Ciencia cognitiva de la religión

The Cognitive Science of Religion is the study of religious thought and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive sciences. The field employs methods and theories from cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, neurobiology, zoology, and ethology, among others. The scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religion by means of ordinary cognitive capacities.

E. Thomas Lawson is the founder of the Cognitive Science of Religion. A systematic treatment of religious representations can be found in the books he authored (with Robert McCauley): Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture and Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms. A festschrift in his honor, Religion as a Human Capacity was published in 2004. Pascal Boyer in his Naturalness of Religious Ideas and Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought made the contribution of explicitly demonstrating the value of an evolutionary psychology framework within cognitive psychology of religion. The focus in the field has now shifted from theorizing to experimental and empirical studies. Examples of current well publicized multi-million dollar projects are the Oxford University based Explaining Religion project and the Cognition Religion and Theology Project.
Other contributors to this field include Robert McCauley (who first came up with the notion of a Hyperactive Agency Detection Device - HADD), Stewart Guthrie, Pascal Boyer and Harvey Whitehouse. Dan Sperber foreshadowed the Cognitive Science of Religion in his 1975 book Rethinking Symbolism. The first use of the term "cognitive science of religion" appears to be in a 2000 article in the journal Numen entitled "Towards a Cognitive Science of Religion" by E. Thomas Lawson (2000).

Researchers in the field include:

• Scott Atran, Directeur de Recherche, Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS, Paris
• Justin L. Barrett, senior researcher at the University of Oxford
• Jesse Bering, Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University - Belfast
• Pascal Boyer, Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis
• Emma Cohen, postdoctoral researcher at the Max Planck Institute
• István Czachesz, fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki
• Michal Fux, PhD fellow at the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University - Belfast
• Armin W. Geertz, Professor of religion at the University of Aarhus
• Stewart Elliott Guthrie, Anthropology Emeritus at Fordham University
• Jeppe Sinding Jensen, Associate Professor of religion at the University of Aarhus
• Nicola Knight, researcher and lecturer at the University of Oxford
• E. Thomas Lawson, Honorary Professor and Research Scientist at the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University - Belfast
• Cristine Legare, Assistant Professor at the University of Texas - Austin
• Pierre Liénard, Assistant Professor at the University of Nevada - Las Vegas
• Brian Malley, lecturer at the University of Michigan
• Luther H. Martin, University Professor of Religion at the University of Vermont
• Robert N. McCauley, William Rand Kenan Jr. University Professor at Emory University
• William W. McCorkle Jr., Visiting Assistant Professor at Webster University
• Joel Mort, Research Scientist in the Behavior Modeling Branch, Air Force Research Laboratory and Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University - Belfast
• Ara Norenzayan, Associate Professor of Psychology, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
• Ilkka Pyysiäinen, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki
• D. Jason Slone, assistant professor at Tiffin University
• Jesper Sorensen, Associate Professor of religion at the University of Southern Denmark
• Dan Sperber, Directeur de Recherche, Institut Jean Nicod, CNRS, Paris
• Todd Tremlin, assistant professor of religion at Central Michigan University
• Harvey Whitehouse, professor of social anthropology at the University of Oxford
• Dimitris Xygalatas, postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University