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Managing Religiosity Proposal4/28/2007 13:29:27This is an initial proposal for my master's thesis at UCSB. In some respects it connects to the themes of my college senior thesis, The Cosmogonic Theater, in that it deals with the performativity of religious science. The title here is far from final; I would hope it would be much more intruiging by the end! "Managing Religiosity: Cognitive Strategies in the New Medical Materialism" At the 2006 American Academy of Religion meeting, the North American Association for the Study of Religion held a discussion about philosopher Daniel Dennett's recent book Breaking the Spell. With a number of active scholars on the subject in the room (Luther Martin, William Paden, and Donald Wiebe, to name a few), it was a good opportunity to judge current moods and directions in cognitive approaches to the study of religion. About three quarters of the way through, the participants made manifest an apparent consensus that (1) the seeds of religiosity are grounded in universal human nature and (2) the better we understand these seeds, the better they can be "managed." Such confidence in calculation and prediction of religious instincts has existed before, but there appears to be a renewed confidence, fueled by excitement in recent, startling advances in brain sciences. That one of the session's participants, Joel Mort, studies the cognition of religion under the employ of none other than the United States Air Force is a case in point. This development amounts, apparently, to a new homo religiosus, stated in cognitive terms, a new anthropology that is demonstrably inseparable from its religious proclivities. Similar assumptions are shared by the group that, since a 2006 Wired magazine article, has come to be called the New Atheists. Led by bestselling authors Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, and Sam Harris, this contingent puts forth scientific explanations for the religious pathology and propose correspondingly scientific cures. In the English-speaking world, these have become the outspoken performers representing both anti-religious ideology and the scientific study of religion (though none is part of a religious studies department). They have been widely vilified and also widely read. Meanwhile, religious performances are developing around such medical materialism as well. One of the leading researchers in the cognitive science of religion, for instance, is Justin Barrett, a confessing evangelical Christian who suggests theological reasons for why people might have built in mechanisms for religiosity. A growing movement among particularly western Buddhists, also, is the investigation and celebration of religious contemplation for its cognitive benefits using the latest neural imaging technology. A recent meeting in Washington, D.C. on the subject included neuroscientists from around the world together with the Dalai Lama. Sam Harris, of the New Atheists, is in the process of completing a degree in neuroscience, apparently for allied reasons. Such "neurotheology" has opened up the space-age possibility of technologically-induced religious experiences and a science of medical meditation. In this project I propose to undertake a thorough study of recent and current thinking on the possibilities of "management" for the new homo religiosus. If we (in religious studies or elsewhere) can come to understand the "actual" bases of religious thinking, what should we do with that knowledge? What responsibilities does it imply? What relation does it bear to earlier attempts to manage religiosity (from Benedict of Nursia to David Hume), and does it stand any special chance of success? Addressing questions like these means care with the attendant ideologies, which seem always to come in pairs: religionism and secularism, naturalism and supernaturalism, realism and spiritualism. Out from these, I will attempt to come to some clarity about the ambitions and perhaps the contradictions in this kind of thinking. It seems to me that such a project goes to the implicit heart of the study of the "meaning and," quite literally, the "end" of religion. |
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