Reflections on a book ¹

Alexander Agadjanian

Religion and Theory: Current Trends

Alexander Agadjanian - Professor of Religious Studies, Center for the Study of Religion, Russian State University of the Humanities, Moscow, Russia. AlexAgadjanian@asu.edu

The paper is an extended review of the book "Contemporary theories of religion", 20og, which brought together critical articles about relatively recent theories appeared within the last twenty years. In spite of the lasting impact of postmodernist skepticism toward theories and the deconstruction of "religion" as a modern narrative, the period of iggo-2000s gave birth to a wide range of new theories. The main trend was a new interest to the methods and explanatory strategies of the natural sciences. However, this trend did not mean a simple return to old positivism but rather has been a search of integrating religious studies into a new field of cognitive research.

Keywords: contemporary theories of religion, postmodern critique, cognitive studies.

^1. Stausberg, M. (ed.) (2009) Contemporary Theories of Religion: A Critical Companion. London and New York: Routledge.

A few careful words in defense of the theory after the postmodern storm has subsided

Theoretical approaches to religion... You should start with the main question that immediately comes to mind: why? Even if the storm of postmodern criticism of all narratives - not just the great ones, but in fact the small ones - seems to have subsided, and we are beginning to look around uncertainly for islands of solid ground, we still have to admit that this storm has pretty much battered the foundations of academic consciousness and the good old epistems, and therefore any mention of "theory" often causes skepticism or yawning, and even contempt. Not always, but often. I would say much more often than, say, in the middle of the XX, and even more so in the middle of the XIX century.

After all, theory is a child of the Age of Enlightenment, an undoubted attribute of "science", a product of European Art Nouveau. Theory is an attempt to grasp the invisible Essence; to construct an abstract schema that can organize reality; or, to use the terms we learned in the decades of postmodern assault, theory is an ambitious claim to impose rules on reality, to curb and subdue it. In the heyday of Modernity, such intellectual ambitions seemed absolutely legitimate, prestigious, and inevitable, and the theorizing in physics prepared by systematic philosophy became the model for all other projects of this kind, gradually covering all new areas of knowledge, including the social sciences and humanities.

Now the attitude towards theories - or even just generalizations - is emphatically restrained; reliability and empirical authenticity are valued above all else. Any speculation that breaks away from the tangible ground of reliable primary evidence carries the risk of distortion and even a presumption of guilt: the corrosive, ruthless technique of deconstruction will reveal in your generalizations personal prejudices, the fruits of education, ethno-cultural biases, stereotypes of the era and even, God forbid, ideological biases-all the "idols" of Francis Bacon and many others. others to boot. Thousands upon thousands of biologists, linguists, or anthropologists, guided by this kind of methodological asceticism, bind themselves for life to compact objects of research, not daring to generalize - and not even thinking about them.

What can we say about theoretical approaches to religion?! After all, now, after the same postmodern storm, it is almost universally accepted that "religion" is a product of Modernity, constructed according to the Protestant Christian model by secular scientists during ^the time of post-enlightenment secularization2. The endless search for definitions of "religion", countless attempts to explain this "phenomenon", even accompanied by incantations about its inexhaustible complexity - does not this exude some mixture of original scientific naivete and self-confidence, not to mention fruitless dogmatism, which now seems quite demodic? Consistent deconstruction and content blurring turn the concept of "religion" into nothing, make it purposeless, not operational for analytical and even descriptive purposes, and religious studies - a discipline without a subject.

Michael Stausberg, writing a book on "modern theories of religion," was aware of the double vulnerability of his enterprise:"theory"? "religion"? He speaks directly about postmodern challenges and agrees that his project can be called, perhaps, the answer to these challenges: "This book," he writes, " certainly does not intend in any way to present theories of religion as something useless, as armchair and intellectual quirks-even if someone will read it in the very beginning." on the contrary, this book is based on the desire (if you will, "modernist") to attach high importance to theory, criticism and discussion as a means of scientific activity" (p. 14).³. The editor, as we can see, cautiously but unequivocally defends both the theory as such and the theory of religion, in particular, although he is ready to call his project "modernist" only in parentheses, in quotation marks and not without some coquetry ("if you like", "if you will"). Stausberg is ready to accept what only yesterday seemed like a label; does this fact indicate that times are changing and the storm has really subsided?

Still, Stausberg admits that many will see the book in exactly the same spirit that he intended to oppose - as a story about " armchair and intellectual quirks."

^2. Smith, J.Z. (1999) "Religion, Religions, Religious", in M.Taylor (ed.) Critical Terms of Religious Studies, pp. 269 - 284. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press; Asad, T. (1993) Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. The Johns Hopkins University Press.

^3. References to the book Contemporary Theories of Religion are given in parentheses here and below.

And he's right. I think it is. I assume that after reading the title of this review, many readers will either shrug their shoulders skeptically, or, if they continue reading, then out of curiosity, hardly linking "fancy" theories with their own professional tasks. I confess that I myself have an overwhelming suspicion of pure theorizing, born of a strange mixture of positivist empiricism, historicism, and epistemological irony.

Nevertheless, this book gradually convinced me that Stausberg's enterprise of piecing together critical articles on relatively recent theories of religion was not meaningless, but even instructive and useful. There are at least a few considerations that prove this. Let's try, together with Stausberg, to understand them.

