New item in the Archive for Religion and Cognition:


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Author(s): Westh, Peter
Title: Anthropomorphism in God concepts: The role of narrative
Category: conference paper
Length: 22
Keywords: anthropomorphism; HADD; intuitive ontology; agency; gods; religion;
superhuman agents; Theory of Mind; theological correctness; story comprehension;
narrative

Abstract: There is an emerging consensus among current, cognitive theories of
religion that the detection and representation of intentional agents and their
actions are fundamental to religion. By no means a monolithic theory, this is an
argument with several separate lines of reasoning, and several different kinds
of empirical evidence to support it. This essay focuses specifically on the
notion that people tend to spontaneously make inferences about gods based on
intuitive, ontological assumptions, and on one of the main pieces of evidence
that is cited to support it, the narrative comprehension experiments conducted
by psychologists Justin L. Barrett and Frank C. Keil. It is argued that the
experimental data in fact do not support the conclusions that have been drawn
from them.

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