often imply a different choice of the boundaries of the system. Thus it
could be meaningful to study the mind in the context of the brain for
some purpose and consider perceptual information (including mes-
sages to and from parts of the body) as external inputs and outputs. At
the other end of the spectrum, a group of humans and objects (and
artifacts) can be studied as a single system if this yields new insights.1.3 COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGIONDuring the last two and a half decades, insights from cognitive science
appeared in the study of religion. Starting with a handful of pioneering studies,
a new interdisciplinary research area emerged gradually that became known as
the Cognitive Science of Religion. In this section, I offer a short introduction to
the field, discussing some of its foundational studies and theories. More
detailed presentations of the relevant theories will follow across various
chapters of this book.
Anthropologist Stewart Guthrie (1980, 1993) has to be credited with thefirst
attempt to formulate a cognitive theory of religion. Guthrie developed the
argument that religion is rooted in an anthropomorphic interpretation of our
environment. By far the most important factor in the human environment,
Guthrie argued, is other human beings. The benefits of recognizing humans and
human activity in the environment are great and the risk of ignoring them is
huge. As a result, we prefer to use cognitive models that evolved for interacting
with humans to make sense of a wide range of perceptions: we interpret noises,
shapes, and other information as traces of human presence and activity. The
most important human-like feature of the gods is the use of symbolic commu-
nication. Although the gods do not necessarily have human-like forms, they
interact with humans through language or some allied system of symbols. In
sum, according to Guthrie (1993, p. 178),“God or gods consist of seeing the
world as humanlike.”
In their monographs entitledRethinking Religion(Lawson & McCauley,
1990) andBrining Ritual to Mind(McCauley & Lawson, 2002), E. Thomas
Lawson and Robert N. McCauley asked how the human mind represents
rituals and what this implies for their structure. They answered these ques-
tions by putting forward the Ritual Form Theory. According to Lawson and
McCauley, the human mind represents actions in terms of an agent acting on a
patient with the help of an instrument. For example, John (agent) hits (action)
the ball (patient) with a bat (instrument). Unlike in ordinary actions, however,
in a ritual one of these components is connected to a superhuman agent (god).
For example, in baptism a priest (connected to God by ordination) baptizes an
infant (or adult in certain denominations) with the help of water. This is an
16 Cognitive Science and the New Testament