As we can see in the example above,
belief shows up in life in a way that involves knowledge about
something ?out there? beyond one?s own subjective thoughts.
James?argument extends to religious belief and shows us how,
without something tied to it, religious belief is not sensible. The
sophistication of his point lies in how he is not offering apologetics
but a way to approach religious belief.
James (1981/ 1907, 1956/ 1897, 1996/ 1912) considered how
63
Chapter 4
belief functions in life to show how our religious beliefs are about
something. He highlighted how belief is about relationships in the
sense that one can have knowledge about another thought or
another thing, but it always involves a relation to another thing. All
things that fall under the banner of belief involve relationships so
that we do not have any element of belief that is isolated and on its
own. That is, every belief is related to something else, and it simply
does not make sense to talk about a belief that stands as a
subjective isomorphic proposition. Belief is a kind of knowledge in
relation to something else, and so we always have religious belief
in relation to another thing.
This approach to belief is what enables James to break us out
of the abstract approach we get from Kant and Descartes, which is
important because abstract conceptions of belief simply miss the
phenomenon. This position has a huge implication for how we
think of ideas like subjective mind and objective reality. James
wrote:
Just so, I maintain, does a given undivided portion of
experience, taken in one context of associates, play the part
of the knower, of a state of mind, of ?consciousness?; while in
a different context the same undivided bit of experience
plays the part of the thing known, of an ?objective?content . .
. since it can figure in both groups simultaneously we have
every right to speak of it as subjective and objective both at
once.
(James, 1996/ 1912, p. 10)
To many people, speaking in terms of belief being both objective
and subjective seems strange, but it provides a very helpful idea. A
belief in another belief can be subjective, but the web of relations
involved in belief never stops there in self-contained subjectivity.
All belief eventually comes into relation with something in the
64
Chapter 4
world we share with others. Eventually, we come to a relation to

something that is not just inside our heads and is necessarily never
abstract. Take a close look at the following illustrative
conversation.
If we look at the structure of this conversation, we see how the

participant articulates his belief. Turn 4 involves discussing how
something just ?feels right,? and so it would seem to contradict
James by not leading to something outside the participant?s head. It
reads like a description of a deep solipsistic experience. In turn 6,
however, the participant transitions to talking about doing the right
thing. In the way the participant talks, we see how religious belief
ties to an actual activity like helping someone. The structure of the
answer reveals a belief in relation to an objective action in the
65
Chapter 4
world. It is insufficient to say that the belief is just subjective

because it always points beyond an individual to something
outside. To paraphrase James (1981/ 1907), if one dies and stops
believing in something, the object does not disappear, and it
continues on without any single individual: ?. . . I could perfectly
well define [belief], what the knowing actually and practically
amounts to ? leading towards, namely, and terminating in percepts,
through a series of transitional experiences which the world
supplies? (James, 1996/ 1912, p. 25). Take the example of
Participant 1 knowing that there is a God ?out there.? Obviously, it
may seem like God is a subjective thing because we cannot find a
conclusive empirical case for its existence. If Participant 1 dies,
however, the notion of God is not going to die with him, and so it is
not properly subjective. James, contra Descartes, realized that
belief does not fit with the subjective-objective dualism that
people tend to take for granted.
Belief in relation to something: against disembodied belief
Religious belief, then, is not simply dismissible as a subjective
thing, and it is not simply an objective thing. If belief were purely
separate from the world and not in relation to something, then we
could say that it is abstract. We cannot say so about belief, and so it
is not abstract. What about the notion of being disembodied?
Experience involves the body, and so addressing this
question involves a discussion of experience (Baerveldt &
Voestermans, 2005; Cresswell, 2012; Thompson, 2007). What
James (1981/ 1907, 1996/ 1912) meant by experience can be
understood if we start from basic experience and then work to the
more complex notion of religious belief. James goes as far as to
claim that belief is best characterized in terms of pure experience,
which is the name for a collection of ?sensible natures?
(1996/ 1912, p. 27). Experience, at its most basic level, includes
66
Chapter 4
how our senses entwine with happenings in life. When one looks
out at the environment in which one is reading, for example, light
rays stimulate cells on the retina, and the activity of cells happens
in relation to what is in life. This is a simplistic example of
experience and highlights how experience involves a flow of
sensory stimulation occurring in relation to the world. We move
through life with our bodies responding in relation to things, and
so one experience passes into another in a constant flow.
The constant flow of experience involves more complexity
than merely being stimulated by an environment. If one were to sit
and read in a café, one could look around and see the stimuli in
terms of coherent and meaningful unities like ?tables? and
?chairs.? Previous flows of experience such as learning the names
for such things in childhood bleeds into the current flow to give
sensory stimulation shape. Included in the previous experiences
that are brought into the present are emotions and personal
histories. A café may feel a certain way because of previous
experiences like, for example, spending time with a caregiver at
cafés that gives the tables and chairs emotional valence. James
(1996/ 1912) pointed out that experience includes a constant flow
of stimuli in relation to one another and in relation to
psychological phenomena like concepts and emotions. He pointed
out how experience involves an inseparable relation between
psychological phenomena and physiological ones. The flow of
human experience includes continual relations among a range of
elements, and so it does not make sense to abstract conscious
phenomena like belief from the concrete materiality of the world.
Hence, he argued against the idea that that the ?thought-of [an]
object is hid away inside the thinking subject? (1996/ 1909, p. 19)
because the past can impact us directly to shape what is
experienced as real. Belief is something that is experienced in the
flow of the life that we live and experience as real. It is part of the
67
Chapter 4
reality that humans experience.

Religious belief is thereby entwined with physical life.
Beliefs relate to all other experiences insofar as they are in relation
to concrete particulars like light and touch. They involve a
complete way of relating to the world that shapes reality that feels
objective. James thereby described belief as part of an
interconnected web of past and present experiences shaping a
reality that includes belief. When someone is faced with a
situation, beliefs come to bear in their experiential sense and
shape immediate bodily dispositions. Instead of deciding about
what to do in life on intellectual (i.e., abstract and disembodied)
grounds, we ?find ourselves believing, we hardly know how or
why? (James, 1956/ 1897, p. 9).
The question I raise is an important one: Do psychologists,
and those involved in CSR in particular, address belief as it shows
up in life, in its non-abstract and embodied quality? I don?t think so.
Blake, for example, was looking for abstract and disembodied
rationale for belief that does not include belief as a whole way of
experiencing the world. It is an important question to decide if
Blake is typical because, if psychologists are giving back to the
community like good citizens do, then we ought to have something
to say about the actual phenomena of belief as it shows up in life.
The next few pages propose why the answer to the question above
is partly no.
Psychology of religion: cognitive science of religion and bypassing
belief
Dennet?s (2006) Breaking the Spell: Religion as Natural Phenomenon
describes religion as being the accidental result of a ?hyperactive
agency detection device.? ?Device? refers to an automatic
mechanism that operates in the mind. Humans are supposedly
endowed with a mechanism for detecting agency in the world
68
Chapter 4
around us. It is ?hyperactive? insofar as it kicks into gear and

processes all sorts of events as if they were caused by agents. The
result is a supposed mechanism that tends to overproduce the
perception of agency lying behind natural happenings in the
world. The wind rattles a shrub as we walk past and jump back as if
there is a nefarious thing intentionally prompting such happenings
(see Dennet, 1996).
Other researchers were picked up by the popular media with
the claim that ?Analytic Thinking Promotes Disbelief? (Gervais &
Norenzayan, 2012). Titles like this betray a claim that religion is a
product of mechanisms like the hyperactive agency detection
device, but controlled rational thinking overriding such intuitive
mechanisms leads away from religious belief. People can
supposedly override these primal leftovers of the mind when they
think more carefully and analytically. The implications of such
ideas can be seen in the work of well-known critics of religion like
Richard Dawkins: ?[t]he general theory of religion as an accidental
by-product ? a misfiring of something useful ? is the one I wish to
advocate? (2006, p. 188).
The quarrel with this view is not to quarrel with the dismissal
of religious belief as an accident, but the underlying
presuppositions of what religious belief is. There is good reason to
suspect that this approach, while offering valuable insights in its
own right, bypasses religious belief as it plays a role in life. This
reason has to do with the way that psychologists have generally
approached religion. Usually, they advocate an agnostic approach
to religion that considers the topic from a ?rigorously? scientific
perspective (Argyle, 2000).
At a general level, such a perspective is hard to maintain
because studying religion is not an easy task. Hall et al. (2008)
pointed out how this challenge is attested to the availability of
over 100 instruments attempting to measure religion or aspects
69
Chapter 4
thereof. They noted that the challenge is compounded with how

the definition as to what even counts as religious shifts with the
researchers. In some cases, studies are about religious behaviors
such as going to attend a service. Others involve an attempt to
measure behaviors and/ or more ethereal-experiential aspects of
religious experience (see also Kapuscinski & Masters, 2010). These
efforts reflect an attempt to get at a sense of connectedness
associated with spirituality as opposed to institutional religious
behavior or ascent to dogma (see Meezenbroek et al., 2012). What
Hall et al. (2008) note is that authors often overstate their
conclusions about religion in general when there is so much
disagreement as to what the phenomenon is and how it is being
measured. Researchers seem to continually cling to the notion that
some sort of religion in general must underlie all of this diversity:
Although the empirical stream of religious measurement has
developed and supported a multi-dimensional model of
religiousness that resists global assessments, much of the
research on religion . . . assumes that
?religiousness-in-general? actually exists. As such, it
attempts to measure the intensity of religiousness (belief,
experience, strength, value, etc.) in order to locate people on
a continuum between ?very religious? and ?not religious? . . .
(Hall et al., 2008, p. 154)
Despite imprecise concepts and a need for contextual
social/ theological informed research, a context-free approach to
religion continues to be popular. It is in this vein that authors such
as Underwood (2011) argue that religion and spirituality are
multidimensional constructs with many features reflective of a
single underlying factor. Developments such as the Daily Spiritual
Experience Scale are designed to assess such variability while
being opaque enough to even work with people who would not call
70
Chapter 4
themselves religions. Measuring experience instead of beliefs is

taken to get at this underlying construct (see also Underwood &
Teresi, 2002).
The literature points to a recognition that it is difficult to
access underlying unified constructs, yet such covering laws must
nevertheless be present. Chirkov (2016) notes that this paradigm is
one where researchers search for natural laws underlying behavior.
That is, researchers are interested in uncovering the truth about
reality in a way that has been referred to as naturalism (see Reber,
2006; Brown & Stenner, 2009). Naturalism involves trying to
understand the truth of reality by uncovering the laws by which the
natural world works. This approach is that one has found truth
when one finds the mechanical laws by which the world works.
In the early 1960s, psychologists began to speculate on how
the mind worked in order to uncover the naturalist laws of mental
operations. Alan Turing ? one of the widely accepted forerunners
of the cognitive revolution that shapes contemporary psychology
(see Dawson, 2001) ? developed the idea that humans operated on
computational principles, where computation was defined as
algorithms or rules (Boden, 2006, p. 173). This person-as-computer
perspective put forward by Turing was that the computer observed
symbols, processed such symbols according to a set of rules, and
then responded on the basis of the outcome of those rules. One
author writes that ?[c]ognitive skills are realized by production
rules? where ?[p]roduction rules are if-then or condition-action
plans. The if, or condition, part specifies the circumstance under
which the rule will apply. The then, or action, part of the rule
specifies what to do in that circumstance? (Anderson, 1998, pp. 59,
63).
It is on this heritage that much of contemporary psychology
is built (see Thagard, 2005). When authors argue for an agnostic
scientific approach, they mean a science that uncovers natural laws
71
Chapter 4
about mental computation and outputs. It involves seeking to

explicate psychology in terms of natural mechanical laws of human
functioning. The result is an approach to religious belief shaped to
fit a naturalistic bias. The rigorous scientific approach is a form of
naturalism that shows up in in the psychology of religion as a
concern with computational processing laws. Discovering
naturalist predictors and processing outcomes associated with
religiosity reflects a concern with what psychology is taken to be
about. This kind of approach is what is embodied in a ?rigorously?
scientific perspective. Nowhere is this heritage clearer than in CSR.
The sort of production-rule-based naturalism manifests in the CSR,
and writing about practices in this field can be generalized back to
the psychology of religion in general. CSR, for example, underlies
the work on the Hyper-Active Agency Detection Device that I
discussed above (e.g., Guthrie, 1993; Whitehouse, 2004).
This kind of naturalism bypasses the phenomena of belief as
it was outlined above in our discussion of James. An approach that
is scientific via a naturalist fixation can come at the expense of
everyday life (James, 1981/ 1907). Consider as an example how
some authors of the naturalist ilk have explicitly stated that they
are not interested in what belief is about because this is simply not
a relevant focus (e.g., Pyysiäinen, 2002; Guthrie, 2002). That is,
belief as a non-abstract and embodied phenomenon is not a
concern. Religious belief, as it shows up in life, is part of the reality
humans experience and is not lived as a cognitive mechanism.
Consider an illustration from Blake?s interviews.
72
Chapter 4
This quote would seem to support the idea that a cognitive

mechanism is at stake with the mention of brain development. This
participant, however, is talking about the experiential power of
belief. God is described as part of reality by the implicit
presupposition that God uses one?s brain. A proponent of CSR
would say that this experience is irrelevant because it only matters
what happens underneath in the realm of naturalist mechanisms.
This position is fine for cognitive scientists who believe ? in the full
sense of the term ? in naturalist laws.
Belief, on a naturalist CSR approach, is abstract in the sense
that the specifics that belief is about are simply not addressed. The
hyper-active agency detection device, for example, allows for any
kind of super-agent to fall into the scope of the mechanism?s
operation but a belief is rarely about a non-specific super-agent.
For example:
73
Chapter 4
In both of these examples, the beliefs are about specific features of

the faith. What practically matters in life is what beliefs are
specifically about. A general mechanistic rule is too abstract to
grasp what this belief entails. The approach taken by CSR is also
disembodied insofar as experience is bypassed. Moreover, a
specific religious belief involves particular content that is
integrated with emotional entanglement with the world. The
abstract mechanisms bypass this integration and lose what it
means to have the experience of religious belief.
For those outside of the CSR belief system, naturalistic laws
of functioning are unhelpful because the psychological reality that
matters in life is bypassed. When truth is defined as only finding
natural mechanisms and processing rules, we actually bypass what
74
Chapter 4
religious belief is. The result is that belief, as it tends to be studied,

