Unnatural comparisons: commentary on Robert McCauley'sWhy Religion is Natural and Science is Not

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

“…I will turn to McCauley's useful response to Smith shortly, but first I will briefly summarize Francisca Cho's related critique of Why Religion Is Natural and Science Is Not . In a book symposium recently published in Religion, Brain, and Behavior , Cho maintains that McCauley's selective definitions of religion and science reflect an ideological commitment to scientific exceptionalism (Cho , 1–6). For Cho, McCauley's narrow emphasis on science's “unnatural” cognitive processes (e.g., “radically counterintuitive” representations that that go “beyond the appearances”) perpetuates the notion that scientific knowledge somehow uniquely transcends the cognitive structures, symbolic systems, and social dynamics involved in human knowledge making (McCauley , 106–07).…”

Explanatory Modesty

“…His complaint is not about distinctions but, rather, about their artificiality . Interestingly, though, neither Aghapour nor Cho () nor Smith (), both of whom he cites, ever spell out what exactly makes for artificiality in distinctions, let alone demonstrate that they have some nonartificial means for clarifying what nonartificial distinctions are. This is especially puzzling, since these scholars are all, so far as I can tell, champions of the artificiality of human knowledge, from which it would seem to follow that all distinctions are artificial.…”