Cognitive Regeneration and the Noetic Effects of Sin: Why Theology and Cognitive Science May not be Compatible

Authors

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.2021.3398

Keywords:

Cognitive science of religion, Noetic effects of sin, sensus divinitatis, Reformed epistemology, Prejudice, Evolution of religion

Abstract

Justin Barrett and Kelly James Clark have suggested that cognitive science of religion supports the existence of a god-faculty akin to sensus divinitatis. They propose that God may have given rise to the god-faculty via guided evolution. This suggestion raises two theological worries. First, our natural cognition seems to favor false god-beliefs over true ones. Second, it also makes us prone to tribalism. If God hates idolatry and moral evil, why would he give rise to mind with such biases? A Plantingian response would point to the noetic effects of sin. Such a response, however, would have to assume that God is restoring the minds of believers. This paper considers empirical reasons to doubt that such a process is taking place.

Author Biography

Lari Launonen, University of Helsinki

Doctoral student, Department of Systematic Theology

References

Allport, Gordon W. 1966. “The Religious Context of Prejudice”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 5, no. 3: 447–57. doi:10.2307/1384172.

Altemeyer, Bob. 2006. The Authoritarians. Unpublished e-book. www.theauthoritarians.org .

Banerjee, Konika, and Paul Bloom. 2014. “Why Did This Happen to Me? Religious Believers’ and Non-Believers’ Teleological Reasoning about Life Events”, Cognition 133, no. 1: 277–303. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2014.06.017.

Barlev, Michael, Spencer Mermelstein, and Tamsin C. German. 2017. “Core Intuitions About Persons Coexist and Interfere With Acquired Christian Beliefs About God”, Cognitive Science 41, no. S3: 425–54. doi:10.1111/cogs.12435.

Barrett, Justin L. 1999. “Theological Correctness: Cognitive Constraint and the Study of Religion”, Method & Theory in the Study of Religion 11, no. 4: 325–39. doi:10.1163/157006899X00078.

—. 2009. “Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology”. In The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion, edited by Jeffrey Schloss and Michael Murray, 76–99. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

—. 2012. Born Believers: The Science of Children’s Religious Belief. New York: Free Press.

Barrett, Justin L., and Frank C. Keil. 1996. “Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts”, Cognitive Psychology 31, no. 3: 219–47. doi:10.1006/cogp.1996.0017.

Barrett, Justin L., and Aku Visala. 2018. “In What Sense Might Religion Be Natural?”. In The Naturalness of Belief: New Essays on Theism’s Rationality, edited by Paul Copan and Charles Taliaferro, 67–84. Lanham: Lexington Books.

Batson, C. Daniel. 1976. “Religion as Prosocial: Agent or Double Agent?”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 15, no. 1: 29–45. doi:10.2307/1384312.

—. 2013. “Individual Religion, Tolerance, and Universal Compassion”. In Religion, Intolerance, and Conflict: A Scientific and Conceptual Investigation, edited by Steven Clarke, Russell Powell, and Julian Savulescu, 88–116. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Batson, C. Daniel, Randy B. Floyd, Julie M. Meyer, and Alana L. Winner. 1999. “‘And Who Is My Neighbor?’ Intrinsic Religion as a Source of Universal Compassion”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 38, no. 4: 445–57. doi:10.2307/1387605.

Batson, C. Daniel, Patricia Schoenrade, and W. Larry Ventis. 1993. Religion and the Individual: A Social-Psychological Perspective. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Boyer, Pascal. 2001. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books.

Brown, Rupert. 1995. Prejudice: Its Social Psychology. Cambridge: Blackwell.

Catholic Church, ed. 1997. Catechism of the Catholic Church: Revised in Accordance with the Official Latin Text Promulgated by Pope John Paul II. 2nd ed. Vatican City : Washington, DC: Libreria Editrice Vaticana ; United States Catholic Conference.

Clark, Kelly James. 2019. God and the Brain: The Rationality of Belief. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans.

Clark, Kelly James, and Justin L. Barrett. 2010. “Reformed Epistemology and the Cognitive Science of Religion”, Faith and Philosophy 27, no. 2: 174–89. doi:10.5840/faithphil201027216.

—. 2011. “Reidian Religious Epistemology and the Cognitive Science of Religion”, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 79, no. 3: 639–75. doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfr008.

De Cruz, Helen, and Johan De Smedt. 2013. “Reformed and Evolutionary Epistemology and the Noetic Effects of Sin”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 74, no. 1: 49–66. doi:10.1007/s11153–012–9368-z.

Edgell, Penny, Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann. 2006. “Atheists As ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society”, American Sociological Review 71, no. 2: 211–34. doi:10.1177/000312240607100203.

Fulton, Aubyn S., Richard L. Gorsuch, and Elizabeth A. Maynard. 1999. “Religious Orientation, Antihomosexual Sentiment, and Fundamentalism among Christians”, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 38: 14–22. doi:10.2307/1387580.

Gervais, Will M., Azim F. Shariff, and Ara Norenzayan. 2011. “Do You Believe in Atheists? Distrust Is Central to Anti-Atheist Prejudice”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 101, no. 6: 1189–1206. doi:10.1037/a0025882.

