, super-human who lives in the sky. Recent empirical research on the development of these concepts may suggest an alternative hypothesis. In this paper, we review this research and outline the "preparedness hypothesis," which suggests that children may be cognitively equipped to understand some properties of God in a non-anthropomorphic way.
Advertisement
Content uploaded by Justin L. Barrett
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Justin L. Barrett on May 19, 2016
Content may be subject to copyright.
-... Thus, Bar ett and co lea ues claimed, when the fo k likewise attribute these human-like limitations to these supernatural agents, they are providing an anthropomorphized, theologica ly incor ect representation. This view of anthropomorphism toward supernatural agent concepts has been widely influential in CSR as it has sur eptitiously ap eared and been adopted in much subsequent research (Bar ett, 2012; Bar ett and Richert, 2003;Bar ett et al., 2001;Heiphetz et al., 2016;Heiphetz et al., 2018;Knight et al., 2004;Lane et al., 2010;Shtulman, 2008;Shtulman and Lindeman, 2016;Slone, 2007). This is largely because CSR researchers have retained a near laser focus on the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God to the neglect of a l others....... Another group of CSR scholars ar ues that God concepts themselves are not, contrary to received wisdom (Piaget, 1929), based on anthropomorphism but rather on a general intentional agent conceptual template which does not assume any human-like limitations on the agent given that, in our evolutionary environment, agents come with a variety of nonhuman-like abilities (Bar ett and Richert, 2003;Bar ett et al., 2001;Knight et al., 2004;Richert et al., 2016a;Richert et al., 2016b;Richert and Smith, 2010;Shtulman and Lindeman, 2016). God is nonhuman-like inasmuch as it is not restricted by a body, time, or space....This article reviews and discusses the various ways by which researchers in the cognitive science of religion have empirically demonstrated that neurotypical humans (a.k.a., the folk) represent supernatural agents through the cognitive analogical processes of anthropomorphism. These include attributing a human-like mind, human-like physical and mental limitations, and human-like sociability. Additionally, the article points to several problematic issues that CSR must needs address, such as how to better demarcate when the folk are anthropomorphizing versus simply attributing agency, and how CSR's insistence that the folk represents supernatural agents as disembodied minds places it at odds with the overwhelming and devastating evidence to the contrary. Keywords: anthropomorphism, supernatural agent representations, theory of mind, embodiment.
-... CSR-scholars provide many accounts of cognitive processes, mechanisms, and faculties they allege to be involved in religious belief-formation and behavior, some of which we dealt with at length in the previous chapter. Scholars for example study agency-detection (Maij, Van Schie, andVan Elk, 2019, Van Leuwen andVan Elk, 2018), the memorability of MCI concepts (for example, Barrett and Nyhof, 2001, see also the review in Ch. 2, section 5), how religious activities affect brain-activity (Schjoedt, 2009 provides a review), and conceptual development in children (Kelemen, 2004, Barrett andRichert, 2003). The focus in CSR on proximate issues is also evident from the entries in the introduction to this field Slone and McCorcle (2019) provide, which presents empirical studies that have been influential....All over the world people form beliefs about superhuman agents such as gods, ancestor-spirits, ghosts, angels, and demons. A culturally successful god-concept is found in the Abrahamic religions, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. This concept involves the notion of a powerful, moralizing deity. A field known as the “Cognitive Science of Religion” (CSR) purports to explain these phenomena by combining evolutionary theory, cognitive science, and anthropology. Scholars in this field focus on the origin of god-concepts in human natural history and on the nuts and bolts of religion today, such as processes by which the mind constructs god-concepts and forms religious beliefs. Let us suppose that this enterprise is successful and that central contributions are true or at least approximately true. What normative implications does that have for theism, theistic arguments, and theistic beliefs? The thesis is a detailed investigation of this question.
-... La idea es posteriormente elaborada por Barrett & Richert (2003), quienes a partir del estudio del desarrollo del conceptode....