substantially diverges from the way it shows up in life. It is here
that we can see the impasse that Blake and other researchers
reach. The dismissal of belief as a processing mechanism is met
with a response that what is dismissed is what really matters.
Moving f orward
James shows us how religious belief works in a way that is concrete
and embodied. A related issue is that how we think of the scientific
belief can be abstract and disembodied. Naturalism in CSR
exemplifies this issue because a claim in CSR is taken to be true
when it represents what natural mechanisms are at play. For
example, if a researcher claims that the hyper-active agency
detection device produces the ability to perceive a super-agent, a
researcher is making the claim about a mechanism that plays a role
in the production of religion (e.g., Boyer, 2001). It is taken to be a
true claim because it represents a natural process that is really
happening. CSR, for example, is abstract in the way that naturalism
bypasses what belief is about. A super-agent and experience that a
religious belief entails is treated as irrelevant when scientific truth
is approached in this manner. It is disembodied in the sense the
experience of life is little more than a source of stimulation. This
bypass of belief comes from an approach to science where truth is
abstract and disembodied. The truth claims in CSR are about
general naturalistic mechanisms that don?t bear much relevance to
religious beliefs as they show up in life.
James (1981/ 1907, 2011/ 1909) was aware that holding only
to a naturalist approach to belief means that it is often bypassed
and addressing religious belief requires a broader approach to
scientific truth. That is, instead of presuming natural cognitive
mechanisms to be the only feature of belief that matters, we can
return to James because he offers a direction that expands the
75
Chapter 4
notion of scientific truth. This section outlines a vision for CSR that
sets the groundwork for the future steps proposed herein. For our
purposes, I will outline three criteria for truth that enable this
expansion.
First criterion for truth: fit in life
James (2011/ 1909) expanded the definition of truth by arguing
that it is always inextricably bound to life because people do not
use truth in an abstract and disembodied sense. This means that
truth is not used in a vacuum because people use it in relation to
all of the other aspects of life. For example, consider the following
interview extract.
To understand the notion of truth in order to study religious belief,

we need to look carefully at this conversational excerpt. This
participant discusses leaving faith and coming back to it. Religious
belief is discussed in turn 3 in terms of being a ?practicing Christian?:
doing something in life. We see the theme of religious belief being
tied to embodied doings and not a subjectivist ascent. It also refers
to life being steeped in religion and coming back to a place where
Christianity is considered true is coming back to practice. Here we
see a discussion of the idea that religious belief is tied to practice,
and what I want to add is that truth is tied to life outside of the mind.
76
Chapter 4
Consider this idea in light of the next illustrative comments.

This participant talks about belief in relation to aspects of
life such as all of the vicissitudes of life growing up. Religious
belief emerges in the interconnected milieu of life and so it must
be part of life to be true. A religious belief is true in the context of
interrelations among emotional valuations, ideas, things, and life
with others. These interrelations all play a part in saying that a
belief is true. Truth is not just separate from life in the abstract and
disembodied sense, and a belief is true because of how it relates to
emotional valuations, ideas, others, and things that people are
engaged with. Namely, it has to fit together with the rest of life.
It is the interrelations among features of life that provide a
criterion for how we can approach scientific truth. This criterion is
that something is true when it resonates with the rest of life. We
live in an interconnected experiential web of things and ideas
(past, present, and anticipated) and this interconnectedness
extends to a scientist. James?view of truth was that a scientific
claim is true when it fits into the flow of life insofar as it fits into
the complex web of interrelations constituting experience. There is
a sense of satisfactory peace and rest when something fits with
lived experience. For example, reconsider a quote that I presented
earlier. Consider what we see in this participant and what it can tell
us about the application of science in CSR.
77
Chapter 4
This quote illustrates how the truth of religious belief is

substantiated when it ?feels right? ?deep down,? and it illustrates a
sense of peace and rest being a criterion for truth. A religious
belief that seems disjointed from the aspects of life would not be
true and satisfying because it simply does not fit with life. The
same is true for a scientist who finds truth when it fits with life. It is
the different realities lived by a religious believer and a scientist
that provide different contexts enabling different claims to be true.
A naturalist CSR approach may fit for those that believe in it, but it
78
Chapter 4
runs the risk of stopping there. A religious belief is taken as true

when it fits with the experiences that are part of a different form of
life, and we can see how a naturalist concern with mechanisms
would not fit. At the moment that it fits the flow of experience,
whether it be that of a believer or that of a scientist, belief is
experienced as true. A claim is true for CSR researchers when it fits
with a reality that includes naturalism. A claim made by a scientist
in CSR gains the status of truth beyond the reality of scientists the
moment that it falls into resonance with the reality of those to
whom she is proclaiming a truth.
In the next chapter, I elaborate the forgoing to outline an
approach to research that can get at religious belief in a way that
fits with the world of religious believers. A problem raised above is
that an abstract and disembodied approach to belief misses what
belief is and the constitution of different realities entwined with it.
One key to getting at what religious belief is about is to take
seriously the role of culture because cultural narratives are often
central to the constitution of such realities. CSR has yet to develop
an account of culturally shaped religious belief because of its
naturalist approach that is unconcerned with culturally specific
beliefs (Cresswell, 2014). Culturally shaped beliefs can potentially
? and inappropriately ? be reduced to stored information, and
experience is only understood as an accidental by-product of
computation. Chapter 2 thereby addresses how culture is
necessary for a discussion of belief if one is to find a fit with
culturally shaped life: to truly understand belief is to grasp the
culturally shaped stories that are tied to it.
Second criterion for truth: fit with a community
To get away from the problems associated with abstract and
disembodied truth, it looks like objectivity is lost. This implication
is correct, but a collapse into subjective fancy does not necessarily
79
Chapter 4
follow. James (1981, 2011) repeatedly argued that truth is not a

matter of the mere proclivities of subjectivity. He did so in a way
that points out how one?s truth is only true when it resonates with
life outside one?s mind and so means that it resonates with others.
He made the claim that standards of fit are socio-normative in
quality and are integrally integrated with life with others. People?s
precepts are common and they are such within a community. The
truth of something ?. . . gives us an absolute phase of the universe.
It is the personal experience of the most qualified in our circle of
knowledge to have experience, to tell us what is? (James, 1981, p.
17). For James, the truth of belief is deeply entwined with living
with others with whom we agree on what counts as true. For
example, even when someone makes the claim that one must find
one?s own truth as in the following:
Participant 6 is talking about the impact of others and highlights

how important others are for belief. There is not often a
decontextualized moment of divine revelation that cannot be
brought into context of relationships with others and the world.
One cannot have a true belief on one?s own. Beliefs have truth by
virtue of fit and generativity within communities. While not
objective, the truth of a belief is certainly not subjective because it
cannot be reduced to an individual unit.
80
Chapter 4
In short, one cannot have a belief that is true on one?s own

because it must fit with communal standards. This idea can be
extended to scientific truth as well. It is not necessarily objective,
but it is certainly not subjective. A true belief is one that fits with
the standards of a community, and because there are different
communities in the world, there are different standards of truth.
There is a long tradition of work showing how the standards of
naturalist scientific truth are normatively grounded (see Danziger,
1990; Gergen, 1985; Stam, 2015a; Brown & Stenner, 2009).
Consider a simplistic example from the history of psychology.
During the Behaviorist era, standards of truth revolved around the
study of behavior without reference to the mind. Standards of
scientific truth then changed in the 1960s so that research
excluding the happenings of internal mechanisms is now
considered dubious. The truth about naturalist mechanisms in CSR
now works for that community, and it is time for a broader
approach that speaks to a community beyond its own.
Where Chapter 2 specifies how we can reconsider religious
belief from within the purview of religious believers, Chapter 3
offers something palpable to researchers in CSR. It presents how
child development involves learning to embody communal
standards. Babies usually experience emotions as intense global
emotional states that result in undifferentiated crying. Such
dispositions are cultivated into normative signals as caregivers
socialize children by their responses to children?s emotions,
enabling the transition from global catastrophic emotion (e.g.,
crying) to emotional signals (e.g., crying to obtain). Such
interpersonal experiences become the bedrock of cognition where
early childhood interactions are also sites of the development of
socioculturally constituted cognition. This chapter thereby
addresses how we can study the cultivation of cognition in infancy
so as to show the development essential for religious belief and
81
Chapter 4
the meaningful experience it entails. Since such cultivation of

cognition involves emotional signaling and the importance of
interrelationships, it speaks to my goal of developing an approach
to cognition that includes socially shaped religious belief. On the
one hand, Chapter 3 continues with a discussion of the communal
standards that constitute the truth of a religious belief. On the
other hand, it outlines the kinds of changes necessary for
researchers to broaden our science by providing an approach to
cognition.
Third criterion for truth: generativity
Another criterion that establishes truth builds on previous ones
insofar as fit with life is not just a static fit with other aspects of
experience at one moment of time. Humans are always growing
and changing in dynamic ways. We change and the world around us
changes such that a true belief could be antiquated and irrelevant.
A true belief, James (1981/ 1907, 2011/ 1909) argues, is one that
fits the dynamics of life to do more. For a belief to remain true, it
must generate something for us as we move forward such that it
makes future activities smoother. Truth is ?essentially bound up
with the way in which one moment of our experience may lead us
towards other moments which it will be worthwhile to have been
lead to? (1981/ 1909, pp. 93?94). A true belief helps us succeed in
life as opposed to creating friction and tension. Consider the
following conversational illustration.
82
Chapter 4
This segment involves a description of a discussion Participant 2

had with someone that has a radically different perspective.
Participant 2 and the conversational partner he describes do not
resonate with each other in terms of the religious beliefs that each
hold true. They cannot reconcile and cannot move forward into a
new and deeper relationship, so it halts. When ideas or claims
interrupt the flow of life, we then examine their truthfulness or we
move to another group or context where beliefs allow us to move
forward. A discontinuity between the two beliefs do not mutually
work as true, and so the only option is to be pragmatic and move
forward in different directions. Their beliefs would work with
others that share the same suppositions, and so Participant 2 and
this acquaintance must find others with whom their beliefs work if
they want to move forward. Participant 2 doesn?t examine the
truthfulness of his own beliefs and so moves forward to deepen
different relationships.
The same criterion can be applied to scientific truth insofar
as it remains true when a claim helps people move forward in a
83
Chapter 4
more seamless manner. CSR researchers have been moving

forward together insofar as their work has generated lots of ideas
and discoveries. Unfortunately, there are times where religious
believers and researchers have come to a place like Participant 2
and his friend: things aren?t going anywhere, so we should ?just
live with it? by going down our own paths. The problem is that it
has not been generative for religious believers due to abstract and
disembodied naturalism. Chapter 2 shows how belief can be
studied in a way that is generative for believers. If we stopped our
discussion at the end of Chapter 2, we would be at an impasse that
does not resonate with cognitive scientists. Consequently, Chapter
3 is about how CSR can be a more robust enterprise. The goal
herein is to broaden the way we approach the study of religious
belief so we can move forward in a broader range of circles. An
approach to truth that can fit for religious believers by looking at
belief as concrete and embodied moves us along.
A challenge lies in creating a point of generative interface
between the strong cultural approach outlined in Chapter 2 and
develop an approach to cognition that I initiate in Chapter 3.
Chapter 4 further explores a unique approach to the evolution of
human cognition with the aim of providing an approach that better
includes the cultural quality of religious belief outlined in Chapter
2 and articulated in Chapter 3. Current work in CSR and
evolutionary psychology is primarily concerned with genetic
inheritance of mechanisms. Evan Thompson (2007) can aid this
exploration because he presents a phenomenologically oriented
view of the evolution of human cognition that is fundamentally
interdependent with the surrounding socio-cultural milieu. This is a
unique approach that treats religious belief in terms of the whole
sensory-motor activity of the body as it extends beyond the brain
into the whole environment. Rather than treating genes as the
evolutionary unit of transmission, this vision of cognition sees the
84
Chapter 4
unit of evolution as the selection for and passing on of dynamic

cultural belief systems, thereby enabling religious beliefs to be
studied as relational phenomena. This work thereby expands our
understanding of human evolution by highlighting how religious
belief emerges in interdependent dynamic cultural systems. This is
an approach to cognition that is not abstract and disembodied
while being generative via its theory of cognition that can account
for religious belief. As such, it helps to build a generative bridge
between CSR and religious believers. Coupling this work with CSR
enables a conception of the evolution of mind that accounts for the
universal character of some cognitive capacities underlying
religious experience without falling into a view that bypasses
belief.
Wrapping up
The concluding Chapters 5 and 6 attempt to consolidate the
forgoing. Chapter 5 outlines a vision for how psychologists ought
to go about their research of cognition by discussing the notion of
virtue. That is, a CSR that does not alienate itself from religious
believers should include standards of good research. I will outline
such through a discussion of virtues needed to be a good
researcher. In terms of the concluding Chapter 6, the approach
above does not legitimate authoritative belief taken as a
transcendent universal truth because it cannot be determinately
grounded in a transcendent being. I propose that this is not a
problem insofar as a culturally informed CSR that speaks to both
social scientists and religious practitioners is possible. I illustrate
how the indeterminacy introduced by the forgoing is not
threatening to religious experience. The kind of certainty that
comes from appeal to metaphysics paradoxically deadens a
believer?s experience of God because it leads to faith and
commitment to the authoritative rules instead of a living and
85
Chapter 4
dynamic engagement with God. The deconstruction of

authoritative experience that is part of the proposed approach
makes room for dynamic personal experiences.
86
5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND
KNOWLEDGE
QUESTIONS RAISED ON THE
# PRESUPPOSITIONS OF
"PERSPECTIVISM" AMONG INDIGENOUS
PEOPLES