First, in our research, we are dealing with a huge and ever-increasing amount of information about our" objects " (albeit quite compact). In addition, we cannot - except in cases of extreme and painful academic solipsism-ignore what is happening in the neighborhood of our "objects", as well as what our colleagues report about their "objects". This constant empirical accumulation has always been and will always be an incentive to make some generalizations and search for some comparative, explanatory, or interpretive clues.

Secondly, the very structure of our thinking and language, as well as the communicative nature of our being (including professional, but not only), require the development of certain interrelated categories of the "second level", in which the immediate empirical reality would be "folded" in a more or less ordered form. These categories may be directly expressed, formulated, or left in the background as some omissions, as implicit presumptions - but, one way or another, their presence is inevitable. Let's assume that we can study a specific economic problem in a specific place at a specific time, but by default we have some meaning in the category "economy" itself. When in our research we are faced with the need to clarify or rethink this meaning, our omission can turn into a statement that will inevitably be an attempt at theoretical interpretation. The same applies to the category of "religion"that we are studying.

Third, no matter how self-critical and ironic we may now be, there is something that constitutes the professional credo of "scientific work", some more or less unconditional criteria, without which such work would lose all foundation, and further reasoning would become meaningless. This is something that distinguishes academic knowledge from popular knowledge.

Of course, academic theories of religion can be "intellectual quirks" or unintentional distortions (a kind of academic myth - we know there are such things). In addition, all theories without exception, as the editor writes, "belong to a certain intellectual, institutional, ideological and political context, are 'social facts' just like their objects and subjects" (p.3).

And yet, ideally, science - so to speak, bona fide science-is built on opposing the stereotypes of public consciousness and striving for autonomy from them. All this applies to knowledge about religion and theories of religion - and it applies to a special extent, because in this area, overloaded with stereotypes and value judgments, it is especially difficult to offer independent explanations (see the introduction to the book under review in a small section, which is called this).: Lay theories and academic theories - popular and academic theories; pp. 7-8).

Still, as beautiful as these ideals of academic dispassion are, at the end of this review I will return to the inevitable question of preferences and grades.

Theory of religion per se: Basic outlines

So, let's take it for granted that theories are not useless at all, and turn off on our separate theoretical path.

Theories of religion, according to Stausberg, answer four major interrelated questions (among many others).

The first question is the specifics of religion (s)⁴ as an object / phenomenon, i.e. identifying how religion actually differs from everything else, what are its "typical and repeated features"; what are the regularities (regularities), etc.

^4. In many cases, the author follows academic correctness by adding the plural ending after the word religion-religion (s), as if avoiding the idea of "religion in general", outside of a specific empirical variety.

code (specific code) that would help to distinguish "religion" as a separate object. Of course, it is possible to study phenomena that are identified as "religion" by social actors themselves without asking such a question. On the one hand, the researcher who refrains from strict criteria of "distinction" avoids an exaggerated dependence on strict definitions; but it is also clear what the possible risks are, if we keep in mind the variability of the concept of "religion" or its equivalents in local traditions.

The theory takes the trouble to somehow deal with this issue. At the same time, the theorist should be aware of the extent to which his definitions are conditioned by cultural and historical discourses. Moreover, as Stausberg points out, the question of the specifics of religion should not be considered in terms of its uniqueness; he believes that past theorizing has been stymied precisely because it has tried to discover such uniqueness. In fact, as recent theories show, it is productive to see religion as a link in a series of other phenomena, but still analytically consider "religion" as an "independent variable" in this series.

Another challenge is to avoid what postmodern jargon calls " essentialism." To do this, the theorist should talk about "typical features", "regularities", and "epistemological conceptualization", but in no case link all this with "ontological or eternal metaphysical assumptions" (p. 4). if this condition is met, then the search for typical features and regularities does not contain the threat of " essentialization".

The second question of all theories is the origin of religions, which is understood not so much as the beginning, but as the possibility of appearing at any time, under a set of certain conditions (their understanding, in fact, is required). At the same time, Stausberg, again reacting to postmodern criticism, emphasizes that the origin of religion should not be confused with the genealogy of the concept of "religion" itself; the latter can be considered a special case of the former, so that the genealogy of the term itself does not exhaust the question of "origin".

The third question is about the functions of religion. The researcher analyzes "functions" that are not recognized by the actors, and therefore "function" is ultimately a normative category, a fragment of casual connections within the normative model, which is used as a tool for creating new models.-

published by a scientist. In this way, " functions "differ from" effects", which, according to Stausberg, is a purely empirical category. The contrast is unconvincing, and this becomes especially clear after the example given by Stausberg: "Although the function of religion may arguably be social cohesion, the impact of religions can lead to destructive consequences" (p. 5). Shouldn't causality also be understood not in the normative, but in the empirical sense - for example, considering that that religion can equally contribute to social cohesion and division? Or should we abandon the normative notion of "functions" altogether?

Finally, the fourth question is about the structure of religion. We are talking about a standard set (if any) of elements, components, and structural blocks of the system. How variable are they? To what extent are some of them necessary (they are structure-forming) and to what extent? (Just in case - and perhaps unnecessarily - Stausberg points out that an interest in structure does not require a commitment to a structuralist methodology.)

