to listen to me lecturing. If you haven't done the reading, you may ask questions when you don't understand, but there will be nobody else to answer the questions except me. If you have done the reading, you will be able to offer your informed opinion. We will discuss the readings on the date indicated, so you should aim to complete the reading on the night before the date listed.

Some readings will be circulated by the bookstore. Others require you to follow the links below. Many of these links, marked *, require you to use your FSU id and password.


30th June/2ndJuly: Brian Zamulinski, "Religion and the pursuit of truth", Religious Studies, 39, (2003)*
6th July: Truth, (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy); Donald Davidson, "What thought requires" in his Problems of Rationality (Oxford University Press, 2004)
7th July: D. Z. Phillips, "Philosophy, Theology and the Reality of God" and "On Really Believing" in his Wittgenstein and Religion (St. Martin's Press, 1993), John D. Caputo, Chapters 4 and 5 of Philosophy and Theology (Abingdon Press, 2006) and William P. Alston, "Realism and the Christian Faith", International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 38, (1995)*
8th July: Justin Barrett: "Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion", Trends In Cognitive Science, Jan 2001, pp.29-34*
9th July: Joseph Bulbulia: "The Cognitive and Evolutionary Psychology of Religion" Biology and Philosophy, November 2004, 665-686*

13th July: Pascal Boyer, "A Reductionist Model of Distinct Modes of Religious Transmission" and Harvey Whitehouse, extract from "The Cognitive Foundations of Religiosity". Both these are taken from Whitehouse and McCauley (eds.) Mind and Religion, (AltaMira, Walton's Creek CA, 2005). The book contains the proceedings of a conference devoted to Whitehouse's theory about modes of transmission. Boyer's paper opened the conference, and it contains an introduction to cognitive science of religion and the significance of Whitehouse's theory, as well as Boyer's critique of Whitehouse. At the end of the conference, Whitehouse delivered a presentation in which he responded to all the papers. I've included the section in which he responds to Boyer.

14th July: "Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts", Barrett and Keil, Cognitive Psychology, 1996*
15th July: "Genesis of Suicide Terrorism", Scott Atran, Science, 2003*
16th July: Discussion: no new reading required.

Important! Schedule for presentations:

This week, you will each give your  second presentation, in which you explain the topic of your final paper.

Tues 28th: Alicia and Caila

Wed 29th: Roman and Dayana

Thurs 30th: Michael and Erin

Important! Rules for second presentation:

You need to answer the following four questions:

1) What question will your final paper answer?

2) Why would anyone care about this question?

3) What is your answer to the question?

4) Why would anyone believe this answer?



20th July: Erin on "Physiology and Faith: Addressing the 'Universal' Gender Difference In Religious Commitment" Rodney Stark, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 2002* and Michael on "Hand of God, Mind of Man: Punishment and Cognition in the Evolution of Cooperation," by Johnson and Bering, from Murray and Schloss (eds.) The Believing Primate, Oxford University Press, 2009

21st July: Dayana on Chapter 10 of Breaking the Spell by Daniel Dennett and Roman on "Divergent Religion: A Dual Process Model of Religious Thought, Behavior and Morphology" by Todd Tremlin, from Whitehouse and McCauley (eds.) Mind and Religion, (AltaMira, Walton's Creek CA, 2005).

22nd July: Caila on "Why Religions Develop Free-Will Problems" by D. Jason Slone from Whitehouse and McCauley, op. cit. and Alicia on "Evolutionary Psychology and the Rationality of Faith" by Benjamin Murphy, Heythrop Journal, 2009*

For Further Reading:

NEW! Steven Pinker on The Moral Instinct

For ambitious students:

Thanks to FSU's on-line resources, we have access not only to journals, but to some e-books. However, only a limited number of students can access these e-books at any one time. If I asked all of you to read material from one e-book on the same night, some of you would be disappointed, and other might be unable to access the material. But, if you are looking for something longer than a journal article, you might try:

In Net Library: two books by Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained and The Naturalness of Religious Ideas: A Cognitive Theory of Religion. Boyer is one of the leading figures in the field. Religion Explained is a more accessible book than The Naturalness of Religious Ideas.

In Oxford Scholarship Online, Theological Incorrectness by Jason Slone. The first three chapters provide a good introduction to the field. The later chapters show how cognitive science of religion casts light on specific puzzles in the study religions (e.g. is Buddhism a religion or not?)- this book should give you a good idea why this approach is so exciting to anyone interested in religious studies.

Minds and Gods by Todd Tremlin: I haven't yet read this one, but according to the Introduction, its primary purpose is to provide a survey of the field, rather than to provide a fresh theory. It was published in 2006, so it should be very cutting-edge.

For puzzled students:

These two articles by Stanley Fish, (God Talk, and God Talk Part 2) published in t,he New York Times, articulate a position that is very similar to that of John Caputo, but you may find Fish easier to understand.

Fish's articles are part of the media response to the "New Atheists". In 2006, three books that were critical of religion made the best-sellers list. The books were The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins, an eminent evolutionary biologist, Against Faith, by Sam Harris, a neuroscientist and philosopher and Breaking the Spell, by Daniel Dennett, a philosopher and defender of evolutionary theory. Dennett's book is most relevant to this class, since he is concerned not so much to attack religion, as to explain it. Wired Magazine published an article, the Church of the Non-Believers, in which these three authors were given the nick-name the New Atheists.Subsequently, Christopher Hitchens, journalist and author of God Is Not Great was added to the list. The term "new atheist" is somewhat misleading: the only thing that was new was the sudden popularity of books with an anti-religion stance, but the term caught on. Dennett's book is the one most relevant to this class, since his goal is to promote the scientific study of religion. He presents a synthesis of many of the ideas we are studying to a popular audience.


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