Science and Religion: East and West
edited by Yitfach Fehige.
Learn more
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
Excerpted from Science and Religion
Pref ace
In this article, I take a holistic approach to the various bodies of
powerful knowledge guarded by religious specialists in Baniwa
culture that can all be seen as interrelated. Based on my research, I
show that Baniwa jaguar shamans are central figures in a nexus of
religious knowledge and power in which healers, sorcerers, priestly
chanters, and ceremonial dance-leaders share complementary
functions, linking the living guardians of traditions with the deities
and great spirits of the cosmos, the primordial and eternal
?owners,? ?keepers? and generators of knowledge and power.
Throughout, I shall comment on the adequacy of the line of
ethnology called ?perspectivism? for the study of Baniwa
cosmology and religious history. Thus it is first appropriate to
outline briefl y the main presuppositions of perspectivism. An
important feature of many indigenous cosmologies is the existence
of multiple points of view about the nature of being held by
different kinds of beings (humans, animals, fish, etc.). This
perspectivism, a term that has been used by Eduardo Viveiros de
Castro to characterize ?Amerindian? modes of thought, is useful in
understanding many Amerindian religious traditions, although it
has not been shown to be a universal feature.The theory focuses
on certain kinds of relations among beings? human and
other-than-human? that are strongly influenced by the themes of
predation (studied typically in rituals of cannibalism, warfare,
sorcery and mortuary symbolism). It should be pointed out,
however, that other forms of reciprocity? as in giving thanks,
offerings to the Creator, expressions of the Creator?s love for
humans, and forms of divine sacrifice for the well-being of
humanity? were not considered in the first versions of the
perpectivist theory by Viveiros de Castro.
According to this theory, the way in which humans see
88
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
animals and other subjective entities that populate the

universe? gods, spirits, the dead, inhabitants of other levels of the
cosmos, meteorological phenomena, and at times even objects and
artifacts? is profoundly different from the way in which these
beings see them and see themselves. Typically, humans see
humans as humans, animals as animals and spirits as spirits; the
animals (predators), however, and spirits see humans as animals
(game), whereas game animals see humans as spirits or as
predatory animals. Further, the animals and spirits see themselves
as humans. This perspectivism has been influential in the way
ethnologists have taken to writing ethnographies, as the theory
provided a link to previous enthusiasm and aggregation around
French structuralism, also an important source of models in
Brazilian ethnology, to represent the ways in which indigenous
peoples understand relatedness among the beings of the universe
and its dynamics.
For Viveiros de Castro, perspectivism is thus:
a term for a set of ideas and practices found in many parts of
indigenous America and to which we can refer as though it
were a ?cosmology.? This cosmology imagines a universe
peopled by different types of subjective agencies, human as
well as non-human, each endowed with the same generic
type of soul, i.e. the same set of cognitive and volitional
capacities. The possession of a similar soul implies the
possession of similar concepts, which determine that all
subjects see things in the same way; in particular, individuals
of the same species see each other (and each other only) as
humans see themselves; that is, as beings endowed with
human shape and habits, seeing their bodily and behavioral
aspects in the form of human culture. What changes when
passing from one species of subject to another is the
89
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
?objective correlative,?the referent of these concepts: what

jaguars see as ?manioc beer? (the proper drink of people,
jaguar-type or otherwise), humans see as ?blood?; where
humans see a muddy salt-lick on a river bank, tapirs see their
big ceremonial house, and so on. Such difference of
perspective? not a plurality of views of a single world, but a
single view of different worlds? cannot derive from the soul,
because the latter is the common original ground of being;
such difference is located in the bodily differences between
species, for the body and its affections (in Spinoza?s sense:
its capacities to affect and be affected by other bodies) is the
site and instrument of ontological differentiation and
referential disjunction.
My particular position with regard to Viveiros de Castro?s
paradigm, based on the research over the past thirty years on and
in the Northwest Amazon, focuses predominantly on the evidence
from indigenous history, shamanism and cosmology, sacred
narratives and oral histories, prophetic movements, and conversion
to Christianity during the last two centuries of contact among the
Baniwa peoples. The principal points where perspectivism, I
believe, has fallen short of a model that would help to understand
the epistemologies and metaphysics of Baniwa ?history and
religion? cluster around the following:
1. the theory does not help in an ethno-historical
understanding of prophet movements, based on the stories
the Baniwa tell of these people who sacrificed their lives for
the betterment of their communities;
2. I argue that individual historic prophets have understood the
expectation of their own coming,as told in the traditions, to
be ?protectors? f their people and not predators as is
implied in perspectivist theory. These prophets have
90
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
generally dedicated their lives to combating the rise of

another form of knowledge, that of the predatory assault
sorcerer, constantly threatening to eradicate communities
and culture from within or from the peripheral regions of the
cosmos;
3. nor does the theory go very far in an understanding of
shamanic forms of knowledge and power, their basis in
cosmology, their potentials for promoting change and
ensuring cultural continuity, and their foundation in the
politics of hidden meanings;
4. the theory is limited in its interpretation of cosmogony, in
which, according to the Baniwa, distinct forms of knowledge
and power were guarded by deities and demiurges who, as a
whole, are engaged with humans through shamanic healers
and chanters, assault sorcerers and ceremonial
dance-owners;
5. this cosmogony is centrally concerned with the identity of
the Baniwa universe and its reproduction, also a central
theme in the oral histories, and a constant reference for the
shamans in their interpretations of sickness. This paper
discusses the multiple forms of knowledge and power
relevant to the production and reproduction of society,
aiming toward understanding ?humanity? in primordial times
and its relation to the animals, the other-than-human people
that populated the earth at the beginning of time.
In addition to the critique leveled against notions of
perspectivism, scientific knowledge? i.e., the knowledge attained
by the Western paradigm of, e.g., biomedicine? is fundamentally
different from indigenous metaphysics in several ways: its
understanding of the body, its diagnosis of sickness, its methods
91
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
of dealing with the pain of biological change, and its understanding

of external pain. Science divests itself of any emotive qualities, felt
experiences of suffering, and ?mystery.? Importantly, though,
mystery is one of the critical elements of the Baniwa worldview.
The true test of an adult person?s resilience is whether he/ she has
the strength to withstand physical pain and hunger, whether
people can fulfill their moral obligations to withhold consumption
without allowing biological necessities to ruin their initiation into
the mysteries of the world.
The Baniwa conceive of the body as a ?suffering? body, one
that experiences ?pain? as a fundamental part of its identity. The
historical prophets?messages convey the promise that sickness
and pain brought by others (the White people) will come to an end;
they are part of humanity?s lot, but can be managed. The prophets
are, as a whole, messengers of a critique of Western civilization,
which says that it (Western civilization) has a peculiar kind of
sorcery that puts indigenous people in debt, makes them suffer,
can destroy indigenous traditions, afflicts them especially with
respiratory and digestive ailments, yet the whites retain desirable
objects and powers. The pain of historical suffering is physically
and morally debilitating yet can be overcome by following the
traditional ways. In doing so, followers will secure their
autonomous identity, well-being and health in their traditional
territory. This cosmovision is enacted, shaping the Baniwa
experiential world. In short, it provides them with an epistemology,
and an empirical sensibility, that is different from many of those
who dwell in the industrialized global north. What follows is an
explication of this alternative epistemology? a native view of
science, if you will? that illustrates the ways in which cosmological
narratives shape some perceptions of the world, and challenge
others.
92
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
Prophet Movement s
Prophets emerge from a configuration of historical circumstances
internal or external to society, such as outbreaks of witchcraft, or
the dangerous accumulation of secular power. A brief review of key
themes in prophetic movements in Northwest Amazonia reveals
that most have been focused on the same questions that lie at the
foundation of their traditions: how can the knowledge and a way of
life (a habitus,if you will) be reproduced in the face of constant
historical changes? How can humans secure what is most sacred to
them in the face of potentially massive destruction and/ or
obliteration of their ancestral traditions?
To begin the discussion, common to many of the prophetic
movements throughout Amazonian history is the search for a
utopia, which can take one of two forms. The first is spatial,which
can mean either a return? led by the prophet(s)? to a place of
sacred origin in order to re-unite with the primordial and eternal
people and divinities. This was a dominant theme in seven
prophetic movements that took place within a relatively short
period of time at the beginning of the twentieth century among the
Ticuna of the upper Amazon River. Humanity, it was believed, had
strayed too far from the morally correct ways of living, and the
prophets, or ?those who desire to be sacred? (young people in
several cases), showed the way back to places at the headwaters of
certain streams where Yoi,the Creator, and the primordial people
were to be found.
Often, the search for a perfect place is something ?foretold
from old.? That is, in the stories of creation and the first people,
mention is made of ancient migrations to the perfect place, which
only some attained, whereas the rest did not. The Apurina,
Arawak-speaking people of the southern Amazon, tell the story of
ancestral migrations to the perfect place in the north; half of
93
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
humanity decided to stop in the middle of the journey, however,

whereas the rest continued on. The ?middle place? is called the
?moribund place, the place where many deaths occur,? and is
unfortunately not what they had hoped to attain.
There are numerous Guarani in the south of Brazil who
believe in the existence and attainability of a ?land without evil? or
yvy maraey?land which has not been touched,? where ?no
constructions have been made,? according to the first dictionary of
Guarani/ Spanish.6For many Guarani, that land lies in the east and
so, when a person recognized as akarai (spiritual leader) receives
inspiration to lead his people to that land, he or she would begin
singing the ?beautiful words? (divinely inspired chants). The words
recall the Indians?longing for their primordial lands, where they
can reunite with their deities, a land that the Indians will reach in
migration without having to pass through the ordeal of death.
Some picked up all their belongings and left on marches until they
got to the ocean. Many of them stayed in little communities in the
Atlantic Forest range, but some of them, tired of waiting, have
either converted to evangelicalism or sought other ways to assert
their divinely given rights to a vast territory throughout which they
were accustomed to move freely long before the colonists arrived.
Whereas environmental factors are certainly critical to the
religious history of native peoples, in other areas, somewhat
different processes of change based on internal dynamics, or a
combination of both environmental and politico-religious changes,
occurred in pre-Columbian prophetic movements among the
Tupian and Guarani-speaking peoples of the eastern coast of what
is now Brazil and a vast area of the southern part of the continent.
By the 1500s, the Guarani had developed into a society
where political and religious power was divided between powerful
chiefs and shamans, and there are indications that the Guarani
were on their way to developing centralized city-state formations
94
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
like those of the Andean region with whom the Guarani maintained
regular commercial relations. The tendency to centralization of
power met resistance, however, from karai who disputed the power
of the chiefs, gathering followers who believed in their
extraordinary powers to lead people to places where they could
gain access to an original state of perfection, where they would
become immortal without having to pass through the ordeal of
death.
There is evidence that cults developed around these
prophetic leaders who lived a wandering life, visiting villages to
announce their message that the time had come for people to
renew their spiritual connections with their ancestors in places that
had never before been inhabited (yvy maraey literally means ?land
on which nothing has been built or cultivated?; early missionaries
interpreted this phrase to refer to the Christian paradise, a ?land
without evil?).
The second form of prophetic movements emphasizes a
timeor moment of transformation, when the earth? considered to
be irredeemably flawed with impurities, rotten with the corpses of
so many dead, contaminated by sicknesses and toxicity, and
plagued by dangerous and harmful creatures? will be purified by
fire, then washed by water. After this, the survivors who managed
to escape by having dug out a huge hole in the earth where they
hid until the fire had passed, or had taken refuge by tying their
canoes to the tops of trees, will re-appear to a new life, free of
demons. The stories of creation of many peoples tell of a time
when these events occurred. The prophets thus conjugate the logic
of their sacred stories to the situational demands of contemporary
action. The prophets are the emissaries of the divinities and thus
are the only ones who should know when these things will take
place and what people are to do about them. The critical factor
here then is temporality, a time of salvation known only to the
95
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
deities and communicated only to the savants.

Evidently, the prophets have earned their fame either
through the resonance of their message with people?s desires and
hopes, but also from the histories of their acceptance as shamans
and/ or priests. The shaman who has extensive knowledge and
direct experience of all levels of the cosmos, who has survived
witch attacks and become even stronger, who understands and can
explain the myths with coherence and depth, who has a
demonstrated ability to divine, foresee, if not an extraordinary
clairvoyance, and who was trained by a succession of powerful
shamans before him, has all the makings of a prophet. Shamans,
priests and prophets can be the same person at different stages of
the person?s career, culminating when the appeal of their messages
becomes a universal message, the dominant theme most often
having to do with moral reforms internal to society, or inversion of
power relations between the whites and Indians. They are
emissaries of the divinity and have an open line of communication
with both the divinities and the souls of the deceased.
Ideol ogies of Baniwa Savant s
Baniwa prophets, or religious savants(kanhenkedali) are those
?jaguar shamans? who have not only reached the pinnacle of their
spiritual powers but also are seen as the living voices of the
divinities, guiding their followers through historical crises.
According to oral traditions I have been working with since the
1970s, prophets seek to rid the world of sorcerers and install a
regime of order, harmony and beauty. In the understanding of the
elders today, there is still an expectation that a new wise person
may emerge at a time of need to provide them with direction and
counsel. Whoever the new candidate may be, they will have to be
tested first. The Hohodene jaguar shaman Mandu da Silva, today in
his eighties, and who is the focus of my 2013 book, is perhaps the
96
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
last of these Baniwa savants.