Classical and modern theories

Let us now turn to the actual contents of the volume. Let's first look at what the volume's editor considers "classical" theories of religion, and then at what criteria he selects "modern" theorists. So, Classics: An introduction contains a long list spanning roughly one century, starting with Karl Marx and ending with Peter Berger. Among them are Max Muller, Edward Tylor, William Robertson Smith, James Fraser, Emile Durkheim, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, Bronislaw Malinowski, Carl Jung, Edward Evans-Pritchard, Mircea Eliade, and Clifford Geertz.⁵ (It's probably a solid list; you might consider including people like R. Otto, T. Parsons, P. Bourdieu, W. Turner, R. Bell, M. Spyro, and a few others; however, in the end, this is only a quick enumeration.)

What new approaches were highlighted and included in the book? The year 1990 is taken as a conditional watershed - Stausberg notes that, oddly enough, the number of theories has increased-

^5. See the article by L. Astakhova on the theory of religion by Clifford Geertz in this issue of the journal.

It was born in the 1990s. There is nothing surprising in such theoretical pluralism at a time of deep shake-up of classical approaches.

The book analyzes 17 theories. Each of them is represented by one large book (the editor deliberately chose this selection method); some are co-authored. The volume includes 15 critical essays6 written by religious scholars who have a taste for theorizing, but have not published full-fledged theoretical ^monographs themselves. The geography of the theories is simple: about 60% of the theorists are Americans, there are three Germans, two French (but both working in the United States), two co-authors from South Africa, and one each from Finland and the United Kingdom. If we talk about the authors of critical articles, then the volume's editor, Michael Stausberg , is Norwegian (University of Bergen), and among other authors, the share of Americans is even higher than among theorists. American hegemony, although slightly affected by some ostentation, still does not seem to be a distortion: it is difficult to argue with the American academy both quantitatively, and" performatively", and according to the results in toto; and the contrast with European hegemony among the" classics " listed above is also obvious. The rise of American secular religious studies was somewhat belated (starting in the 1960s), but rapid compared to Europe.

Stausberg concludes that in most cases, although theorists are bound by a single general scientific or meta-theoretical context, they do not pay much attention to each other and do not argue much with each other (with a few exceptions; p.283). This is partly due to the different disciplines that dictate the range of knowledge, methods, and style of theory building: a philosopher, sociologist, and evolutionary biologist may have difficulty finding common ground. Even the key "analytical units" in which religion is theoretically understood can be quite different: representations, rituals, emotions, experiences, narratives, groups, etc. Different theorists, depending on their knowledge and outlook, rely to varying degrees on the comparison of cross-cultural examples to substantiate the theory. "Religion" as an object is too broad and vague, so some theoretical approaches simply do not overlap in any way.

^6. Two articles deal with similar theories of two authors, so 17 authors "fit" into 15 articles.

In other cases, the lack of interest in alternative theories is simply a weakness and a reason for a well-deserved reproach.

The authors of the volume were able to respond to most of the most important, original theoretical ideas that have appeared since 199°. However, several names seem to be omitted; for example, Robert Bella may not have been the subject of a separate article (because he does not have a monograph on the theory of religion itself), but the lack of mention of him in the book (see index) seems strange. Harvey Whitehouse, however, would be quite worthy of a separate article (a couple of links to his interesting theory are available here). The same can be said of sociologist James Beckford with his important book, which, however, is also formally not a sui generis theory, but rather an attempt to correlate religious studies with sociological theory.⁸

Hubert Seivert in one of the articles of the collection speaks about three approaches to the study of religion in the history of the discipline: phenomenological (based either theologically or philosophically), socioscientific and natural science (p.224). There is no phenomenological tradition in the book. Theories of religion that grew up in the depths of the social sciences are presented relatively well in the book: there is an article about Rodney Stark/Roger Fink and their "rational choice theory"; there are articles on German sociologists Niklas Luhmann and Martin Riesenbrodt; Roy Rappaport, with his influential theory of ritual, started out as an empirical anthropologist; and the religious scholar Thomas Tweed is also based on specific ethnography. Nevertheless, social-informed issues remain in the shadows, and, for example, the central debate around the theory of secularization remains outside the scope of the book. David Martin, Talal Asad, Jose Casanova, or Charles Taylor, each in their own way, occupied a certain place in this debate; however, none of them created special theories of religion, although they all, in one way or another, raised the ultimate questions about the meaning of the concept and phenomenon. But still, the days of Marx, Weber, Durkheim, and even Clifford Geertz, when religion was understood primarily in terms of the social, are over.

And so, perhaps, our book adequately reflects an important shift towards the third type of approach - the natural science one.

^7. См. Whitehouse, H. (2000) Arguments and Icons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

^8. Beckford, J. (2003) Social Theory and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

But it's important to understand what this means. Of course, we are not talking about the fact that religious studies are actually becoming part of the natural science field, but there is a certain shift in this direction, a certain, so to speak, "naturalization" is noticeable.

Connecting cognition to culture

This shift, which became apparent in the 1990s, is immediately apparent even with a cursory glance at the table of contents. More than half of the theories analyzed are based on "biocentric" approaches, especially those commonly referred to as cognitive⁹

Matthew Day, the author of one of the articles, speaks of a more or less universal recognition of three fundamental facts: (1) in all cultures and at all times, people have devoted and still devote time, energy and resources to communicating with a certain class of non-obvious creatures, including gods, spirits, deceased ancestors, etc. (2) humans, like all other living things, are subject to the processes described in Darwin's theory of evolution; (3) however complex the relationship between culture and biology may be, it must be recognized that humans have some capacity for complex behavior involving communication with "non-obvious beings", and this ability is based on on various motor and cognitive mechanisms of the human brain (p. 115).

