DEFINING “RELIGION” AS NATURAL: A CRITICAL INVITATION TO ROBERT McCAULEY

Abstract

Previous critics have argued that Robert McCauley defines religion and science selectively and arbitrarily, cutting them to fit his model in Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not. McCauley has responded that final definitions are “overrated” and that artificial distinctions can serve an important role in naturalistic investigation. I agree with this position but argue that a genealogy of the category of religion is crucial to the methodology that McCauley describes. Since the inherent ambiguity of religion will undermine any essential claims about its cognitive naturalness, I invite McCauley to consider how his research might investigate scientific and religious cognition in new terms.

Cognitive and quantitative approaches to Islamic studies: Integrating psychological, socioeconomic, and digital‐cultural statistics

“…Over the past 3 decades, humanists have sought to problematize the conventional notion that there exists a universal concept of "religion." Rather, it has been argued that every concept of religion incorporates distinctive cultural assumptions, and is shaped by political power -often, Western (neo)colonial power (Aghapour, 2014;Asad, 1993;Josephson, 2012;Lofton, 2012;Masuzawa, 2005). Meanwhile, cognitive science holds that religion is a universal phenomenon rooted in biology.…”