The relations of the savants with the creator deity involve
constant exchanges and communications, direct experiences of the
deities, spirits and demiurges of the Other World, transcending the
boundaries between present, primordial and eternal time. One
demonstration of this belief is that the prophets?tombs on this
earthly plane are still today sought by their descendants and kin (of
the same peoples/ sibs/ phratries) for protection. While alive, they
are considered by their following to be in constant communication
with protector deities, the first shamans; they are like living deities
themselves.
Why does perspectivism fall short in representing the
historically meaningful statements made by the savants/ prophets?
Firstly, the perspectivist approach refers to the body as
?bundles of affects,? which makes meaningful engagement with
prophetic messages problematic, insofar as they are cosmopolitical
responses to collective historical experiences of ?suffering,?
together with blueprints for action grounded in the traditions, as
well as struggles to keep the traditions alive.
The Baniwa prophets?messages have invariably dealt with
human suffering from sorcerers seeking solutions to this problem.
The questions they deal with are fundamentally moral, proposing
ways to survive and at the same time fulfill one?s obligations as a
fully cultural being.Thus, the notion of body is placed in the
cosmopolitical arena? not a mere bundle of affects.
When the Baniwa prophets speak of the ?new condition?
following a time of change to come, they refer to a number of
different ideal conditions: a time when there will be no more
sickness; the end of debt to the river merchants; the end of
witchcraft; a time of social harmony, prosperity and abundance of
food. And, most recently, they have urged their followers not
97
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
to give up their old ways because if they do, then they will be
overcome by the enemy (whomever that may be).
The narratives of phratric ancestors (that is, a group of clans
interconnected through primordial kinship ties) can be seen in a
similar light, as they focus on key decisions taken by the ancestors
that resulted in their autonomy from the whites,survival from near
total destruction at the hands of the enemies, and revitalization
movements. Narratives of the (non-prophet) ancestors
demonstrate how they sought to reproduce the prosperity of their
lives and guarantee their autonomy. The prophets?messages, for
their part, have consistently pointed to keeping the traditions alive,
to the dangers of selling out to the whites, to the need for living in
harmonious conviviality, to the need to eliminate sorcery, etc.
Even today, both shamans and ordinary people can
communicate with the souls of these great seers at certain sites,
such as at the Great Boulder of Dzuliferi (the great shaman deity),
located right above Hipana waterfalls, where, cosmogony affirms,
the ancestors of humanity emerged from the holes in the stones of
the First World.There, people leave offerings and request help and
protection from the shaman deity. This has been a region-wide
practice noticed by outside travelers since the fi rst contacts in the
eighteenth century. Tombs of the great wise people/ savants of the
past are likewise visited in Venezuela and Colombia, where
followers still go to request from them protection or a cure. In
numerous cases in the Americas and across the globe, those
religious virtuosos considered as prophets are understood to be
more like gods than humans.
What kinds of special knowledge do these prophets and
jaguar shamans have that mark them off from the rest of the
population? How does that knowledge find its basis in
cosmological forces or powers that exclusively religious specialists
can obtain? What is the essence of that power and knowledge?
98
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
Knowl edge and Powers of t he Jaguar Shamans, Dzaui Malinyai

In order to pass on their knowledge to apprentices, the pajés (local
term for shamans) transform their bodies into other-than-human
beings of the natural world that periodically change their skins and
regenerate at certain times of the annual cycle: cicadas, and a
series of other insects and animals that periodically molt, slough
off their old exoskeletons, re-emerging as totally new beings, in a
time-bound cycle of death and rebirth. In the pajés?cycles of
transformation, the months of June and July are said to be the
times for taking pariká (the shamans?psychoactive snuff) daily, so
that throughout the month of August, the pajé transforms into the
cicada; pajés become one with the ?universe people? as they
transmit their knowledge and power to their apprentices.
In his/ her apprenticeship, as the pajé?s body fills up with
medicines from the eternal Other World, he/ she acquires an
atemporal dimension that transcends human time and limitations.
?He doesn?t have anything more that is human,? Mandu said,
meaning that he ?dies? (to his human existence),exchanges his life
for that of the ?jaguar shaman spirit other?(Dzaui malinyai), who
obeys a radically different temporality and spatial orientation (or,
perspective).
The pajé, in fact, is one who is constantly in the process of
becoming other, so it seems not to make much sense to talk about
his ?being? in terms of fixed forms. It makes more sense to speak of
the shaman as, citing C. Fausto?s apt phrase, ?a multiplicity of
intentionalities,? or a series of selves with, in the case of the
Baniwa, distinct body-shadows like the spirits and deities,
constantly transforming.7We may add that the Baniwa shamans
consider their instruments included among their multiple selves
(rattles, stones, crystals), as these have the power of agency and
action.
99
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
A NEXUS OF RELIGIOUS KNOWLEDGE AND POWER

The four principal owners of [spiritual] power and knowledge are:
1. the pajés,who heal and protect their communities, the
highest grade of which is the true pajé or jaguar shaman.
Apprentices acquire their power and knowledge at a certain
phase of the life cycle: a young adult, male or female, may
begin training to become a healer and may either complete
the full ten years required to become a real pajé, or interrupt
training at the end of the first major stage and remain a
?half-pajé? with limited powers to cure.
2. the sorcerers who attack to destroy a victim or an entire
family. These are also called mantís, a lingua geral term for
assault sorcerers, and dañeros, a Spanish term. From the
sorcerers?point of view, their actions are justified as
redressing what they perceive to be an imbalance of power
or a personal loss that they attribute to sorcery sent by pajés
or other sorcerers.
Pajés and mantís are opposing forces at either end of a gradient
that separates good people (matchiaperi) from the
wicked(maatchipem). To understand the struggles between them, it
is vital that we take into account the motives behind the sorcerers?
actions. For example, external influences such as contacts with the
whites, or exogenous diseases, on Baniwa society have resulted in
extreme disruption and increases in assault sorcery attacks during
their histories;
3. priestly chanters who ?are guardians of ? highly specialized
chants called kalidzamai, performed during the all-important
rites of passage in which they protect those undergoing life
transitions from all potentially harmful places, spirits and
animals in the world. As the priestly hanters minister to the
100
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
ancestors, they also create the conditions by which new

generations are produced. They thus embody the critical
theme of death and regeneration that is at the heart of so
many native religious traditions. Only the senior elderly men
and women of the grandparent generation can learn these
chants, which require great stamina, memory, exact
knowledge of places in the world, and knowledge of the
poetic spirit names(naakuna) of all living beings. There is
also less chance that these very elderly specialists are
embroiled in any of the struggles that involve shamans and
sorcerers, which would detract from the great responsibility
and the strenuous spiritual work involved in the transmission
of culture through their chanting;
4. the dance leaders (mandero) who lead the dance lines with
the correct patterns for each type of dance, upholding the
collective, aesthetic virtues of beauty, symmetry and form.
Whereas the dance leaders have been treated in the
literature as owners of a kind of secular knowledge, the term
used for their knowledge is manderokai, the suffix -kai again
referring to the power they have to make the dances
effective instruments of sociality. Dance leaders acquire
their knowledge from within their own consanguineal
kinship groups.
The true sorcerers are those whose intentions have become so
dominated by the desire to kill as to use poison against everyone
whom she or he considers an enemy. As Mandu stated, ?Their only
thought is to kill?(manhene kada lima).The word for poison (the
plant substance), poisoning (the act itself of putting the poison in
the victim?s drink or food), and the lethal sickness resulting from
the poison are all known by the word manhene. This word is
particularly important for understanding the kind of spiritual
101
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
knowledge that the sorcerer also has. The translation of manheneis:

one does not know. This can be understood in several senses,
depending on the speaker: (1) one doesn?t know who the sorcerer
is; (2) the poison, which is always hidden away and (3) the victim
who? as a result of the poisoning? is brutally robbed of his/ her
knowledge and consciousness. This demands vengeance for the
loss of a person. The whole process is of course very hidden and
secretive until it becomes a memory and people can talk about it in
the open.
The jaguar shaman is a high-level pajé whose power(malikai)
is considered to have been directly transmitted over a long
genealogical line from the original creative powers of the universe,
especially the deity Dzuliferi, the ancient shaman deity. The jaguar
shaman is a true pajé, considered to know everything about the
world, and is said to be able to attain a place next to the creator
deity, Nhiãperikuli. She or he is the only native healer who is
believed to be capable of curing victims of assault
sorcery-by-poisoning.
The sábios (wise men or women, kanhenkedali tapame) are
religious leaders who provide moral guidance to their followers,
who include peoples of different ethnic groups spread out over a
large geographical area in the Northwest Amazon on three sides of
the international borders; who maintain constant communication
with the creator deities; and who perform cures or feats that are
considered to be extraordinary or miraculous. The sábios combine
most of the above named functions into one integrated knowledge
and power. Yet, rather than keeping that power centralized in their
person, they use their wisdom to protect and benefit the people of
their community. In that sense, they are guardians of multiple
communities located throughout a wide geographical area and of
multiple linguistic groups, demonstrating qualities that are
characteristic of the deities Nhiãperikuli and Dzuliferi (the
102
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
sun deity and the primal shaman, respectively).

In summary, the ethnohistories of the Baniwa of the Içana
and Aiary and, to a certain extent, the upper Rio Negro or Guainia,
amply testify to the importance of a tradition of ?wise men and
women? who have interpreted the signs of their historical
situations? mostly characterized by poverty, oppression and
violence at the hands of the whites. The prophets turned to the
knowledge and powers of their own deities, particularly the
shamanic powers, in order to find answers to the existential
questions concerning their survival. The following section
characterizes the powers and attributes of the principal deities in
the Baniwa pantheon.
The Ot her Worl dl y Keepers of t he Sacred Knowl edge and Power
In the Other World of the great spirits, the shamans differentiate
the ?good people? from the ?wicked people? of the universe.
Among the wicked of the Other World are the being called Kuwai,
also known as the ?Keeper of sicknesses and sorcery? and his
?secretary? the sloth Tchitamali, also an avatar for sickness. The
jaguar shaman Mandu also characterized the ?first person to die,?
as the unfortunate one, maatchieneri, for he was the primordial
being who brought death into the world, although he has another
image of himself, a kind of flip-side inverse signifying reversible
death.
Many pajés evaluate the world of humans to be an evil
place(maatchikwe), a place of rot(ekukwe)and pain(kaiwikwe).This
point of view is not consensual,however, reflecting the differences
of perspectives that are deliberately constructed in ongoing daily
lives of dozens of communities over time. Nevertheless, the
association of This World with pain, sorcery and rot means that, in
the shamans?view, This World is in some way a manifestation of
the Great Spirit of Sickness, Kuwai,the primordial source of sorcery,
103
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
pain and death by sorcery.

In this way, witchcraft is perceived by many to be the
greatest threat to ordered existence in this life. The prophet
movements may be understood as vibrant historical struggles of
indigenous peoples to come to terms with the internal dilemmas
posed by their ontologies when articulated with historical
circumstances. The white man, as an ?other? type of being, is in
Baniwa cosmology, either an ally or an enemy. As enemy, he brings
sickness and disorder, accompanied by witchcraft or sorcery, and is
a ?boss,? sometimes violent, sometimes feared and admired,
always the subject of conversations. In their mythology, the ?great
anaconda? makes one appearance as the white man who has an
amorous affair with the Creator?s wife, which leads to her giving
birth to the same anaconda, and the Creator?s subsequent
abandonment of the woman and anaconda-child back into the
forest. Eventually, the woman, transformed into a fish, falls back
into the river.
The most notable appearance of the white man imagery,
however, is as Kuwai himself, who takes on the image to fool
children at the age of initiation. As in the previous case, the
outsider? here, Kuwai? is associated with material wealth,
violence and the technology of destruction. Yet, when Kuwai finally
completes his role as initiator, as priestly chanter, he is
transformed by fire into the sacred flutes and trumpets that the
men play today to initiate their children. An external, dangerous
and treacherous being is nevertheless the owner of a powerful
knowledge that humans wished for themselves. That knowledge is
taught to humans at a certain moment in the story, precisely when
Kuwai is burned by fire. It is said that, at that moment, Kuwai told
the world about everything related to sickness and its cure. Then
he departed, having instituted the first initiation rite, as well as
104
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
the first whipping rite, their songs and dances, and above all, the
great initiation chants, and the pepper chants where all
spirit-knowledge can be found.
The Knowl edge of t he Universe Owners
The transformative power of the life-force elements that fl ow
through the universe is intimately connected to the forms of
knowledge (ianheke) that brought the universe into being and that
has overcome all attempts by enemies to destroy it. It is critical to
understand how the knowledge and power of each of the deities is
distinct but complementary. The forms of knowledge each one
owns or guards were transmitted from the original owners to their
descendants, who then became guardians of that knowledge in
This World.
In the undifferentiated Before-World of the deities and great
spirits, one personage could assume the attributes and powers of
another. In the Baniwa pantheon, there are connections among all
major spirits/ deities that demonstrate the nexus of religious power
and knowledge and its replication among the principal religious
specialists. They share in each other?s powers and knowledge in
some critical way. As in the Before-World, so in This World, the
different keepers of knowledge can accumulate power, but only at
their own risk, for the sorcerers are ever-present to provoke
instability.
The vertical representation the Baniwa make of their cosmos
might suggest a hierarchy of knowledge and power. I find it more
productive to see that each of these deities represents a body of
knowledge and power corresponding in This World with living
specialists; thus the knowledge and power of the Other World is
directly transposed onto and into This World via the shamans,
dance-leaders, and priestly chanters. The relation between the
Other World and This World comes alive through them: during
105
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
cures, during ceremonial rites of passage, and in the day-to-day

encounters of humans and other-than-human beings (forest spirits,
water spirits, and spirits of the dead).
The Baniwa universe is centralized in the universe?s
?umbilical cord,? from which all life begins and returns.
Nevertheless, the peoples of the world, with their ancestral
instruments and knowledge, are dispersed over a vast territory,
which makes the centralization process emerge only when there
are collective rituals, notably the rites of initiation, taught to
humanity by Kuwai. Outside of this kind of supra-local
centralization, each community has its own sacred flute or trumpet
linking it to a particular place and ancestral identity. The point is
that, whereas all identity derives from a single source, that
knowledge has suffered great losses over time, and large portions
of the Baniwa/ Kuripako population sadly do not want to have
anything to do with traditional ways. Thus, it cannot be assumed
that each people has one perspective; for the Baniwa, the
distribution of knowledge and the kinds of religious knowledge
and power are quite uneven.
Among pajés, the accumulation of shamanic knowledge and
power can certainly produce the wise men and women at the apex
of this hierarchy. One of the principal objectives of the historical
prophets, wise men and women, has been to control
sorcery-by-poisoning by transforming the negativity that
permeates villages where sorcery has become dominant into
harmonious conviviality. If successful, the prophets?powers are
considered to be greater, in the sense of morality, than the jaguar
shamans?. The prophets resisted utilizing this power for secular
purposes; the stories state that they did not wish to become kings or
presidents or powerful secular leaders. Their stories show how much
their families suffered from attack as a result of their spiritual
leadership. Given the advanced age of these spiritual leaders, their
106
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
spiritual weaponry seems helpless before an attack by sorcerers.