So, religion is a natural, natural, biologically determined phenomenon, "rooted in the brain", i.e. it is a definite result of the cognitive structure of human thinking. The entire selection begins with an analysis of the book that was a breakthrough in this regard and set the course for the "cognitive approach" as such - a book by Thomas Lawson and Robert McCauley with an absolutely clear, prescriptive title: "Rethinking Religion: connecting Thinking and culture" ¹⁰.

^9. See M. Shakhnovich's article in this issue of the journal devoted entirely to cognitive studies of religion.

^10. Lawson, S. and McCauley, R. N. (1990) Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

It is this connection between thinking and culture that becomes the main theme; and behind it , the even grander and older problem of the interaction of nature and culture, nature and nurture. Most of our theorists believe that religion is a "natural phenomenon", a natural phenomenon, where the word natural refers to the"natural sciences". The cognitive approach is a response of the humanities to the rapid growth of evolutionary biology, neurophysiology, cognitive psychology, and other disciplines related to the study of brain function. Haven't the natural sciences always been a role model for the humanities? After structuralism, after the dominance of sociocentric critical (Marxist) approaches, after the cultural turn-now a new turn to thinking in its quite natural, natural hypostasis as a property of human consciousness, analyzed in biological categories. Thus, everything that we refer to as" society " or "culture" (in particular, religion) is reinterpreted as, in a sense, a projection of the laws of human thinking, which in turn is part of the process of evolution.

The essence of the problem that all cognitive theorists face, therefore, is not only to find the origins of certain "human phenomena" in the mechanism of thinking, but also to find ways to translate thinking into culture, or to project thinking onto culture. Culture exists, no matter how one tries to dismiss it, and it is a "collective" phenomenon, and therefore, first of all, one must understand how individual consciousness, which can only be the subject of cognitive analysis, turns into collective representations, discourses, identities or behavioral patterns. All these ideas and so on cannot, of course, be just an arithmetic sum of individual consciousnesses; they are something more, and here the question arises about the ways of "projection": for example, about how culturally significant and translatable religious ideas, myths, rituals and symbols are formed as a result of the functioning of certain mechanisms of thinking.

I am, of course, deliberately simplifying the question by presenting the process of connecting cognition and culture in a one-sided way. In fact, this relationship is more complicated. For example, it may also make sense to talk about the opposite effect, when cultural discourses or patterns of behavior, reproducing themselves for tens or hundreds of generations, force cognitive development.-

the system of human thinking can change according to the laws of evolutionary adaptation, but it is now almost impossible to confirm this hypothesis empirically. However, here is what we can say with good reason: if not thinking (in a narrowly biological sense), then at least individual "human reality" as a sum of values, identities, decisions and actions is largely constructed socially and culturally.

But I deliberately emphasize causality directed in the opposite direction - from thinking to culture, not vice versa - in order to emphasize the trend, the essence of the cognitive turn. Here, of course, a reduction immediately begins to "loom" - the world-old reduction of culture to nature, to biology, to matter. Most of our theorists are indeed materialists in a certain sense. The very logic of the cognitive argument pushes authors to such a reduction, no matter how much they resist it. Many of them directly and consistently criticize the very concept of "culture". By analogy with the dichotomy introduced by N. Chomsky and accepted in linguistics, Joseph Balbulia (in an article on the theory of Scott Atran) contrasts iReligion and eReligion: i - from innate, internal, innate; e - from external, external; the first category reflects internal, innate religious impulses, and the second-external " religious culture". Atran himself, of course, prefers to see iReligion as defining (p. 158 et seq.); most other cognitive theorists are inclined to do the same.

Let us agree with Stausberg that the relations between thought and culture appear dialectical rather than antagonistic (p.291; he refers to "a large volume of literature" on this subject, but does not name specific works). We know that in the history of science there have been various examples-from the tragicomic reduction of culture to physiological characteristics to the contradictory insights of psychoanalysis and, finally, solid, verified semiotic explanations of culture based on structures of thought (for example, in structuralism). And although the danger of reduction is indeed present (isn't every scientific project potentially a reduction?), I would not exaggerate it. For the study of religion, the cognitive turn seems to be useful: reviving old approaches that used to smoulder on the periphery, within the tradition of William James and the psychology of religion, cognitive research is being conducted in a new way.-

These studies turn religious studies around to face the revolutionary changes in the natural sciences of man that took place in the second half of the 20th century.

In this sense, religious studies are "catching up" with other disciplines. Many universities already have" cognitive research " centers. Cognitive approaches in linguistics (including neurolinguistics and psycholinguistics) have long been part of the mainstream, especially within the influential school of the aforementioned Noam Chomsky and close associates of Ron Langacker, founder of Cognitive Linguistics proper, and Ray Jackendoff, a student of Chomsky and head of the Center for Cognitive Research at Tufts University (the second head of which is Daniel Dennett, the author of one of the theories of religion discussed in this book)¹¹. Another already developed sub - discipline is cognitive anthropology, which, however, is in contact with linguistics. So, we can see how religious studies fit into this interdisciplinary flow.

Briefly about different theories and their criticism

Now we will quickly try to flip through the articles included in the book.

As already mentioned, Lawson and McCauley's 1990 book can certainly be considered groundbreaking, opening up a new discourse in the study of religion. Analyzing this book, Engler and Gardiner reproach the authors for schematically contrasting biological universalism and cultural diversity, without sufficient attention to the latter, without supporting empirical material. The authors of the article also criticize theorists for reducing religiosity to rational acts (due to their cognitive approach in the spirit of Chomsky's ideas) and inattention to emotions.

