6 - The significance of the natural experience of a “non-natural” world to the question of the origin of religion

Summary

Human cognitive capacities and the problem of the supernatural

Many students in the field of religious studies who have adopted a “cognitive science of religion” approach to understanding religious phenomena seem to think that once we have come to understand the brain as a collection of cognitive capacities, formed in our evolutionary development for dealing with the data-processing needs in relationship both to our physical and social environments, that we can then easily provide a naturalistic, empirical account of the emergence and transmission of religious ideas and beliefs. Although I have no doubt that the cognitive sciences are essential to achieving a naturalistic explanation of religion, I have not found such accounts for the mind's move from the natural to the supernatural realm simply in terms of such cognitive capacities as a “theory of mind” (ToM), a hyperactive agency detection device (HADD), an innate dualism, and the innateness of teleological thinking and the like, persuasive. Such human cognitive capacities — mechanisms by which the mind obtains knowledge of the world – make it possible to conceive of supernatural powers or beings, and may even “predispose” us to becoming religious, but I do not see how that sheer possibility actually generates a “mental” move from the natural to the supernatural. It seems to me, that is, that something more than the ordinary natural world is a necessary condition for that “predisposition to religion” to be effected; a set of conditions that necessitates a tweaking of the normal human cognitive capacity humans have for detecting agency in the environment that ultimately amounts to a radical transformation of the ordinary everyday notion of agency into supernatural agency.