Mind And Religion

Recent cognitive approaches to the study of religion have yielded much understanding by focusing on common psychological processes that all humans share. One leading theory, Harvey Whitehouse's modes of religiosity theory, demonstrates how two distinct modes of organizing and transmitting religious traditions emerge from different ways of activating universal memory systems. In Mind and Religion, top scholars from biology to religious studies question, test, evaluate and challenge Whitehouse's sweeping thesis. The result is an up-to-date snapshot of the cognitive science of religion field for classes in psychology, anthropology, or history of religion.

This collection examines new psychological evidence for the modal theory and attempts to synthesize this theory with other theories of cognition and religion.

Harvey Whitehouse is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture at Queen's University Belfast. Robert N. McCauley is Professor of Philosophy at Emory University in Atlanta. He is the author, with E. Thomas Lawson, of Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture (1990) and Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms (2002).