The road opened by Lawson and McCauley then branches off.

The book "Why God does not Disappear"by E. Newberg, Y. d'Aquili and V. Rause ¹² represents a relatively rare direction in the framework of the cognitive approach: in contrast to the mainstream, it is well-trodden.-

^11. I thank Professor L. Blumenfeld of Carleton University for his information on cognitive linguistics.

^12. Newberg, A., DAquili, E. and Rause, V. (2001) Why God Won't Go Away. New York: Ballantine Books.

developed by Lawson and McCauley and developed to the greatest extent by Boyer and some others (see below), Matthew Day, the author of an article about them, characterizes the theory of these authors as relatively marginal and refers to "neurotheology". While in the cognitive mainstream, "religious ability"is assumed to be a byproduct of the evolution of thinking, "neurotheologists" consider this ability to be independent, sui generis, and seek to document it. We are talking about direct laboratory experiments using the SPECT method developed by them in order to describe the behavior of the brain at the moment of experiencing a mystical experience ¹³. As a material, they used the experience of meditating Tibetan (Buddhist) and Franciscan monks. The study captures "neurological snapshots" at different stages of meditation, trying to penetrate the " neurological mechanism of the transcendent." These authors believe that religious experience is " biologically, empirically, and scientifically real, "and so M. Day calls them" neurological realists " (p.121).

"Neurotheologists" and" neuro-realists " are easily vulnerable to criticism. Day writes that, first of all, the mystical experience in the laboratory is staged and therefore largely artificial. Secondly, absolute confidence in religious universals leads to a complete disregard for real religious diversity. Third, the authors, influenced by W. James, reduce religion exclusively to ecstatic, mystical experiences; they focus on "religious exoticism" and are completely deaf to all other forms and manifestations of religion. Finally, and most importantly, we must still recognize that the methods and data of neurophysiology that they rely on are still far from perfect.

Loyal Ryu's interpretation of religion is similar to that of "neurotheologists", although he did not conduct any laboratory experiments.¹⁴ His main postulate, which is very speculative, is that religion is some way of organizing the neural systems necessary for human survival as biologists-

^13. SPECT stands for single photon emission computed tomography (computed tomography of single photon emission). D'Aquili is a psychiatrist, while Newberg has a medical degree.

^14. См. Rue, L. (2005) Religion is not About God: How Spiritual Traditions Nurture our iological Nature and What to Expect when They Fail. New Brunswick, London: Rudgers University Press.

of a specific type. It separates "primary, intuitive, and secondary, cultural, mental operators" (primary and secondary mental operators). But unlike most cognitive scientists, who are skeptical of "culture" as an explanatory category, Ryu believes that "culture controls emotions" (p. 230) and that "secondary" (cultural) mental operators can have a decisive influence and even rearrange human nature: a symbol can "overpower" genes (see the eloquent subtitle his books).

Stuart Guthrie, although he fits well into the broad cognitive paradigm, is not at all like a"neuro-realist." He proposed his theory in 1993 in the book Faces in the Clouds, which, as the title suggests, explains religion exclusively in anthropomorphic terms. Drawing on Edward Tylor's theory of animism and Robin Horton's ideas about the projection of social relationships on relationships with supernatural forces, Guthrie goes even further, reducing all products of the religious imagination to unconscious anthropomorphic projections. Benson Seiler reproaches Guthrie for being too direct, which prevents him from explaining why, for example, the gods are also endowed with superhuman qualities.

Pascal Boyer and Ilkka Pusiainen complement each other in their monographs "Explaining Religion" and "How Religion Works"¹⁵. Jeppe Jensen presents their ideas beautifully and provides a well-founded critique. The approach of Boyer and Puciainen, developed on the basis of their own special studies16 and largely due to the influence of the French anthropologist Dan Sperber, can be considered a mainstream cognitive approach. Sperber, and our theorists after him, are changing the way religious studies is viewed: religion is not so much a cultural phenomenon as a mental mechanism. At the same time, they reject the notion of religion as an irrational, dramatic "meaning gap." Boyer operates with a dichotomy of intuitive vs counterintuitive concepts, but there is no gap, and "counterintuitive" gods and spirits embody many human qualities (similar to Stuart Guthrie!), and yet they are not the same.-

^15. Boyer, P. (2001) Religion Explained: the Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books; Pyysiainen, I. (2003) How Religion Works: Toward a New Cognitive Science of Religion. Leiden: Brill.

^16. Boyer studied African religions, while Pusiainen studied Buddhism.

ko's are learned and remembered. So, religion is quite "natural", but with one thing: it is a "probable, but not inevitable by-product" of brain activity. It emphatically denies any normativity (religion is good for a person and society) and any functionalism (religion is necessary for performing certain functions for the survival of a person and society). It goes without saying that there is no place for a special "religious organ" or a special "religious faculty" in the approach of Boyer and Puciainen (as in the neurotheology of Newberg and others).

Jensen speaks respectfully of the authors, but exposes their conscious reductionism (the danger of which I wrote above), the absolute preference they give to the study of individual consciousness, "psychological universalism" and inattention to the mechanisms of culture (and it is at the level of culture that variations are formed). So Jensen calls out: need to go beyond the brain!