Nevertheless, when they have important messages to deliver that
offer divinely inspired guidance to their followers and all Baniwa
communities, they carry through their mission until they no longer
can, or until they are sacrificed by their ex-followers.
Only the prophets are the living voices of the deities and
maintain an open line of communication with the Creator. Their
campaigns to control sorcery in This World find numerous parallels
in the sacred narratives and in the primordial inscriptions known as
petroglyphs (diakhe). It is said that these were drawn (idana) by
Nhiãperikuli, who wished to remember the outcome of a major
battle against enemies by leaving traces on the rocks. Several of
these sacred sites are extraordinarily complex configurations of
the landscape, transforming it into a mythscape that tells several
stories which occurred in one place.
Pajés say humans have made This World a bad place to live
because they use sorcery to kill each other, which has left many
rotting bodies in the earth. There is a never-ending struggle in This
World between power and anti-power, as there was in the
primordial world between the original agnatic (patrilineal) group of
creator deities and the various animal-tribe affines who were at
once in-laws and their enemies. Humans today are leading
themselves to the brink of destruction, which, the sacred stories
tell, occurred in the past, when the enemy tribes overcame
humans.
In the holistic sense that I have shown of the Other World
permeating This World, and with considerable historical depth and
spatial extension evident in the sacred traditions, it seems
ludicrous to assert that, underlying it all, all living beings with souls
think in pretty much the same way, have similar emotional lives,
and remember their actions through the same representations.
107
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
Concluding, I hope to have shown the following points in this

brief essay that have wider implications for the theme of religion
and science: firstly, the important interdependence of
cosmovisions, normative assumptions (ethics), and recapitulations
of ancient practices and knowledges. A native people?s
cosmovision is at once perspectivist, but (1) predation is not a
dominant theme, but rather the prophets are anti-predation,
anti-sorcery; (2) suffering is a predominant theme stemming from
historical oppression, and living in a hostile environment. The
Amazon environment, according to their stories, is permeated with
traps, hurdles, pain and sickness that lie around every corner. The
Baniwa are particularly concerned with sorcery because sorcerers
attack and destroy whole families; (3) the idea of the body can be
understood as integrated on different levels of inclusion (Person,
House, Community, Sib, Phratry, and Universe), while as opposed to
the sick body, which the shaman has to treat, can?t be so
understood.
In relation to the central theme of this volume, religion and
science, it goes without saying that neither of these areas easily
apply to the Baniwa. Rather, we have focused on Baniwa spiritual
relations to the environment, how they see and relate to other
?peoples? (animals, insects, birds, etc.), for which we made
extensive reference to their cosmogony, cosmology, eschatology
and their understanding of the relations among beings of the same
type and beings of different types (i.e., perspectivism). My own
work shows how there exist bodies of knowledge and power, which
are interrelated, that comprise a whole, and are reproductions of
the original knowledge and power of the deities and great spirits of
the cosmos.Thus, spiritual knowledge and power must be seen in
this holistic way. The prophets are those who sacrifice their lives
for the betterment of the community, especially moral betterment,
108
Chapter 5
RELIGIOUS POWER AND

KNOWLEDGE
because they are remembered for their anti-witchcraft campaigns.

The Unknown leaves them in awe, fear, or minimally, an enormous
curiosity. This is the test of their strength to withstand? whether
they can fulfill moral obligations, and bear the pain of suffering,
without allowing bodily needs and desires to, so to speak, lead them
to ruin.Such knowledge complexes are not antagonistic toward
Western science and healing arts, and indeed often work in concert
with them. But they do represent alternative epistemologies,
ontologies and experiential matrices, which thus lead them to
perceive this one world in a culturally and historically specific way.
109
6
KNOWLEDGE AND THE
OBJECTION TO RELIGIOUS
BELIEF FROM COGNITIVE
# SCIENCE

The Roots of Religion
edited by Roger Trigg and Justin L. Barrett.
Learn more
Chapter 6
KNOWLEDGE AND THE OBJECTION
TO RELIGIOUS BELIEF FROM
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Excerpted from The Roots of Religions
Belief in gods requires no special parts of the brain. Belief in gods

requires no special mystical experiences, though it may be aided
by such experiences. Belief in gods requires no coercion or
brainwashing or special persuasive techniques. Rather, belief in
gods arises because of the natural functioning of completely
normal mental tools working in common natural and social
contexts. (Barrett, 2004, p. 21)
Part I
Theism is no stranger to attack. In its long and checkered history it
has faced a barrage of assaults on its veracity. Some of these
challenges, like the problem of evil, remain unresolved. The
scientific revolution marked the beginning of a particularly difficult
period for theism, with these difficulties intensified by modern
science. Today the science vs. theism debate is an industry of its
own. In recent years a growing number of atheists have made
recourse to some of the findings in contemporary cognitive science
to formulate a novel challenge to theistic belief. According to
several psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionary theorists, and
cognitive scientists, the human mind evolved in such a way that it
is naturally drawn towards belief in disembodied, supernatural
agents, the God of monotheism being just one such agent. The
belief that God exists, according to most defenders of this view, is
an accidental byproduct of certain cognitive mechanisms that
evolved for rather different adaptive purposes. Richard Dawkins
(2006, pp. 200?22) and Daniel Dennett (2006), for example, make
use of this research in their case against theism. While neither
explicitly claims that in virtue of this research there is something
epistemically suspect about the belief that God exists, the
innuendo is obvious. Dawkins contends that these findings partly
explain why it is that people acquire and maintain the delusion that
God exists, while for Dennett, this research?breaks the spell?of
111
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
religious belief.
Since no formal arguments are presented, it remains unclear
how the research in the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) is
alleged to undermine the positive epistemic status of the belief
that God exists (hereafter, we shall call such attempts?the CSR
objection?). Some (e.g., Murray, 2009; and Clark and Barrett, 2010;
2011) have taken up the challenge of proposing different ways in
which such arguments could be formulated to the conclusion that
religious beliefs are irrational. This chapter is a continuation of this
line of work, but differs in two respects. First, we consider how the
CSR objection might be understood in terms of Timothy
Williamson?s knowledge-first framework (Williamson, 2000).
Second, in light of the significant role that testimony plays in the
acquisition and transmission of religious belief, we consider the
role that the epistemology of testimony could play in the CSR
objection. Section 2 begins with a presentation of the relevant
aspects of the CSR research. Thereafter follows a brief explanation
of Williamson?s claim that safe belief is a necessary condition for
knowledge. A treatment of several epistemic terms of art
concludes section 2. In section 3 we present two different ways in
which the CSR objection can be formulated as an argument to the
effect that the belief that God exists is unsafe. We argue that
neither version works.
Part II
The Cognitive Science of Religion
Owing to differences in methodologies and research goals, there is
no definitive statement of the cognitive and evolutionary
psychology of religion. For our purposes it will suffice to draw
attention to the work of Justin Barrett (2004; 2009), a dominant
figure in the CSR literature. Here is a rough sketch of Barrett?s
theory.
112
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Human beings are naturally prone to develop a certain class

of concepts that Barrett labels?minimally counterintuitive
concepts?(MCIs). An MCI is a standard concept that has been
augmented in some rather unusual ways such that it becomes
attention-grabbing, easy to understand and remember, and has the
capacity to feature in the explanation of many events. A?talking
shoe?or an ?invisible dog?are examples of MCIs. It is not unusual to
find disparate groups, in no contact with one another, having many
MCIs in common. The concept of a?god?is an example of a common
MCI, where a?god?is a disembodied, supernatural agent. Eventually
the concept of God developed where that term denotes the God of
monotheism.
The mental configuration of human beings also includes an
Agency Detection Device (ADD) that disposes us to detect agency
in our environment. Because ADD is sometimes triggered on the
slenderest of bases (a rustle in the bush, a creaking of the floor), it
has been called?hypersensitive.?As such, the so-called
Hypersensitive Agency Detection Device (HADD) often registers
false positives. With respect to evolutionary psychology,
possessing such a hypersensitive device has survival advantages,
since the speedy and noninferential detection of an agent in the
vicinity (a predator, say, or a potential mate) would have increased
one?s survival, thus leading to greater reproductive success. Once
the presence of an agent is registered, a second mental tool kicks
in. This tool, commonly termed?Theory of Mind?(ToM), attributes a
mental life to the detected agent, where such attributions typically
concern what beliefs, desires or intentions that agent might have
vis-a-vis the subject.
At a point in our history some primitive peoples perceived a
state of affairs that resulted in HADD triggering a belief in the
presence of an agent. With the aid of ToM, the state of affairs made
sense by virtue of an agent acting in a particular way with
113
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
particular intentions. However, only agents with MCI concepts of

god-like agents could explain what they had perceived, as no
natural explanation adequately accounted for these circumstances.
As a result, human beings came to believe that God exists. In some
cases the order of explanation is in the reverse? the
MCI?God?developed on its own apart from such inexplicable states
of affairs. Only much later did certain human beings retroactively
understand said states of affairs in terms of God?s actions.
Knowledge as Safe Belief
Knowledge, for Williamson (2000), requires avoidance of error in
similar cases. The basic idea is that S knows p only ifS is safe from
error, where being safe means that there must be no risk or danger
that S falsely believes p in a relevantly similar case. Knowledge,
then, permits just a small margin of error; that is, cases in which S
knows p must be buffered by cases of true belief. The relevant
modal notions of safety, risk, and danger are cashed out in terms of
possible worlds such that a margin for error is created insofar as
there is no close world in which S falls into error. Such worlds act
as a?buffer zone?from error and thereby prevent the type of
epistemic luck that characterize Gettier cases (Gettier, 1963;
Shope, 1983). Here is one pertinent formulation of the safety
condition:
If in a case ? one knows p on a basis B, then in any case close
to ? in which one believes a proposition p* close to p on a
basis [B*] close to B, then p* is true.
(Williamson, 2009, p. 325)
For example,S does not know that it is noon by looking at a broken
clock that correctly reads noon, since there is a close world in
which S falsely believes that it is noon, e.g., a world in which S
looks at the broken clock at any time other than noon.
114
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Unlike the aforementioned authors, we grapple with the CSR

objection in terms of knowledge and not in terms of rationality.
There are several reasons for this difference in strategy. First, since
those putting forward the CSR objection do not explicitly state that
religious beliefs are irrational by virtue of the finding in cognitive
science and evolutionary psychology, there is no prima facie reason
to interpret their challenge in terms of rationality instead of
knowledge, especially if knowledge is the more primitive concept
of the two. Given the current popularity of explications of
knowledge in terms of safe belief, Williamson?s safety condition is
a natural choice, seeing that he is one of the more influential safety
theorists.
Second, most agree that knowledge is non-accidentally true
belief. However, there is no consensus to be found among those
working on rationality. While some consider rationality to be tied
to the degree to which evidence increases the probability of a
belief?s being true, others see it as a property that supervenes on
the reliability of cognitive mechanisms, while yet others deem it to
be a kind of self-reflective state. As such, some see rationality as
being determined from an external point of view, while others
view it from an internal point of view. The concepts of rationality
that result from such divergent approaches can be radically
different. By concentrating on knowledge as opposed to rationality,
we avoid this murky and contested territory.
Third, given that the CSR research concerns the apparently
accidental genesis of theistic belief, one natural concern would be
that accidentally true theistic belief is unsafe. It would not make
sense, then, to formulate arguments against theistic belief on the
basis of the CSR research in terms of rationality, for on most
accounts of rationality an agent S may be rational in believing p
despite being lucky that p is true.
115
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
Finally, there is good reason to think that the appropriate norm for
assertion and practical reasoning is knowledge and not justified or
rational belief (Williamson, 2000, pp. 238ff; Hawthorne and
Stanley, 2008). Since theistic belief is often the subject of assertion
and, more importantly, influences the way theists go about living
their lives, it makes sense to worry about whether theists can know
that God exists in light of the CSR research more than whether
theists can rationally believe that God exists.
Before commencing our treatment of the CSR objection, two
epistemic terms of art need to be addressed. First, there is a
distinction between individual epistemology and social
epistemology. The first makes normative assessments of a specific
agent?s beliefs, e.g., that an agent S?s belief that p is warranted or
rational or justified or known if and only if conditions C1,? , Cn are
satisfied. The second differs in that normative assessments are
made about an entire community?s belief(s). We understand the
methodology of social epistemology to begin with an assessment
of which method or cognitive process a group uses to produce a
certain belief and then to judge the epistemic status of that belief,
the judgment naturally applying to all agents in that community. An
adequate treatment of the CSR objection must take into account
this distinction for it is unclear whether CSR objectors have specific
theists in mind or intend their remarks to apply to all theists.
Second, knowledge is factive? only true propositions can be
known. Without thereby begging the question, it makes little sense
for the CSR objection to be framed on the assumption that theism
is false, for then it would be trivially true that theistic belief is
unsafe. The CSR literature would then be irrelevant to the claim
that theistic belief is unsafe. We therefore interpret the CSR
objector as making the claim that despite it being true that God
exists, one does not know that God exists. Given the conceptual
dependence of assertion, practical reasoning, and evidence on
116
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
knowledge in Williamson?s framework (2000, pp. 184ff ), such a

challenge is a serious one indeed.
Part III
As adverted to earlier, we think that the CSR objection can be
formulated into two different arguments to the conclusion that the
belief that God exists is unsafe. An independent discussion of each
objection follows.
The Counterfactual Argument

