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Major new Oxford study of the nature and origins of religious belief

22 February 2008

Oxford researchers have received a £1.9 million grant for the development of the study of the cognitive science of religion – a scientific approach to why humans believe in God and other issues around the nature and origin of religious belief.

The award has been made by the John Templeton Foudation to the Oxford Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion and the Centre for Anthropology and Mind. It will be used to draw together and promote the latest scientific ideas about the meaning of religion and its origin in the human mind.

The cognitive sciences include all aspects of the study of the mind and intelligence, ranging across fields as diverse as evolutionary biology, neuroscience, linguistics and computer sciences. They offer a complex set of tools for looking at the full range of human behaviour.

Dr Justin Barrett, a psychologist who has been at the forefront of the development of the cognitive science of religion, will be playing a lead role in the new study. He said: ‘Cognitive science can help to explain the origin and nature of human religion. For example, developmental psychology has been instrumental in determining that belief in religion seems to be an integral part of human nature – it is found across all cultures and is something that we grasp from a young age.

‘The cognitive science of religion allows us to take a subtler approach to questions such as the alleged divisiveness of religion – looking at whether the conflicts associated with religion are a product of human nature itself.’

'The next step therefore is to look at some of the detailed questions – which religious beliefs are most common, and most natural for the human mind to grasp. The exciting questions in this field are in the details – how does the mind vary in its response to different forms of religion, such as polytheism and monotheism for example, and what is the relationships between religion and evolutionary biology – is religion a part of the selection process that has helped us survive or merely a by-product of evolution?’

Professor Roger Trigg, Senior Research Fellow at the Oxford Theology Faculty and Co-Principal Investigator for the study, said: ‘Religion has played an important role in public life over the last few years and the debate about the origin of religion, and how it fits into the human mind has intensified. This study will not prove or disprove any aspect of religion, it will allow us to have a more intelligent and informed debate and to support this with a vastly expanded and improved supply of evidence – particularly the quantitative skills which tend to be less common amongst theologians.’

The grant will also provide training for scholars to build up scientific and quantitative skills and support a number of seminars and workshops. A large part of the award, £800,000, will be used to run a ‘small grant competition’ providing 41 grants to support work by a range of scholars carrying out diverse individual research projects that will be the building blocks of the further development of the field.

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Notes for editors

The Ian Ramsey Centre, founded in 1985 for the study of religious beliefs in relation to the sciences and medicine, is a part of the Theology Faculty in the University of Oxford. Its regular seminar series, open to graduate students and informed members of the public, brings together scientists, philosophers and theologians to explore interests they have in common. The Centre also sponsors regional conferences to encourage new networks for examining connections between theology and the sciences; and through its international workshops it enhances the quality of courses on science and religion that are taught worldwide. In addition, the Ian Ramsey Centre is involved in a new Anthropology and Theology Project, for which it has been awarded a major research grant by the John Templeton Foundation.

Dr Justin Barrett is senior researcher of the Centre for Anthropology and Mind and The Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology at Oxford University. He is an editor of the Journal of Cognition and Culture and is author of numerous articles and chapters concerning cognitive science of religion. His book Why Would Anyone Believe in God? presents a scientific account for the prevalence of religious beliefs.

Professor Roger Trigg is a Senior Research fellow at the Oxford Theology Faculty and Emeritus Professor of Philosophy in the University of Warwick. Professor Trigg’s work has focussed on upholding the relevance of appeals to an objective reality and human nature. He recently published a new book about religion and the public sphere - Religion in Public Life: Must Faith be Privatized? He is also joint editor of the Ashgate series of monographs on Science and Religion and was founding President of the British Society for the Philosophy of Religion.

Cognitive science is most simply defined as the scientific study either of mind or of intelligence. It is an interdisciplinary study drawing from relevant fields including psychology, philosophy, neuroscience, linguistics, anthropology, computer science, biology, and physics. The term cognitive science was coined by Christopher Longuet-Higgins in his 1973 commentary on the Lighthill report, which concerned the then-current state of Artificial Intelligence research. In the same decade, the journal Cognitive Science and the Cognitive Science Society began.