Scott Atran, author of The Evolutionary Landscape of Religion [¹⁷] and many other works, is very close to Guthrie and Boyer and can also be considered almost a classic of the cognitive approach (see a good article by Joseph Balbulia). An anthropologist by formation, Atran has studied Druze communities in the Middle East in detail, and since then his main interest has been in the nature of rigid religious identity and cohesion (something that most characterizes Druze and other similar groups). In his works, Atran combined cognitive theory with the theory of solidarity. Like Boyer and Puciainen, Atran says that religion is an "optional byproduct" of brain evolution; he likens religion to the" spandrel", an architectural element that appears - unintentionally, from the point of view of architectural design - when an arch is inscribed in a rectangular vault. Atran seems to suggest that religion is similar to the diverse decor that has been used to fill such sinuses in the history of architecture.

The mainstream cognitive approach to religion is precisely this: to deny the special brain functions that generate religious sensitivity (that is, what is sometimes used in popular usage).

^17. Atran, S. (2002) In Gods We Trust: the Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

God's cell " or "God's gene"), and at the same time recognize that religiosity is a natural (even "unintended") consequence of human evolution.

All the arguments of cognitive scientists like Boyer and Atran seem a little "strained"; even if we ignore the cardinal objection to "inattention to culture", it remains unclear how strong are the evolutionist arguments about the emergence of religion as a "byproduct"? For what other purposes did those cognitive functions arise, the" sinuses "of which were filled with religious "patterns"? Until this mechanism is described at the neurobiological level, speculation about it seems speculative. Also, explanations of how the counterintuitive beliefs that make up the basis of religion are formed are not very convincing. When and why is the "intuitive ontology" violated? What is the cause of such a violation in the mechanism of brain activity? Etc.

In his own way, the cognitivists are joined by the German antiquarian Walter Burkert, author of the famous book Homo Necans (The Man Who Kills, 1972)¹⁸ and later-the book "The Creation of the Sacred" discussed here ¹⁹. Burkert is a leading expert on ancient Greek religion, especially sacrificial rituals; unlike some other theorists, his work is based on a huge amount of empirical research. This makes it look academically solid. However, in" The Creation of the sacred " Burkert uses, perhaps, too rigid evolutionist scheme of the struggle for survival, finding in the cruel sacrificial rites, even in the need for violence, the manifestation of the very essence of human existence ²⁰. G. Benadives does not reproach Burkert ethological excursions (in particular, comparing the behavior of humans and chimpanzees), considering these features to be the most important. the attempts are quite cautious and permissible , to the extent that biology triumphs; but he reproaches Burkert, if not for reduction, then at least for the fact that he is trying to do so.

^18. Burkert, W. (1972) Homo Necans Interpretationen altgriechischer Opferriten und Mythen. Berlin: De Gruyter. First English translation: Homo Necans: the Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986. Unfortunately, the book has not been translated into Russian.

^19. Burkert, W. (1996) Creation of the Sacred. Tracks of Biology in Early Religion. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.

^20. Burkert's ideas undoubtedly echo those of Rene Girard in his book Violence and the Sacred, published in the same year as Homo Necans (Girard, R. (1972) La violence et le sacre. Paris: Grasset).

to the extent that Burkert's idee-fixe leads to ignoring the complexity of human culture, reducing it to a "minimal order" and describing religion as a rather mechanical "hybrid" of biology and culture (p.55).

South African archaeologists David Lewis-Williams and David Pearce, authors of Inside the Neolithic Consciousness, ²¹ derive their theoretical reasoning from their special studies of rock art (in particular, famous rock art samples from the Western Cape Province of South Africa). They interpret the revolution at the Upper Paleolithic-Neolithic boundary as a colossal turn in thinking, not just a reaction to environmental changes, as is commonly believed. The appearance of" gods " is the content of this revolution. Like other cognitive scientists, Lewis-Williams and Peirce focus on neurophysiology, reducing many religious manifestations to shamanic trances that they find in rock art. Donald Wiebe criticizes archaeologists for their reluctance to see rock art as anything other than religious content, and for their unproven view of shamanism as a universal form inherent in all primitive societies.

While many of the theories presented in this book accept, at least implicitly, the principles of Darwinian evolution, David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary biologist by profession, wrote Darwin's Council, ²² which demonstrates a strict biocentrism in the explanation of religion. At the same time, however, he initially belongs to the minority of evolutionary biologists who recognize the possibility of a group (rather than individual) principle in natural selection (group selection). It is on this recognition of group selection that Wilson's entire theory is built: religion is based on the" tendency to altruism "(more precisely: non-reciprocal altruistic tendency), which creates a kind of" solidarity technology", which, in turn, is necessary for humans as a species from the point of view of evolutionary adaptation. Wilson seeks to go "beyond the genes "(i.e., beyond the biological individual) and understand how religion at the group level as a whole contributes to strengthening solidarity by

^21. Lewis-Williams, D.J. and Pearse, D. (2005) Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos and the Realm of the Gods. London: Thames and Hudson.