Recall that one does not know it is noon by looking at a broken
clock that fortuitously just so happens to read noon correctly. That
the agent would have believed it noon even if it were not noon is
one way of explaining why agents who look at broken clocks
fortuitously reading the correct time are denied knowledge. On
similar grounds, the CSR objector might have the following
argument in mind:
1) If God did not exist, human beings would still believe that
God exists (given that humans are primed to believe in
supernatural agents, independent of whether or not such
agents exist).
2) Therefore, the belief that God exists is unsafe.
The cogency of this argument turns on the first premise, which is
expressed in the form of a counterfactual. There are three reasons
why this argument fails. First, those familiar with accounts of
knowledge in the post-Gettier period will recognize that the type
of counterfactual expressed by (1) above corresponds to Robert
Nozick?s sensitivity condition for knowledge. According to Nozick
(1981, p. 171), an agent S does not know p if it is the case that were
p false, S would still believe p. It is now recognized that the
117
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
sensitivity condition for knowledge is inadequate in several

respects. That theistic belief fails to satisfy the sensitivity
condition for knowledge in light of evolutionary cognitive science
is therefore irrelevant.
Second, the Counterfactual Argument is invalid as it is not
the case that if a belief fails the sensitivity condition, it is therefore
unsafe; that is to say, a failure of sensitivity does not entail a lack
of safety. For example, in some cases sensitivity is the more
stringent condition, while in others safety is. The following two
points of logic elicit the difference between the safety and
sensitivity conditions. When it comes to cases concerning
knowledge of the denial of skeptical hypotheses, the safety
principle is less demanding than the sensitivity principle. The
sensitivity principle requires that the agent not believe p in the
nearest possible world in which p is false. As such, no agent can
know the denial of skeptical hypotheses, e.g.,?I am not a brain in
the vat,?by the sensitivity test because in the nearest possible
world in which the agent is a brain in the vat, the agent continues
to believe that he is not a brain in the vat.
The safety principle, however, permits knowing the denial of
skeptical hypotheses. By the safety principle, I count as knowing
the everyday proposition p?that I have hands?only if I safely
believep. It follows, then, that if I safely believe p, then there is no
close world in which I am a brain in the vat and am led to falsely
believe that I have hands. Consequently, if I know that I have hands
and I know that that entails that I am not a brain in the vat, then I
know that I am not a brain in the vat.
On the other hand, cases can be constructed in which safety
is more demanding than sensitivity. Suppose S truly believes p in
the actual world, but (i) in the closest world in which p is false S
does not believe p, and (ii) there is close world in which S falsely
believes p. In this caseS satisfies the sensitivity condition, but fails
118
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
to satisfy the safety condition. The following case illustrates this

point. Unbeknown to Mary, the thermometer she has just
purchased is defective and will always yield a reading of 39°C
regardless of her temperature. Mary, who is running a fever of
39°C, then uses the thermometer to measure her temperature and
it just so happens to correctly read her temperature of 39°C.
However, in the nearest world in which her temperature is not 39°C
and she uses this thermometer to take her temperature, she is
distracted by her son and she doesn?t form any belief about her
temperature. She accordingly satisfies the sensitivity condition for
knowledge. However, there happens to be a non-closest close
world in which Mary, who is running a fever of 38.5°C, uses this
thermometer to take her temperature and consequently forms the
false belief that her temperature is 39°C. Mary thus fails to satisfy
the safety condition.
In light of the complicated relationship between the
sensitivity and safety conditions for knowledge, with respect to
any belief p, it is not the case that failure of the sensitivity
condition entails failure of the safety condition. The counterfactual
argument is therefore invalid.
A third reason to discount the Counterfactual Argument is a
semantic one. According to the standard Lewisian semantics for
counterfactuals, acounterfactual with an impossible antecedent is
vacuously true (Lewis, 1973, p. 24). For example, the
counterfactual (F)?If frogs were numbers, then pigs would fly?is
true, but vacuously so. As discussed earlier, we have interpreted
the CSR objector as putting forward her objection on the
assumption that God exists. On standard conceptions of God?s
existence, if God exists, he exists necessarily; that is to say, he
exists in every possible world. Therefore, by the CSR objector?s
own lights the antecedent of (1) is impossible. Asserting (1)
119
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
thus amounts to no more than asserting (F). As such, there is ample

reason to discredit the Counterfactual Argument.
The Argument from Testimony Chains
Reliability, as a property of a belief-forming method, comes in
different kinds, two of which are important for the purpose at
hand? local and global. The latter refers to a method M?s reliability
in producing a range of token output beliefs in different
propositions P,Q,R,? , etc. A method M is globally reliable if and
only if it produces sufficiently more true beliefs than false beliefs
in a range of different propositions. For example, M could be the
visual process and P the proposition that there is a pencil on the
desk, Q the proposition that there are clouds in the sky, and R the
proposition that the bin is full. If a sufficiently high number of P, Q,
R,? is true, then method M is globally reliable. A method M is locally
reliable with respect to an individual target belief P if and only if M
produces a sufficient ratio of more true beliefs than false beliefs in
that very proposition P. Method M, e.g., the visual method, is locally
reliable with respect to the belief P if and only if it produces a
sufficiently high ratio of true beliefs about the presence of the
pencil on the desk.
According to Williamson, for a belief to count as safe, it must,
among other things, be the product of a globally reliable method or
basis:?If in a case ? one knows P on a basis B, then in any case close
to ? in which one believes a proposition P* close to P on a basis
close to B, P* is true?(Williamson, 2009, p. 325). In light of these
considerations, the CSR objector might have the following
argument in mind:
3) The basis on which the theist believes that God exists is
globally unreliable.
4) Therefore, the belief that God exists is unsafe.
120
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
According to Barrett, theistic belief arose through the interaction of

HADD, MCIs, and other mental tools, ToM in particular. For the sake
of simplicity, let us call this set of mental tools HADD+. On the
simplifying assumption that these constitute a singular basis of
belief, HADD+, so the CSR objector argues, as globally unreliable,
as HADD+ generates many false positives. Hence, the doxastic
products of HADD+ are unsafe. If the above argument is valid,
theistic belief is unsafe.
As discussed earlier, the distinction between individual and
social epistemology must be kept in mind when assessing the CSR
objection. It is unclear who the CSR objector has in mind with this
argument. With respect to the contemporary theist, it is
controversial whether: (i) said theists come to believe that God
exists on the basis of HADD+; or (ii) whether HADD+ is globally
unreliable. Concerning (i), some contemporary theists believe that
God exists either via testimony or as the result of an argument,
neither of which involves HADD+. With respect to (ii), even were
the contemporary theist to believe that God exists on the basis of
HADD+, HADD+ is, at least for us today, globally reliable; that is, we
form more true than false beliefs about agents in our
environments. So the above argument is irrelevant to at least some
contemporary theists.
Suppose, however, we concede the truth of (3) for the
earliest theists because they were using HADD+ in ways that
generated many false positives; that is to say, for these very early
theists, their HADD+ may have been globally unreliable. Therefore,
with respect to these very early theists, the belief that God exists
was unsafe. Given this supposition, the CSR objector might have
the following argument in mind:
5) On the basis of HADD+, some primordial human beings came
to believe that God exists.
121
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
6) In these primordial human beings HADD+ was a globally

unreliable basis for belief.
7) Beliefs produced by globally unreliable methods do not
constitute knowledge.
8) Therefore, these primordial human beings did not know that
God exists.
9) Contemporary theists believe that God exists via testimony
chains originating with these primordial human beings.
10) A testimony chain that does not begin with knowledge
cannot yield knowledge to the recipient at the termination of
that testimony chain.
11) Therefore, contemporary theists don?t know that God exists
via such testimony chains.
The Argument from Testimony Chains seeks to undermine the
epistemic status of theistic belief by identifying its epistemically
suspect causal origins.
As has been conceded, (5)?(8) may indeed be true. And given
that many contemporary theists believe that God exists via
testimony, (9) may be true as well. (10), however, is false. An agent
S2 can safely believe a true proposition p via testimony from an
agent S1 even if S1 does not safely believe p. Consider the
following case from Lackey (2008, p. 48). It is plausible that a child
knows that modern-day Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus
when taught so by her teacher, even though her teacher is a
religious fundamentalist who does not believe that evolution is
true. In this case the child?s belief is safe despite the teacher not
believing that modern-day Homo sapiens evolved from Homo
erectus and therefore not knowing as much (on the assumption that
knowledge entails belief ). Testimony can thus be an epistemically
generative process? it may permit the hearer to gain something
122
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
the speaker lacks.

So much for testimony from one person to another, but what
about testimony chains? Might a testimony chain that originates
with a person who does not safely believe p prevent the person at
the termination of the chain from knowing p? An extrapolation of
the foregoing case proves that safe belief is possible for an agent
at the termination of such a chain. Suppose Billy, one of the
children in the biology class, tells his best friend Jack that
modern-day Homo sapiens evolved from Homo erectus. We take it
that Jack also counts as safely believing that modern-day Homo
sapiens evolved from Homo erectus. And so on. And surely the
contemporary theist, relying on the testimony of her parents or
community, counts as knowing that God exists even if that
testimony chain originated in a primordial ancestor who did not
know that God exists. The Argument from Testimony Chains is
therefore unsound.
In light of these considerations, the CSR objector may
concede that while (10) is not a universally true principle, there are
cases in which it does hold and that the genesis of theistic belief
according to CSR is just such a case. For example, if I truly believe
that the train is about to depart on the basis of testimony from
someone who read a departure schedule riddled with mistakes, it
seems that my belief does not count as safe. The CSR objector
might argue that the contemporary theist is in a similar position if
she believes that God exists based on a testimony chain originating
in an ancestor who came to believe that God exists on the basis of
a globally unreliable method.
There is room to argue, however, that exceptionally long
testimony chains with unsafe origins exhibit some unique
epistemic features. A case can be made for there being a sense in
which the primordial human (S1) is a reliable testifier and as such
the contemporary theist (Sn) can safely believe that God exists
123
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
from a testimony chain originating with S1 even if S1 used the

globally unreliable HADD+ to arrive at theistic belief. For the sake
of argument, consider a case in which S1 holds a set of beliefs
{P,Q,R, ? } and that many of these beliefs are generated by HADD+.
S1 testifies to others a great many of the beliefs she holds overall.
Let us stipulate further that P is the belief that God exists and is
one of the few true beliefs in the set {P,Q,R, ? }. According to the
CSR objector S1 is thus an unreliable testifier. Assume further, and
not unreasonably, that as time passes, humans develop mentally.
As they do, the testimony chains passing along beliefs Q, R,and the
other false beliefs in the set?die out?or?dry up? because people
come to realize that Q,R, etc. are false. We call this feature of long
testimony chains epistemic winnowing; individuals and
communities do not generally pass along information they deem
false. And epistemic winnowing is something we expect others in
our community to be committed to. By the time Sn receives the
testimony that P from a testimony chain originating with S1, there
are no false beliefs from S1?s mouth that are passed along
anymore; if so, from Sn?s perspective, at least, S1 is a reliable
testifier.
One can explain this conclusion in terms of safety: there is
no close world in which Sn falsely believes P or any other
relevantly similar belief by way of a testimony chain originating
with S1. It seems reasonable to us that the case of the
contemporary theist who believes by way of such a long testimony
chain is the beneficiary of epistemic winnowing. Therefore, even if
the testimony chain by which a contemporary theist believes that
God exists has an unsafe genesis, the belief held thereby is safe.
The Argument from Testimony Chains is thus unsuccessful.
Part IV
We have presented two different ways in which CSR might be used
124
Chapter 6
COGNITIVE SCIENCE
to generate an argument towards the conclusion that the belief

that God exists is unsafe. For a number of reasons, each argument
fails. This failure does not entail that belief in God is safe, however.
That conclusion would require a separate consideration of its own.
125
7
INTELLIGENT DESIGN AS
SCIENCE OR
PSEUDOSCIENCE
#

The Intelligent Design Debate and the Temptation of
Scientism
by Erkki Vesa Rope Kojonen.
Learn more
Chapter 7
INTELLIGENT DESIGN DEBATE AS

SCIENCE OR PSEUDOSCIENCE
Excerpted from Intelligent Design Debate and the Temptation of Scientism
In the discussion of cosmological and biological design arguments,

one chief objection to ID?s design-based explanations has been
that they are not scientific. Much energy has been used to discuss
criteria of science like methodological naturalism, testability,
fruitfulness, detailed predictions and so on. In part, the prominence
of the theme is based on the political situation and the debate over
whether it is permissible to teach creationism or ID in public
schools in the United States of America.
The legal strategy for combating the teaching of creationism
in the United States was designed around methodological
naturalism as a requirement of real science. Against the efforts of
creationists to portray ?creation science?and evolution as
competing scientific theories, it was argued that no theory which
appeals to supernatural entities can possibly be science, already by
definition. The definition of science has even been called ?the
philosophical question?in the controversy over creation and
evolution, implying that this question is philosophically more
important than (for example) evaluating the merits of the design
argument or understanding whether the fundamental character of
reality is purposeful or purposeless.
Practical reasons also influence ID?s insistence on the
scientific nature of its design arguments. As noted, the movement
desires cultural influence and public impact. The movement
recognizes the immense cultural authority of ?science?and wants to
reclaim it from naturalists. In challenging the sufficiency of the
scientific theory of evolution and naturalistic philosophy in the
public arena, they want to say that their critique and their
alternative are also scientific. However, ID?s main arguments
against methodological naturalism are based on their
understanding of the nature of science, and their belief that
methodological naturalism unduly restricts science as a search for
true explanations, rather than merely a search for naturalistic
127
Chapter 7

explanations.
In this chapter, I will analyse the controversy over ID and the
definition of science. In the first section I will look at ID?s critique
of methodological naturalism and several ways in which
methodological naturalism has been defended against this critique.
I then move on to consider several possible defences and
formulations of methodological naturalism. I argue that
intellectually responsible defences of methodological naturalism
will not allow us to dismiss the consideration of the more
interesting questions in the debate, such as the evaluation of ID?s
arguments. In the third section of the chapter, I discuss other ways
of differentiating between science and non-science, and argue that
the definition of science is not the central philosophical question
of the debate, unless we accept some kind of scientism ? or unless
we care most about influencing public education than the core
philosophical questions of the debate.
Met hodol ogical nat ural ism and ID?s crit ique
The historical background of methodological naturalism
Methodological naturalism has historical roots extending far
beyond current political controversies. Methodologically
naturalistic science can be broadly construed as a project of
understanding the structure of the universe in terms of natural
causes. It always looks for natural explanations, laws and
mechanisms, rather than resorting to supernatural explanations of
any phenomena. As Ronald Numbers argues, this broad approach
has Christian and even medieval roots. Even in the middle ages,
natural philosophy was guided by a ?preference for natural
explanations over divine mysteries?when dealing with natural
phenomena. It was thought that God had created a rational world,
whose structure was pen to human investigation. Explaining things
by reference to God?s mysterious will was not the default position
128
Chapter 7

of the natural philosophers; rather, they wanted to understand the

natural processes which God had created. Similarly, many
contemporary theists also restrict natural science to the study of
natural causes and adopt methodological naturalism.
The importance of methodological naturalism for the debate
over ID is inherited from the discussion over whether creationism
could qualify as part or science or not. In the 1987 trial over the
teaching of creationism, five main criteria of science were defined:
(1) science is guided by natural law; (2) it explains by reference to
natural law; (3) it is testable against the empirical world; (4) its
conclusions are tentative; and (5) it is falsifiable.3In defining
science as restricted to non-supernatural factors, the courts
followed the testimony of philosopher of science Michael Ruse,
who had argued in his testimony that ?any reliance on a
supernatural force, a Creator intervening in a natural world by
supernatural process, is necessarily not science?.
After the trial, much critical discussion has ensued about
these criteria, and some critics of creationism also argued that they
were not philosophically rigorous, and that it is the definition of
science as a complex philosophical question that cannot be
decided by courts of law. Philosopher of science Larry Laudan in
particular argued that though the banning of creationism was
desirable, the criteria used to demarcate between science and
pseudoscience in the trial were problematic. Laudan argued that
scientific creationism contains much that is testable ? and which
has been tested and found false. Rather than being excluded from
science a priori, creationism should rather be treated as a bad
scientific theory, Laudan argued. However, this was not sufficient
for the legal strategy against creationism or ID: in order for them to
be barred from schools, ID and creationism have to be non-science,
not merely bad science.
In the same collection of articles,But Is It Science, philosopher
129
Chapter 7

