David Leech

The Cognitive Science of Religion: A Modified Theist Response

Critics of religion have recently claimed that the natural explanation of religious-belief formation offered by the Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) is incompatible with theism. Defenders of theism have in turn responded to these claims by arguing for the compatibility of the CSR account with theism. In this paper we propose a modified defence of the compatibility of the CSR account with theism which supplements extant theistic arguments by drawing out the implications of certain points about the nature of CSR explanation which have so far been left relatively unexploited. In developing this defence, we argue that extant atheistic and theistic readings of the CSR can be understood as accepting certain presuppositions, especially about the relative centrality of the CSR account in explaining religious belief, which, we argue, would be detrimental to the theist case were they actually intended, and which should be clearly rejected. We suggest that the theist should argue explicitly from the nature of CSR explanation to its compatibility with theism.

The cognitive science of religion and theism again: a reply to Leo Näreaho

In this article we respond to Leo Nareahos critique of our position on the relationship of the cognitive science of religion (CSR) and theism, arguing that he misrepresents our position and assimilates our views to ones we do not in fact hold. The central issue we address has to do with how Nareaho construes what he takes to be our commitment to a ‘world-view neutrality’ thesis regarding the ‘assumptions and results’ of the new bio-psychological theories of religion (in the case at hand, CSR). We suggest that Nareaho has misconstrued us on what the neutrality thesis actually is and what follows from it. We conclude that his own proposal for compatibility is not an alternative to ours but rather one permissible metaphysical reading of CSR among others.

How Relevant Is the Cognitive Science of Religion to Philosophy of Religion

On a standard view of the scope of philosophy of religion, philosophers of religion are concerned with the meaning of religious claims and what (if anything) they succeed in saying about the world. Naturalistic explanations of religion, on the other hand, seek to causally explain how religious ideas, beliefs and behaviours come about and persist in human populations.

Cudworth on superintellectual instinct as inclination to the good

ABSTRACT Stephen Darwall notes that for Cudworth the fundamental ethical motive is love, but that the Cambridge Platonist tells us little about love’s character, aim and object (The British Moralists and the Internal ‘Ought’, 1640–1740). In this article I examine Cudworth’s doctrine of ‘superintellectual instinct’ as a natural love for or inclination to the good as it takes shape in two of his unpublished freewill manuscripts (BL MS Additional 4980 and 4982). I show that in these manuscripts he assumes a threefold model of how this higher love as a natural or ‘created’ grace fits into the overall moral life of a person, together with human free will and special grace. I argue that although Cudworth adopts an Origenist synergistic position on the question of the relationship between grace and free will, stating that special grace is a necessary condition of salvation conjointly with free will and creation grace, in reality he struggles to show the strict necessity of special grace.

More et la lecture athée de Descartes

Cet article examine l’interpretation athee de la doctrine de l’esprit de Descartes que More propose dans ses ecrits tardifs, en particulier dans l’Enchiridion Metaphysicum de 1671 et dans des remarques eparses dans ses scholies de 1679. More n’a pas toujours pense que la philosophie de Descartes conduisait a l’atheisme. Cependant, je suggere qu’a l’epoque ou il redigeait l’Enchiridion, il etait convaincu que le cartesianisme impliquait l’atheisme au sens fort ou il impliquait l’impossibilite de Dieu. Je presente les principales raisons de More a l’appui de sa lecture athee et me tourne dans une seconde partie vers son principal probleme a l’egard de la doctrine de l’esprit de Descartes – ce qu’il nomme « nullibisme ». La critique du nullibisme par More est implicite des la correspondance avec Descartes (1648-1649), mais c’est seulement dans les œuvres ulterieures et en particulier dans l’Enchiridion qu’elle est principalement developpee. J’essaie de montrer que le probleme avec le nullibisme se reduit au probleme avec l’autre doctrine de l’esprit inacceptable aux yeux de More – le « holenmerisme » scolastique – et que sa reductio ad atheismum de la philosophie de Descartes repose au fond sur sa facon de comprendre le holenmerisme. Or je suggere que celle-ci n’est pas charitable. A l’inverse, la doctrine de l’esprit qu’il defend – l’etendue spirituelle – echoue a surmonter les difficultes que le nullibisme et le holenmerisme cherchent, chacune de leur maniere, a resoudre.