Magic Miracles And Religion

PREFACE, OR HOW I SAID GOODBYE TO AN ABSENT-MINDED STUDY OF RELIGIONMy Personal Story And Its Implications.1. WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE A BELIEVER?How Explanation And Understanding Can Be Combined To Provide A Rational Account Of The Subjective Experience Of Religious Belief.2. A COGNITIVE SCIENTIFIC PERSPECTIVE IN THE STUDY OF RELIGIONHow Cognitive Science And Evolutionary Theory Have Contributed To The Creation Of A New Science Of Religion.3. BREAKING BOUNDARIESHow We Have An Intuitive Capacity To Form Counterintuitive Ideas And To Try To Transcend Our Own Cognitive Limitations.4. TAKE THE BUDDHA FOR EXAMPLEOn Why Buddhism Is A Religion, Too.5. RELIGION – A UNIQUE WORLD BUT IN WHAT SENSE?Religion Is Not Sui Generis But Yet Requires A Unique Combination Of Natural Cognitive And Emotional Processes.6. EXPLAINING MIRACLESWhy We Consider Some Events As Miraculous.7. A NEW THEORY OF MAGICA New Principle For Analytically Distinguishing Between Magic And Religion. 8. TRUE FICTION: PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY OF RELIGIOUS BELIEFWhy There Can No Longer Be Any Philosophy Of Religion That Overlooks Empirical Findings In Psychology.9. RITUALS – WHY INDEED?Why We Perform Rituals? A Simple Answer.10. SINGERS OF TALESHow Traditional Singers Of Tales Produce The Oral Performance Of A Lengthy Epic Never Written Down.11. HOLY BOOK: A TREASURY OF THE INCOMPREHENSIBLEHow The Adoption Of Literacy Changes Religion.12. RELIGION, SCIENCE, AND IDEOLOGYA New Theory Of Ideology As A Cognitive Phenomenon.13. GOD AS ULTIMATE REALITY IN RELIGION AND IN SCIENCEOn Why Some Scientists Want To Believe In God.14. RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE ACROSS CULTURES How Religious Experiences Can Be Identified Across Cultures.15. DO CULTURES EXIST?The Ontology Of Culture Clarified.

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Can scientists study religion? Ilkka Pyysiainen says that they can. While the study of religion cannot be reduced to other disciplines, it must not ignore what other disciplines have learned about human thought and behavior. In this collection of essays, Pyysiainen shows how findings from cognitive science can offer new directions to debates in religion. After providing a historical and theoretical overview of the cognitive science of religion, Pyysiainen demonstrates how knowledge of the mind’s workings can help deconstruct such concepts as “god,” “ideology,” “culture,” “magic,” “miracles,” and “religion.” For scholars of religion or for scholars of the mind-brain, Magic, Miracles, and Religion provides a helpful overview to this emerging field.