Philip Quinn even argues that while there are good arguments
against creationism, these may be too complex, and so ?there may
well be circumstances in which only the bad effective argument
will work against them in the political or legal arenas. If there are,
then I think, though I come to this conclusion reluctantly, it is
morally permissible for us to use the bad effective argument?. As
Bradley Monton has commented, this strategy is unfortunate. We
should seek for the truth and reject bad arguments, even if they are
expedient.To that end, I will go on to consider some critiques and
defences of methodological naturalism.
ID?s designer and the critique of methodological naturalism
Methodological naturalism was used as a weapon against
creationism, and so it has also been used as an argument against
understanding ID as part of the natural sciences. To defend the
scientific nature of their argumentation, proponents of ID have
responded by criticizing methodological naturalism. As I pointed
out in Chapters 3 and 4, proponents of ID argue that cosmology
and biology provide data which point to purposeful design as the
explanation. The structure of the argument is often aimed to show
that the design argument utilizes the best methods used in
historical science, such as the inference to the best explanation.
Proponents of ID argue that their design argument is analogous to
forensic sciences, archaeology and the search for extraterrestrial
intelligence (SETI), and as such should also be accepted as
scientific.
It is somewhat curious why methodological naturalism
should be an issue in the debate, since as noted, proponents of ID
typically insist that their designer does not have to be
supernatural. While Johnson?s early argumentation in Darwin on
Trial critiqued the way methodological naturalism bars
supernatural design from science, later ID writings have
130
Chapter 7

emphasized that design can be detected without knowing anything

about whether the designer is supernatural or not, and without
reliance on prior religious beliefs. The idea that ID does not require
supernaturalism is common in the ID literature. Dembski, Behe and
Meyer all emphasize that ID does not violate the rule against
supernatural agents, because ID?s designer is not identified as
supernatural, and indeed the question of the designer?s identity
cannot be settled by the scientific evidence.
One way in which methodological naturalism could be
relevant is if it is very difficult to avoid the conclusion that the
designer must be somehow supernatural. The question of the
designer?s identity arises immediately, and the religious
interpretation is a plausible one. (I will come back to these issues
in Chapter 6). But the ID movement insists that it is cogent to
separate the design argument and the identification of the
designer as a supernatural identity. The movement criticizes
methodological naturalism rather because it understands the
restriction to bar all kinds of intelligent causes from the natural
sciences, not merely supernatural ones.
Proponents of ID even agree that the natural sciences are
predominantly a search for natural causes. For example, Behe
argues that even if supernatural designers were allowed in science,
?the fear of the supernatural popping up everywhere in science is
vastly overblown. If my graduate student came into my office and
said that the angel of death killed her bacterial culture, I would be
disinclined to believe her?. According to Behe, belief in a rational,
understandable, law-bound universe is not threatened by belief in
a Creator, but is something that religion and science can agree on.
However, Behe argues that science should be a search for truth,
and it should also allow design as an explanation when that is
warranted by the evidence: ?I count as ?scientific? any conclusion
that relies heavily and exclusively on detailed physical evidence,
131
Chapter 7

plus standard logic. No relying on holy books or prophetic dreams.

Just the data about nature that is publicly available in journals and
books, plus standard modes of reasoning?. For ID, the debate is
about the freedom of science to follow the evidence, and
methodological naturalism is understood to be an obstacle to the
search for truth.
The freedom of science and the freedom of the creator
The critique of methodological naturalism has been a hallmark of
ID?s argumentation from the beginning. Johnson argued already in
his Darwin on Trial that the naturalistic ground rules of science
have led to a far too positive view of the powers of Darwinian
evolution. According to Johnson, defenders of naturalism ?enforce
rules of procedure that preclude opposing points of view?. Johnson
argues that methodological naturalism actually assumes a
philosophical, naturalistic understanding of the world. Science
must be understood as a search for the truth. If methodologically
naturalistic science only searches for natural explanations, then
this must be because it is assumes that only naturalistic
explanations are true. Otherwise it would make no sense to restrict
the search for truth to merely naturalistic explanations, Johnson
argues.
In this way, Johnson argues that methodological naturalism
is not actually religiously neutral at all. In contrast to
methodological naturalism, Johnson proposed an alternative
?theistic realist?framework for science. This theistic realism would
be an open investigation of nature, allowing that God has created
nature in an orderly fashion to be studied scientifically. In natural
history, God could have used evolutionary mechanisms, or he could
have acted miraculously. Johnson has a strong theological
preference for any option which allows us to have evidence of
divine action in history. However, neither evolution nor
132
Chapter 7

creationism is to be barred from science on a priori grounds (as

Johnson believes is done in methodological naturalism), but only
on the basis of empirical investigation.
Johnson?s emphasis on the independence of God from the
world and his ability to create any sort of world is reminiscent of
the medieval debates on the logic of ?possible worlds?. Pierre
Duhem dates the beginning of the scientific revolution as 7 March
1277, when a set of theses of Aristotelian physics was condemned
as wrongfully imposing limits on God?s omnipotence. Duhem
argued that this led to the rise of empirical science, because now
Christians could not discover how God had created the world based
just on philosophical first principles but had to rely on empirical
observations and experiments. This type of theistic background
assumption can also be identified in many of the founders of
modern science, such as Francis Bacon and Isaac Newton, and it is
commonly referred to in the theology and science discussion.
Johnson?s novel argument is to apply this reasoning also to the
creation/ evolution debate.
Later proponents of ID typically do not emphasize the
aforementioned theological framework in just the same way.
Though the idea of theistic science has found other defenders,
mostly the ID literature does not discuss theistic realism as the
alternative framework to methodological naturalism. Rather, the
proponents of ID generally argue only that the foundational
assumptions of science do not require that no intelligent designers
have acted in history. The assumption remains the same as in
Johnson?s argument: it could be that design is actually the true
explanation of the development of biological species.
This is argued to be a serious possibility that should not be
dismissed a priori from scientific consideration but should be
allowed to compete with non-purposeful explanations. Suppose
that the actions of an intelligent creator are in reality responsible
133
Chapter 7

for the origin of life and much of its development, and that there
are real ?gaps?in the capabilities of natural processes nature. In this
case, reliance purely on the results of methodologically naturalistic
science would produce a false picture of the history of life, because
it could not even in principle recognize this being?s role and the
really existing limits of naturalistic processes. In such a case,
science would lead us away from the truth. Proponents of ID argue
that this can be avoided by giving up methodological naturalism.
Def ending met hodol ogical nat ural ism
The ID movement?s critique of methodological naturalism
generally assumes that methodological naturalism means an a
priori restriction barring the use of supernatural or teleological
explanations from the natural sciences. Proponents of ID generally
also operate on the premise that methodological naturalism is not
credible in any traditional theistic framework, because theism
allows that God could have acted in natural history. However, in
the literature responding to the ID movement, there are different
strategies for defending methodological naturalism, not all of
which are vulnerable to ID?s critique.
Strong methodological naturalism
In its critiques of methodological naturalism, ID mainly criticizes
methodological naturalism as an a priori restriction on what kinds
of explanations are allowed in science. This kind of strong form of
methodological naturalism does indeed exist, and it has indeed
been a central part of the legal strategy against creationism and ID.
For instance, Ruse, whose testimony was pivotal in the creationism
trial of 1987, defines methodological naturalism as the claim that
?any reliance on a supernatural force, a Creator intervening in a
natural world by supernatural process, is necessarily not science?.
This means that excluding design from the natural sciences is not
134
Chapter 7

done only after evaluating the evidence, but based on the

definition of science and based on logic. Sometimes critics of ID
have stated this outright very strongly: ?even if all the data point to
an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from
science because it is not naturalistic. Of course the scientist, as an
individual, is free to embrace a reality that transcends naturalism?.
On this understanding, science is simply by definition a search for
natural explanations. Science is concerned with understanding the
natural causal structure of the cosmos, and its methods are
unsuited for discussing theological and philosophical questions,
such as whether nature is ultimately purposeful or not.
Proponents of ID argue that this kind of strong
methodological naturalism can only be defended if we assume that
there are in reality no intelligent or supernatural causes acting in
nature. Otherwise it would be misleading. This is indeed one
possible way of defending strong methodological naturalism. If we
assume that nature is all there is, or at least that God has no effect
on the world, then there should not be any need to consider
supernatural explanations within science (or anywhere else really).
However, this cannot be the only way to defend methodological
naturalism, since it was initially formulated in a theistic framework.
Furthermore, philosophical naturalism or deism are not obviously
true worldviews, nor are they universally accepted by scientists. So
this kind of defence of methodological naturalism would not be
persuasive for all. Furthermore, in order to defend philosophical
naturalism in a dialogue with other views, the non-existence of a
God who acts in history cannot be simply assumed, but must be
argued. And part of this process should also involve the detailed
examination of arguments for design, such as those presented in
natural theology and ID.
135
Chapter 7

Theological defences of strong methodological naturalism

However, methodological naturalism can also be defended
theologically. For example, John Haught argues that theologies of
nature can incorporate the findings of natural science, but that it
would be mistaken to use design as an explanation on the same
level as natural science functions. According to Haught, theological
accounts of nature are rather concerned with the ultimate
character of reality, rather than operating on the level of scientific
theories: ?theology would have the role of ultimate explanation in
an extended hierarchy of explanations that includes, and does not
in any way compete with, scientific accounts?. This type of
hierarchical understanding of the relationship of different
disciplines is very common in the theology and science community:
each discipline is understood to have its own territory, to which its
methods are best suited. While there can be overlap and dialogue
between the disciplines, investigating questions of natural science
with the methods of the humanities or theology is not likely to be
fruitful. Rather, references to supernatural design should take
place outside the sciences, in theology and philosophy. And so,
methodological naturalism within the natural sciences could be
quite justified also for theists.
Does this defence evade ID?s critique of methodological
naturalism? Suppose that it were indeed a true fact about the
world that God created life through a miracle and that the origin of
life would have been impossible otherwise. Suppose further that
we can construct a good argument showing that design is the most
credible explanation for the origin of life. Would it then be
problematic to exclude design from science and instead say that
some objectively very unlikely naturalistic hypothesis is the best
scientific explanation for the origin of life? It could well be that the
created reality does not respect the boundaries of scientific
136
Chapter 7

disciplines as they are understood in the theology and science

community model.
In my judgement, the aforementioned form of
methodological naturalism can avoid this criticism, as long as we
do not adopt scientism. We do not have to assume that the general
criteria for good explanations are exactly the same as the criteria
for good scientific explanations. If we do not restrict rationality to
the natural sciences, then it is completely fine that often the best
explanation for some phenomenon will lie outside the range of the
natural sciences. Psychological and theological explanations, for
example, might be best studied by methods outside the natural
sciences. If we respect the idea that there are valid disciplines
other than the natural sciences, then each question should belong
to the domain of the discipline that can best study the question,
though often a question might require input from several different
disciplines. On this kind of understanding, the inability of the
natural sciences to refer to personal explanations is no more
problematic than the inability of psychologists to study quantum
mechanics.
However, one problem (or benefit, depending on your
viewpoint) of this defence of methodological naturalism is that it
does not allow us to bypass discussion of ID?s arguments. This is
because there is no a priori criterion for determining where the
precise limits of the disciplines are and what kind of methods are
best suited for studying which question. Rather, the boundaries of
disciplines have been historically fluid and changing. The proper
domains of each discipline have not been written for us in an
infallible holy revelation, but must be decided as we go, based on
our previous experience of what kinds of methods work in
answering these particular kinds of questions. So, we could in
principle discover that the origin of life, for example, is better
explained when we use methods of design detection, such as those
137
Chapter 7

used in archaeology or SETI, rather than the methods we normally

use in methodologically naturalistic biological research. So, even
though this kind of methodological naturalism allows us to banish
ID from the natural sciences, this does not mean stopping ID?s
arguments altogether.
Here the discussion comes down to how good the arguments
for various views are, and in the end cannot be settled simply by
reference to the traditional boundaries of disciplines (as valuable
as these are). If we think that biological problems are properly a
realm where strong methodological naturalism applies, we have to
present arguments for why we think this is so. These arguments
will have to show why it is likely that we will find naturalistic
explanations for all biological problems, and why things like ID?s
critiques fail to overturn these naturalistic explanations. So,
approaching some problem as an issue best suited to study by
methodologically naturalistic natural sciences should not be a
dogmatically held position, but a working assumption and the
result of the evaluation of our knowledge of that problem.
The strong form of methodological naturalism outlined
above holds that the natural sciences are by definition a search for
natural causes. I have argued that this is not a problematic position,
as long as it is not coupled with scientism, where rationality and
the possibility for knowledge about the natural world are restricted
to the natural sciences. Together with scientism, methodological
naturalism would indeed be the kind of ideological position that ID
proponents criticize, because this would mean that the entire
possibility of design-like explanations is barred from
consideration. In order to be defensible, methodologically
naturalistic science must in principle be able to have boundaries,
outside of which other methods and disciplines are the better
source of true beliefs. If ID proponents were to adopt this
understanding, they could well present ID more as a way of
138
Chapter 7

challenging the mainstream understanding of where these

boundaries lie, rather than as a violation of methodological
naturalism as such.
Moderate methodological naturalism
In the debate over ID, not all who defend methodological
naturalism have understood it as an a priori restriction against
intelligent causes in the natural sciences. Rather, some have
argued that the natural sciences are in principle open to creationist
and design-based explanations, if the evidence is good. On this
understanding, methodological naturalism merely means a
preference for natural, non-teleological explanations, rather than
an absolute exclusion of them from the sciences. ID?s exclusion
from the natural sciences is based on the failure of its arguments,
rather than on definitions. For example, Phillip Kitcher argues that
ID does qualify as science, and that even methodologically
naturalistic science can be open to evidence of design. However,
he goes on to argue that ID is bad 18th-century science which has
been superseded and refuted by the developments of science after
that.28Niall Shanks similarly argues that ?the methodological
naturalist will not simply rule hypotheses about supernatural
causes out of court?.
Methodological naturalists of this type (which I will now term
?moderate methodological naturalism?) can maintain a critical
openness to design arguments within science, while nevertheless
favouring natural explanations. This type of methodological
naturalism avoids the central point of the ID?s critique, because it
does not rule out the question of design based purely on a priori
criteria before considering the evidence and the quality of the
arguments. Proponents of ID could also themselves be classified as
moderate methodological naturalists, since they also believe that
science is predominantly in the business of studying the operation
139
Chapter 7