Gervais, Will M., Dimitris Xygalatas, Ryan T. McKay, Michiel van Elk, Emma E. Buchtel, Mark Aveyard, Sarah R. Schiavone, et al. 2017. “Global Evidence of Extreme Intuitive Moral Prejudice against Atheists.” Nature Human Behaviour 1, no. 8: 1–6. doi:10.1038/s41562–017–0151.

Goldfried, Jerry, and Maureen Miner. 2002. “Quest Religion and the Problem of Limited Compassion.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 41, no. 4: 685–95. doi:10.1111/1468–5906.00154.

Guthrie, Stewart. 1993. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Harris, Lasana T., and Susan T. Fiske. 2006. “Dehumanizing the Lowest of the Low: Neuroimaging Responses to Extreme Out-Groups”, Psychological Science 17, no. 10: 847–53. doi:10.1111/j.1467–9280.2006.01793.x.

Helm, Paul. 1998. “John Calvin, the ‘Sensus Divinitatis’, and the Noetic Effects of Sin”, International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 43, no. 2: 87–107.

Hood, Ralph W., Peter C. Hill, and Bernard Spilka. 2009. The Psychology of Religion, Fourth Edition: An Empirical Approach. Fourth edition. New York: The Guilford Press.

Hunsberger, Bruce, and Lynne M. Jackson. 2005. “Religion, Meaning, and Prejudice”, Journal of Social Issues 61, no. 4: 807–26. doi:10.1111/j.1540–4560.2005.00433.x.

Jong, Jonathan, Christopher Kavanagh, and Aku Visala. 2015. “Born idolaters: The Limits of the Philosophical Implications of the Cognitive Science of Religion”, Neue Zeitschrift für Systematische Theologie und Religionsphilosophie 57, no. 2: 244–66. doi:10.1515/nzsth-2015–0012.

Kahneman, Daniel. 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. New York: Penguin.

Kelemen, Deborah, and Evelyn Rossett. 2009. “The Human Function Compunction: Teleological Explanation in Adults.” Cognition 111, no. 1: 138–43. doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2009.01.001.

Koopmans, Ruud. 2015. “Religious Fundamentalism and Hostility against Out-Groups: A Comparison of Muslims and Christians in Western Europe”, Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 41, no. 1: 33–57. doi:10.1080/1369183X.2014.935307.

Kvandal, Halvor. 2020. “The God-Faculty Dilemma:Challenges for Reformed Epistemology in the Light of Cognitive Science”, International Journal of Philosophy and Theology 81, no. 4: 404–22. doi:10.1080/21692327.2020.1753095.

McCall, Grant S., and Nancy Shields. 2008. “Examining the Evidence from Small-Scale Societies and Early Prehistory and Implications for Modern Theories of Aggression and Violence”, Aggression and Violent Behavior 13, no. 1: 1–9. doi:10.1016/j.avb.2007.04.001.

Norenzayan, Ara. 2013. Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict. Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press. doi:10.2307/j.ctt32bbp0.

Pedersen, Daniel. 2016. “‘Irenaean’ or ‘Schleiermacherian’?: An Evolutionarily Plausible Account of the Origins of Sin”, Theology and Science 14, no. 2: 190–201. doi:10.1080/14746700.2016.1156330.

Peels, Rik, Hans van Eyghen, and Gijsbert van den Brink. 2018. “Cognitive Science of Religion and the Cognitive Consequences of Sin”, In New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, edited by Hans van Eyghen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink, 199–214. Cham: Springer. doi:10.1007/978–3-319–90239–5_11.

Plantinga, Alvin. 2000. Warranted Christian Belief. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Slone, D. Jason. 2004. Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn’t. New York: Oxford Univ. Press.

Teehan, John. 2016. “Cognitive Science, Evil, and God”, In Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy, edited by Helen De Cruz and Ryan Nichols, 39–60. London: Bloomsbury Academic.

Timpe, Kevin. 2014. Free Will in Philosophical Theology. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.

Van Bavel, Jay J., Dominic J. Packer, and William A. Cunningham. 2008. “The Neural Substrates of In-Group Bias: A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Investigation”, Psychological Science 19, no. 11: 1131–39. doi:10.1111/j.1467–9280.2008.02214.x.

Whitley, Bernard E. 2009. “Religiosity and Attitudes Toward Lesbians and Gay Men: A Meta-Analysis”, The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 19, no. 1: 21–38. doi:10.1080/10508610802471104.

Xu, Xiaojing, Xiangyu Zuo, Xiaoying Wang, and Shihui Han. 2009. “Do You Feel My Pain? Racial Group Membership Modulates Empathic Neural Responses”, Journal of Neuroscience 29, no. 26: 8525–29. doi:10.1523/JNEUROSCI.2418–09.2009.

Published

2021-08-01

How to Cite

Launonen, Lari. 2021. “Cognitive Regeneration and the Noetic Effects of Sin: Why Theology and Cognitive Science May Not Be Compatible”. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (3). https://doi.org/10.24204/ejpr.2021.3398.

Issue

Section

Research Articles