Religions_whatever else they may be_are configurations of cultural information reproduced across space and time. Beginning with this seemingly obvious fact of religious transmission, Harvey Whitehouse goes on to construct a testable theory of how religions are created, passed on, and changed. At the center of his theory are two divergent 'modes of religiosity: ' the imagistic and the doctrinal. Drawing from recent advances in cognitive science, Whitehouse's theory shows how religions tend to coalesce around one of these two poles depending on how religious behaviors are remembered. In the...

Religions--whatever else they may be--are configurations of cultural information reproduced across space and time. Beginning with this seemingly obvious fact of religious transmission, Harvey Whitehouse goes on to construct a testable theory of how religions are created, passed on, and changed. At the center of his theory are two divergent 'modes of religiosity: ' the imagistic and the doctrinal. Drawing from recent advances in cognitive science, Whitehouse's theory shows how religions tend to coalesce around one of these two poles depending on how religious behaviors are remembered. In the...

The international conference from which these 11 papers are taken, on modes of religiosity, was held in December 2001 at Cambridge University; it was the first of three, and the proceedings of the others are presented in other volumes in the series. Mostly anthropologists explore such topics as divergent modes of religiosity in West Africa, the doc

Ethnographers of religion have created a vast record of religious behavior from small-scale non-literate societies to globally distributed religions in urban settings. This work features a range of ethnographers who grapple critically with Harvey Whitehouse's theory of two divergent modes of religiosity.

Historians bound by their singular stories and archaeologists bound by their material evidence don't typically seek out broad comparative theories of religion. But recently Harvey Whitehouse's "modes of religiosity" theory has been attracting many scholars of past religions. Based upon universal features of human cognition, Whitehouse's theory can provide useful comparisons across cultures and historical periods even when limited cultural data is present. In this groundbreaking volume scholars of cultures from prehistorical hunter-gatherers to 19th century Scandinavian Lutherans evaluate...

Can scientists study religion? Ilkka Pyysi inen says that they can. While the study of religion cannot be reduced to other disciplines, it must not ignore what other disciplines have learned about human thought and behavior. In this collection of essays, Pyysi inen shows how findings from cognitive science can offer new directions to debates in religion. After providing a historical and theoretical overview of the cognitive science of religion, Pyysi inen demonstrates how knowledge of the mind's workings can help deconstruct such concepts as "god," "ideology," "culture," "magic," "miracles,"...

Psychologist Barrett demonstrates how belief in God is quite natural given the structure of our minds.

The author presents a new theory of magical actions based on a wide array of recent findings in the cognitive sciences. Analysing classical ethnographic cases, he argues that paying close attention to the underlying cognitive processes will not only explain why magical rituals look the way they do, it will also supply new insights into the role of magic in the formation of institutionalised religion.