^22. Wilson, D. (2002) Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

what he calls "practical realism," oriented toward utility rather than truth (a cross between Kant's division into "practical" and "pure" reason?). Balbulia and Frin, the authors of the article on Wilson, note that his book is only a program, not a full-fledged theory; remind once again that most biologists are skeptical of group selection; and reproach Wilson for superficially using the material of historical and living religions proper.²³

Roy Rappaport is also an absolute evolutionist and biocentrist. Rappaport is famous for his theory of ritual; in fact, for him, religion and ritual are almost synonymous. His direct predecessors were Victor Turner, Mary Douglas, and Clifford Geertz. On the other hand, his name is associated with the "cultural materialism" of Marvin Harris, a consistent Marxist who explained culture as a system of practical means of adapting to the environment. ²⁴ Harris, in particular, referred to the book "Pigs for Ancestors", an anthropological study of Rappaport in Papua New Guinea, in which he formulated his idea of "cultural materialism".environmental anthropology " ²⁵. This is where he discovered the key function of ritual in maintaining ecosystem stability. All of his subsequent publications, including his last theoretical one, are devoted to the development of this idea: the function of religion is to remove doubts, to maintain social order and even ecological balance. Rappaport is particularly interesting for its emphasis on the ecoregulatory function of religion, which is more applicable, however, to compact and relatively archaic societies. Robert Segal, the author of an article on Rappaport, criticizes him for his extreme attention to ritual and for underestimating other aspects of religion; for his straightforward functionalism, as well as for his excessive speculative metaphysics at the end of the book (p.77).

Finally, in this series of biocentric, evolutionist theories, stand out the vivid and provocative books of the Boston philosopher Daniel Dennett and the Oxford ethologist and biologist Richard Dawkins²⁶

^23. See O. Michelson's article on modern evolutionist approaches to religion in this issue; it examines, in particular, the theory of D. Wilson's older namesake, Edward Wilson.

^24. Harris, M. (1980) Cultural Materialism. New York: Vintage Books.

^25. Rappaport, R. (1968) Pigs for the Ancestors. New Haven: Yale University Press.

^26. A full translation of Armin Geertz's article on these theories is published in this issue of the journal. Therefore, I will not dwell on them in this review.

Let's move on to a brief review of several articles about theories that are not related to cognitive turn or evolutionary biology and that can rather be called sociocentric.

However, Rodney Stark and Roger Finke can be partly interpreted in a cognitive way. In their theoretical book, Works of Faith, ²⁷ they propose what they call a "new paradigm" that is opposed to both the old secularization theory and Dawkins ' "new atheism." Gregory Allee provides a brilliant analysis of how Stark and Finke applied "rational choice theory" to the understanding of religion. The novelty of the "new paradigm" is, according to the theorists themselves, in relation to the essence of religion: religion appears not as the focus of hopeless irrationalism, contrary to science, economics and other products of Modernity, but, on the contrary, as a system of ideas and actions based on rational and conscious calculation and in this sense fully consistent with Modernity.

Allee believes that Stark and Finke are inheriting Locke and Adam Smith, and express a completely (if not caricatured, I would add) American view of things. Like cognitive explanations, religion for Stark and Finke is a natural, innate, inherent property of man. Religion functions according to economic laws. There is a free market of religions. Supply generates demand. People choose their religion based on rational calculations. The goal is profit maximization; in the case of religion, the highest "profit" is salvation. People tend to associate the greatest chances of salvation with more" expensive " (costly) religions (you invest more , you get more). Stark and Finke describe this religious market in detail on three levels: micro (individual), meso (churches and sects), and macro ("religious economy" in general).

In the theory of rational choice, there are interesting findings and observations, as well as a good base of sociological (quantitative) empirics. At the same time, it looks flat and simplistic and is easily criticized. Allee presents theorists with a huge list of complaints. It is impossible to reduce "acts of faith" (as well as human relations in general) only to acts of mercantile exchange (but what about, for example, gift relations?). It is inexplicable why the" higher " gods farthest from ta-

^27. Stark, R. and Finke, R. (2000) Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press.

those who are exchanged receive more honors than the gods of direct action. It is impossible to deal only with religious groups with clear borders and identities, without paying attention to the many fluid and mobile forms of religiosity. The purely Protestant evangelical concept of "sects"cannot be taken as a universal model. Finally, it is doubtful that the homo oeconomicus model has universal anthropological significance. And if you really look at the root, it is ridiculous to reduce all human actions to acts of rational choice.²⁸

American Thomas Tweed, a professional religious scholar from Austin, Texas, works in a traditional anthropological manner, without any reference to fashionable biocentric approaches. However, in his generalizing book, which grew out of a meticulous field study of the religious practices of the Cuban diaspora in South Florida, religion is presented in terms of "organic" human everyday life, as a space of "movement and habitation"^.29 In an effort to protect the very concept of "religion" from the criticism of recent decades, Tweed, according to Aaron Hughes, runs the risk of falling into essentialism and becomes less intelligible as soon as he moves away from his field material (pp. 215-221).

Finally-articles dedicated to two German sociologists. The classic heavyweight Niklas Luhmann devoted a separate volume to religion in a long series of special studies of social subsystems included in his grandiose, thorough, difficult-to-digest system project. The book on religion, which followed monographs on science, economics, law, and the political subsystem, was published posthumously on ³⁰. Peter Beyer writes about his teacher with reverence, while soberly acknowledging the marginality of Luhmann's theory of religion and the limited nature of its overall influence. Luhmann does not seem to be trying to make sense of religion beyond its "differentiated" version in a deeply secularized Modern society; and although he offers a sketch of historically changing religious forms, his knowledge outside of Christianity is very limited. But Beyer focuses on the important things that Lou provides-

^28. See in this issue the article by A. Belkova devoted to a particular topic in the framework of the theory of rational choice.

^29.Tweed, T. (2006) Crossing and Dwelling: a Theory of Religion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

^30. Luhmann, N. (2000) Die Religion der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkampf.