The Cognitive Science of Religion is an interdisciplinary research field born in the 1990s. It combines different disciplines and methods, united by the common interest of explaining the cognitive processes underlying religious beliefs and practices, and situating them in the natural evolutionary history of the human species. In the current article, the essential features of this interdisciplinary field will be described, including a presentation of two of its most important research foci: the epidemiology of religious beliefs, and the cognitive study of religious rituals. Both lines of research are concerned with how religious ideas and practices interact with memory and other cognitive processes, trying to explain the widespread occurrence of religious phenomena around the world.Ismael ApudIstvan Czachesz
-... La idea es posteriormente elaborada por Barrett & Richert (2003), quienes a partir del estudio del desarrollo del concepto de....Istvan CzacheszIsmael Apud’ human and nonhuman agent beliefs. Both settings were secular, but the latter comprised a Muslim majority. Children were given a false-belief (unexpected contents) task in which they were asked to infer about three humans (mother, classmate, teacher), three animals (dog, bear, bird) and three supernatural beings (Superman, fairy, God). Similar false beliefs about humans, with subtle differences in inferences about animals and supernatural beings, were found between the two locations. In London different patterns for God between participants with a family religion, in particular Muslims, and non-affiliates, were identified as well as an association between religious beliefs and practice and inferences about God. Findings are discussed in the light of theory and research on the role of sociocultural inputs in children’s theory of mind development and understanding of agency.Virginia LamSilvia Guerrero
The attribution of human traits to non-humans - animals, artifacts or even natural events - is an attitude, deeply grounded in human mind. It is frequent to see children addressing dolls and figures as if they were alive. Adults often attribute mental states and emotions to animals. In everyday life humans speak of events such as fires as if they possessed some form of intentionality, a behavior sometimes shared also by scientists. Furthermore, a systematized form of anthropomorphism underlies most religions. The pervasiveness of this phenomenon makes it a particularly interesting object of psychological enquiry. Psychologists have set out to understand which aspects of human mind are involved in this behavior, its motivations and the circumstances favoring its enactment. Moreover, there is an ongoing debate among scientists about the merits or harm of anthropomorphism in the scientific study of animal behavior and in scientific discourse. Despite the interest and the specificity of the topic most of the relevant studies are scattered across disciplines and have not built a systematic research framework. This observation has motivated the collection of articles presented here, under the unifying perspective of the cognitive underpinnings of anthropomorphism. Within this general umbrella, the authors included in this e-book have explored the issues mentioned above from different points of view. From their work it emerges that far from being the result of naive beliefs, the exercise of anthropomorphism involves a multiplicity of mental abilities including perception and imagination. They also show that the context and the interactive situation are crucial to understanding this phenomenon. Some authors analyze the relationship between anthropomorphization and theory of mind abilities both in typical and atypical populations. Finally, others contributions have identified possible benefits deriving from the natural attitude to anthropomorphize, as a design philosophy for robots and artifacts in general, or as a useful heuristic in the scientific study of animal behavior.Gabriella AirentiMarco CrucianiAlessio PlebeEmily R R BurdettJames Bradley WiggerJustin L. Barrett
Negative physical and mental health outcomes are well documented for those who experience child sexual abuse. We explore the role of three types of dispositional forgiveness (of self, of others, and by God) as effect modifiers of the child sexual abuse and life satisfaction relationship. In 2010–2011, a sample of 5,506 Seventh‐day Adventists reported levels of forgiveness, life satisfaction, and whether or not they had experienced sexual abuse in each of the two age periods (younger than 8 years and 8–18 years). Reported experience of childhood sexual abuse lowered life satisfaction regardless of when the child sexual abuse occurred. Forgiveness of self and of others were associated with higher life satisfaction regardless of sexual abuse exposure. Feeling forgiven by God was associated with increased life satisfaction indirectly through forgiveness of self and others. However, for those abused later in childhood, the association of abuse with reduced life satisfaction was weaker for those who felt forgiven by God. These findings suggest forgiveness by God operates primarily through forgiveness of self (and others) but can also buffer the effects of childhood sexual abuse on later life satisfaction when the abuse occurs in childhood/adolescence.Kelly R Morton
- Laura TanziniJerry W Lee
-.
- The contribution of shared experience to the social role-taking competence of 120 preschool, second- and fifth-grade children