Psychologists finding religious belief: Building bridges between developmental cognitive science and cultural psychology

Abstract

Cognitive science of religion holds that religious belief emerges via universal pre-given cognitive mechanisms. This position is at odds with cultural psychology, which treats culture and cognition as inseparable, pointing out that phenomena like religious cognition cannot be understood without consideration of the culturally constituted realities people live. We seek to enhance cognitive science of religion with cultural psychology and articulate why change is needed in the former. We predicate our work on Bakhtin’s articulation of the constitutive role of language in religious cognition. A Dynamic Systems approach to cognition enables a cognitive approach that can permit the changes in cognitive science of religion promoted by cultural psychology. This approach leads to a view of cognition that accounts for the phenomena of religious cognition by including language practices of a community.