Why are humans obsessed with divine minds? What do gods know and what do they care about? What happens to us and our relationships when gods are involved?
Drawing from neuroscience, evolutionary, cultural, and applied anthropology, social psychology, religious studies, philosophy, technology, and cognitive and political sciences, The Minds of Gods probes these questions from a multitude of naturalistic perspectives. Each chapter offers brief intellectual histories of their topics, summarizes current cutting-edge questions in the field, and points to areas in need of attention from future researchers. Through an innovative theoretical framework that combines evolutionary and cognitive approaches to religion, this book brings together otherwise disparate literatures to focus on a topic that has comprised a lasting, central obsession of our species.
List of Figures List of Tables List of Contributors Acknowledgements Introduction: Studying the Minds of Gods: State of the Art, Benjamin Grant Purzycki and Theiss Bendixen (Aarhus University, Denmark) 1. Toward a Cognitive Science of the Gods: A Brief Introduction Benjamin Grant Purzycki and Uffe Schjoedt (Aarhus University, Denmark) 2. Growing the Minds of Gods Emily Burdett (University of Nottingham, UK) 3. The Divine Projector: How Human Motivations and Biases Give Shape to Gods’ Minds Joshua Conrad Jackson and Kurt Gray, (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA) 4. The Personality of the Divine Kathryn A. Johnson, (Arizona State University, USA) 5. Night Visions: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Dreaming about Supernatural AgentsJohn Balch and Patrick McNamara (Boston University, USA) 6. Animatism Reconsidered: A Cognitive Perspective Jesper Sørensen and Benjamin Grant Purzycki (Aarhus University, Denmark) 7. The Minds behind the Ritual: How “Ordering Gods” Reinforced Human Cooperation Matt J. Rossano (Southeastern Louisiana University, USA) 8. The Mind of God and the Problem of Evil: A Cognitive and Evolutionary Perspective John Teehan (Hofstra University, USA) 9. From Watching Human Acts to Penetrating Their Souls Anders Klostergaard Petersen (Aarhus University, Denmark) 10. Cultural Models of Minds and the Minds of Gods Rita Anne McNamara (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand) 11. Moralistic Gods and Social Complexity: A Brief History of the Problem Benjamin Grant Purzycki (Aarhus University, Denmark) and Ryan McKay (University of London, UK) 12. Game Theoretical Aspects of the Minds of Gods Aaron D. Lightner (Washington State University, USA) and Benjamin Grant Purzycki (Aarhus University, Denmark) 13. Accounting for Cross-Cultural Variation in the Minds of Gods Theiss Bendixen and Benjamin Grant Purzycki (Aarhus University, Denmark) 14. Environmentalism and the Minds of Gods Adam Baimel, (Oxford-Brookes University, UK) 15. Approaching the Minds of the Gods through AI Wesley J. Wildman and Justin E. Lane (Boston University, USA) 16. Never Mind the Gods: Explaining Unbelief and Nonreligion Anne Lundahl Mauritsen (Aarhus University, Denmark) and Valerie van Mulukom (Coventry University, USA) Notes References Index
Benjamin Grant Purzycki is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. Theiss Bendixen is a Doctoral Candidate at Aarhus University, Denmark.
Reviews for The Minds of Gods: New Horizons in the Naturalistic Study of Religion
With cutting-edge, accessible contributions by experts in the cognitive science of religion, this book will be important for readers ranging from advanced college students to faculty. A major accomplishment. * Stewart Elliott Guthrie, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, Fordham University, USA * The Minds of Gods represents an important contribution to evolutionary and cognitive approaches to religion. Its clear topical focus combined with up-to-date theoretical and empirical insights concerning how the mind works make it valuable reading for anyone interested in state-of-the-art research on human cognition and religion. * Vojtech Kaše, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, University of West Bohemia, Czech Republic *