of natural, unintelligent causes. Moderate methodological

naturalism can allow for defending or rejecting ID based on what
the evidence supports.
In contrast to proponents of ID, some adopt moderate
methodological naturalism for the purpose of arguing against
theological claims with the authority of science. If theological
claims were a part of science, then scientific methods would be
suitable for evaluating ? and rejecting ? theology. Thus ID critics
Maarten Boudry, Stefaan Blancke and Johan Braeckman argue that
there are many ideas about the supernatural that scientific results
could in principle corroborate or contradict: ?not only in the life
sciences, but also in other domains of inquiry, paranormal
researchers and sceptics have investigated extraordinary claims
which, if corroborated, would substantiate the existence of
immaterial and supernatural entities?such as ghosts and
extra-sensory perception. According to Boudry, Blancke and
Braeckman, sceptics who restrict science from evaluating
supernatural explanations give up their most powerful weapon in
the fight against superstition and nonsense. It is important to be
able to say that we can scientifically test and falsify some such
claims. However, this also means admitting that science could in
principle also corroborate them.
On t he dif f icul t ies of def ining science
Some problems of demarcation criteria
There have also been attempts to refer to criteria other than
methodological naturalism in order to show that ID is not science.
However, the question of demarcation is notoriously difficult and
unsolved. As philosopher Yujin Nagasawa notes, ?it is much more
difficult to show that intelligent design is not science as to show
that it has not been established as a good viable scientific theory?.
It is difficult to find a criterion which could be used to definitely
140
Chapter 7

rule out design-based explanation from biology. For example,

suppose that only observable entities can be referenced in
scientific theories. Because the ?intelligent designer?has not been
observed, ID would then not be a part of science. But this is
problematic, because the natural sciences typically allow for
indirect observation and theories, which allows scientific status for
the Big Bang theory, belief in electrons and so on. Or consider
falsifiability as a criterion of science. One problem is that the core
of theories can seldom be falsified directly: theories can often be
amended to explain anomalies, and tests require the addition of
auxiliary hypotheses to the theory. Ratzsch argues that even a
hypothesis of supernatural design can have such testable parts,
though the designer?s existence cannot be falsified directly.
Discussion of various demarcation criteria has shown that it
is very difficult to formulate a strict boundary between science and
pseudoscience. However, this difficulty does not show that we
cannot say anything about what makes the quality of a scientific
theory good or bad. Evaluating the virtues of scientific
explanations or the values of science instead of absolute criteria
seems a more promising approach. Testability (including predictive
power), coherence with existing scientific theory, fruitfulness in
opening up further avenues of research, simplicity and other
criteria allow us to judge the scientific quality of competing
theories and research programs. Using scientific virtues as criteria
of judging the best explanation, one could (for example) argue that
naturalistic theories of natural history are scientifically more
virtuous than the competing research program of ID. It is also
possible to argue that though there are problems with naturalistic
understandings of the world, ID represents a larger revision of
science than these anomalies require. Thus, even if design were
admitted as a possible part of science, one could continue to argue
against it. In contrast, proponents of ID can claim that their design
141
Chapter 7

argument provides a more virtuous scientific explanation of the

data than naturalistic explanations.
Personal explanations and science
Another fruitful way to evaluate ID?s scientific status would be to
ask what disciplines it has most analogies with. Is it with the
natural sciences or perhaps more with the humanities, philosophy
or theology? Even if drawing absolute boundaries between science
and pseudoscience, or between various disciplines of science is
difficult, we can still usually quite naturally think that some
questions are more suited to the methods of the humanities and
others more to the methods of the natural sciences. ID makes use
of personal explanations, which are quite different from those
typically used in the natural sciences. For example, Collins argues
that scientific explanations typically possess scientific tractability:
they are highly detailed, with references to laws, mechanisms and
the minutest details of the systems being investigated. Science
also does not provide explanations for everything ? for example, it
is difficult to specify a mechanism explaining why gravity works
the way it does. However, in general, an attempt is made for
investigating natural phenomena in detail.
By contrast, explanations by reference to intentionality do
not include this level of mechanical detail. Theistic intentional
explanations typically do not involve any specification about the
mechanism by which God creates the laws of nature, for example.
Indeed no such mechanism needs to be given, since according to
the hypothesis God can bring about any result he chooses without
any need for intermediate second causes. Both theistic natural
theology and ID require that intentional activity as a cause itself
possesses some explanatory power, even without specification of
any particular mechanistic process the designer worked through.
Furthermore, while intentional explanations seem to work on
142
Chapter 7

a different level than mechanistic explanations, this does not mean

that they have no explanatory power. Like natural theologians, ID
proponent Meyer also references the example of human design as
one basis of this claim. In the case of humans, we cannot yet
specify how our consciousness and will influence the molecules of
our bodies, but we nevertheless believe that our consciousness has
an effect in the world, and that references to human design can be
explanatory. In addition, we can typically detect that something is
designed by humans without being able to specify how these
humans do so. We could also state that in all explanations there
comes a point where we reach the level of basic causal powers and
are unable to specify further intermediate mechanisms.
This does show that design can be explanatory even without
precise knowledge of mechanisms. However, in the case of human
designers, we do typically have at least some idea of how the
designed objects were produced (or how they could have been
produced) in practice. The possibility to investigate such details
further is a good thing for the hypothesis, though it is not
unconceivable that a hypothesis could not have explanatory power
even if further details about the cause cannot yet be investigated.
If personal explanation is indeed explanatory, it is not necessarily a
fatal flaw for it that personal explanations are different from
mechanistic explanations. Even a vague hypothesis could in
principle be the most plausible one and could provide us with
valuable knowledge. Following Aristotle, it could be argued that
there may be great value in even a glimpse of ?celestial things?:
?half glimpse of persons we love is more delightful than an
accurate view of other things?. But such glimpses are quite
different from what are usually considered to be scientific
theories. If ID were to be admitted as natural science, at least we
would have to argue that this would be a quite different type of
science, applying methods of design detection to subjects that
143
Chapter 7

have traditionally been the domain of the natural sciences.

Because of ID?s combination of methods from the natural
sciences and the humanities, it may be too restrictive to think of ID
simply as either part of the natural sciences, or as pseudoscience.
Rather, one could believe that part of ID?s argument is part of the
natural sciences, part some other kind of science and part that is
better characterized as philosophical. For example, Collins argues
that the difficulty of developing the basic idea of an intelligent
designer into a detailed scientific theory makes it disanalogous
with the best scientific theories. Thus it is better thought of as a
philosophical idea than a scientific theory. However, Collins goes
on to argue that the idea of a designer could still function as a
background assumption of a ?metascientific?research program of
intelligent design. This research program could then include many
parts (for example, the question of the exact limits of Darwinian
evolutionary mechanisms) which can be investigated scientifically
and others which are better characterized as philosophical
arguments (such as the design argument).
Words have socially agreed upon meanings. If the generally
agreed on meaning of the words ?natural science?excludes
design-based ideas, then that means that ID is not natural science
as a semantic matter. However, socially agreed upon meanings do
change over time and over cultures, and current meanings of the
words have their own complex history. For example, continental
Europeans usually also define the humanities as ?sciences?,
whereas Anglo-American thinkers are more likely to mean only the
natural sciences with the term. In any case, definitions cannot
settle the questions that form the more substantive content of the
debate. If we were to accept scientism, then the definition of
science would indeed be the central philosophical question of the
discussion on ID. But we can recognize the immense success of the
natural sciences without believing that science is the only reliable
144
Chapter 7

way to gain knowledge, or even that scientific theories are in every

case better or more reliable than common experience, theology or
philosophy. Because of this, the quality of the arguments for
different points of view is the crucial thing to be analysed, rather
than the status of these arguments as science or non-science.
Different reasons for rejecting ID
Related to the discussion on methodological naturalism, Gregory
Dawes makes a useful distinction between ?in principle?and ?in
practice?reasons for rejecting theistic explanations. ?In principle?
reasons would be reasons for excluding theistic explanations from
ever being good explanations (within science or otherwise) and ?in
practice?reasons are based on the actual successfulness of theistic
explanations. If theistic explanation and design can never be
acceptable explanations, then natural explanations are the only
acceptable game in town not only within science but also outside
of science. However, if theistic explanations are good, then it can
be rational to believe in them, whether they are scientific or not.
In my analysis of strong and moderate methodological
naturalism, I have argued that defending methodological
naturalism against ID?s critique cannot be done in a way that allows
us to bypass considering ID?s arguments entirely. Under both
strong and moderate forms of methodological naturalism, we need
to be able to argue that phenomena like the origin and evolution of
life are likely to be best explained on the level of the natural
sciences without invoking designers.
This type of rejection of a priori arguments against ID is also
implicit in all accounts in which the rise of Darwinian evolutionary
theory is seen as the central reason why biological design
arguments can now be rejected. For example, cosmologist Sean M.
Carroll writes that ?A few centuries ago, for example, it would have
been completely reasonable to observe the complexity and
145
Chapter 7

subtlety exhibited in the workings of biological creatures, and

conclude that such intricacy could not possibly have arisen by
chance, but must instead be attributed to the plan of the Creator.
The advent of Darwin?s theory of evolution, featuring descent with
modification and natural selection, provided a mechanism by
which such apparently improbable configurations could have
arisen via innumerable gradual changes?. This implies that without
Darwinian evolutionary biology, design would still be the best
explanation for biological order. This assumes that design
possesses at least some rationality as an explanation and cannot be
dismissed on a priori grounds just by invoking the definition of
science. At the very least, we need to argue that the generally
agreed upon boundaries of scientific disciplines reflect the
historical success of certain methods in answering certain types of
questions.
Summary
In the debate over ID, much energy has been used to debate
whether ID can qualify as natural science or not. I identified several
different ways to exclude ID from science. Strong methodological
naturalism requires that theistic explanations will in principle
always lack some essential characteristic that is required of
scientific explanations. Moderate methodological naturalists can
admit that design-based explanations can in principle possess
explanatory power even within issues normally studied by natural
science, but argue that these cases are exceptional or non-existent.
Defining ?natural science?in a universally valid way has proven to
be a highly difficult philosophical problem. It is much easier to
argue that an idea like ID is bad science than to argue that it is not
science at all. Comparing ideas to other, readily accepted scientific
theories can also help draw out some differences between ID and
what is usually understood natural science.
146
Chapter 7

However, once we reject scientism, we should realize that

there are also questions that are better studied by methods other
than those typically used in the natural sciences. For example,
methods of design detection are important in studying human
culture and artefacts. The precise boundaries within disciplines are
best based on our experience of what kinds of methods actually
work in increasing understanding in each area. There is no a priori
way to determine that methods of design detection could not in
principle also provide the most understanding in problems like the
origin of life. The superiority of methodologically naturalistic
science in investigating these problems needs to be argued, rather
than assumed a priori. Because of this, methodological naturalism
will not ultimately allow us to avoid giving ID a hearing, if ID?s
arguments are otherwise good.
It is my belief that the overt focus on the demarcation
question in the debate reflects the cultural influence of scientism.
Science has enormous cultural authority, and proponents of ID
wish to be able to claim it for their ideas. But in the long term, it
would perhaps be more prudent to also question the undervaluing
of non-scientific ideas in our broader culture. If the problematic
nature of scientism became more widely known, perhaps
proponents and critics of ID would feel less pressure to argue
about the definition of science and could instead concentrate on
more interesting questions, such as the evaluation of the
arguments themselves. The quality of our arguments and the
reliability of our conclusions is far more important than the labels
we give them.
147

Religion and Science Freebook

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Religion and Science Freebook

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Religion and Science Freebook

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

A ROUTLEDGE FREEBOOK

Religion and Science

1 - The Basic Question: Science or Religion or Science and Religion

2 - Islam and Science from The Routledge Companion to Religion

3 - The Cognitive Sciences: A Brief Introduction for Science and

4 - Towards a Cognitive Science that Doesn't Alienate Everyone

5 - Religious Power and Knowledge from Science and Religion: One

6 - Knowledge and the Objection to Religious Belief from

7 - Intelligent Design as Science or Pseudoscience? from The

SAVE 20% AND FREE SHIPPING WITH DISCOUNT CODE LMT02*

This FreeBook brings together a selection of chapters from across our

This chapter is excerpted from

THE BASIC QUESTION

THE DEBATE THAT NO ONE CAN AVOID

THE BASIC QUESTION

or divergence from scientific results.

THE BASIC QUESTION

Based on the sacred scriptures of their particular tradition (the

THE BASIC QUESTION

Theist: Religion is one of the oldest and most notable features of

THE BASIC QUESTION

human life turns on questions like these, questions about the

THE BASIC QUESTION

metaphysics (in this case, belief in God) without doing metaphysics,

THE BASIC QUESTION

fine tuning of the universe provides prima facie evidence of deistic

THE BASIC QUESTION

scientific age, shouldn?t we try to learn as much as we can from the

THE BASIC QUESTION

If we did turn to metaphysics, however, I would side with

THE BASIC QUESTION

evidence that science is now helping to establish how unique many

THE BASIC QUESTION

as Thomas Hobbes wrote in the seventeenth century. But biology

THE BASIC QUESTION

that; even the possibility of miracles occurring would make science

THE BASIC QUESTION

scientific data and theories themselves with their own

THE BASIC QUESTION

means that you employ. God can only be known through

THE BASIC QUESTION

His understanding of God and the created world drew significantly

THE BASIC QUESTION

were. Instead of black and white connections, we will find a world

QUESTIONS FOR REFLECTION AND DISCUSSION

THE BASIC QUESTION

conflicting assumptions. Can you identify some of these

This chapter is excerpted from

ISLAM AND SCIENCE

In studying the relation between science and religion in the greater

ISLAM AND SCIENCE

meaning and significance of religion.

ISLAM AND SCIENCE

various Greek, Persian, and Indian writings into Arabic, making

ISLAM AND SCIENCE

successors. The main points of debate concerned the Mutazilite

ISLAM AND SCIENCE

The Mihna/ trial was terminated in 848 with an apparent

ISLAM AND SCIENCE