Manov's methodology: interweaving religion into an all-encompassing super-system of communications, explaining it precisely through the prism of the general communication theory of society ³¹.

Martin Riesenbrodt is a German religious scholar in the traditional sense and a loyal follower of Max Weber. His book"The Cult and the Promise of Religion "³² is polemically deployed against the postmodern criticism of the very concept of" religion "(as well as the concept of" culture", etc.) - Riesenbrodt has no doubt that the term "religion", even if it was invented at a certain time and in a certain intellectual and social context, is absolutely necessary, understandable and it does not need a definition: religion is defined from within by those who profess it. In fact, to understand religion, we need to systematize these different types of religious "self-awareness", "insiders ' perspectives". Following the "performative approach", Riesenbrodt reveals this self-consciousness through the analysis of ritual, choosing the Christian liturgy as an ideal type in the Weberian sense. The main meaning of religious action, as the title of the book suggests , is the promise of salvation (also quite a Weberian interpretation). However, the author of the article about Riesenbrodt, Michael Stausberg, believes that the central concept of "salvation" has not been developed by him. Riesenbrodt's arguments about religion as a "seismograph" of social changes are interesting, in particular, his explanations of the religious upsurge at the end of the XX century.

Stausberg, as the author of the volume, seems to have to reproach Riesenbrodt for not paying attention to the cognitive and evolutionary theories that clearly prevail; in my opinion, this reproach is in vain. If it is true that Riesenbrodt's theoretical abstractions are somewhat secondary and lack the bright novelty of new wave theorists, they still rest on a solid empirical and categorical foundation, which is by no means necessary to part with.

What is naturally good? Evaluation positions of theorists

When we say, as Michael Stausberg did, that for most theorists religion appears to be a "natural" phenomenon, we can say that religion is a "natural" phenomenon.-

^31. See in this issue a separate article by E. Arinin on Luhmann's theory of religion.

^32. Riesenbrodt, M. (2007) Cultus und Heilversprehen. Eine Theorie der Religion. Munich: C. H. Beck. The word Cultus is deliberately archaized (compare the modern spelling in German: Kult, Kultus).

Instead, we primarily think about the defining role of the natural in explaining religion, as well as the natural sciences that inspire these approaches. But we can't help but notice the additional, non-obvious connotation of the word "natural": a certain positive evaluative quality that can be heard in it. Religion is a natural thing; it means that it is natural; it means that it is necessary; it means that it is useful or even necessary (?).

In the epilogue, Stausberg specifically focuses on the normative and even ideological agenda of modern theories. He believes that theorists often tend to make open or muted value judgments about religion. Among the theorists represented in the book, Richard Dawkins (author of "God Delusion") and Daniel Dennett (author of "Breaking the Spell") do not hide their anti-religious positions; Walter Berkert, already due to the specifics of his approach - the analysis of ritual violence and religious fear - is skeptical and cautionary.

However, as the volume's editor himself notes, in most cases, theorists are either neutral or even positive about religion. Perhaps this is due to a combination of "post-secular" trends, the strengthening of religious-conservative sentiments, and, last but not least, a certain deterioration in the academic paradigm of secularization.

In any case, the inventors of the religious version of rational choice theory, Stark and Finke, as mentioned above, openly oppose their work to the idea of secularization. As Allee, the author of the article on Stark and Fink, notes, these scientists proposed not only a purely American, but also a" Reaganianist "approach based on the ideology of the free market and "Christian (evangelical) triumphalism", which not only postulates God as a scientifically proven fact, but makes Christianity " responsible for the development of modern science and technology and the success of the "West"" (p. 83). Another example is Roy Rappaport: at the end of his book "Ritual and Religion in the Formation of humanity" ³³, according to Robert Segal, he crosses the border between science and theology and, refuting anti-religious criticism, tries to prove that religion should continue to play a central role in human life in the twenty-first century (p.77). Andrew Newberg and his coauthors believe that the existence of an absolutely supreme reality is at least as simple as it can be.

^33. Rappaport, R. (1999) Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge University Press.

at least as rationally possible as the existence of a purely material world (p. 287). At the end of his book, David Wilson, also unable to resist speculating about the future of humanity, speaks of his optimism based on the examples of deep faith and religious reverence for symbols that he observed among Nuer and Balinese peasants; he even speaks in the spirit of bringing science and religion closer together. From the point of view of Loyal Ryu, in complete contrast to Dawkins, religion is extremely important for the survival and well-being of man as a biological species (pp. 224, 288).

Apart from these authors, who can, in a certain sense, be called religiously biased (although we do not know anything about their personal religiosity), the rest remain neutral. Pascal Boyer and Ilkka Pusiainen, as we recall, consider religion to be an "unintentional product of brain functions" or, as Boyer often reminds us, quoting Shakespeare, "an airy nothing"; just as Atran, as we recall, considers religion to be a "by-product"of the brain. systems that were intended for other purposes in the course of evolution.

Theorists who are far from the cognitive approach try to be neutral in their assessments and treat the existence of religion as an inevitable (and in this sense also "natural") reality. For Luhmann, religion is one of the subsystems of a differentiated, modern society. For Riesenbrodt, who works in line with the Weberian methodology, religion is universal and based on well-defined, specific "meanings"; however, the latter goes a little further and sees religion as a necessary "promise" (solving problems and, ultimately, salvation), practically ignoring the idea of "ambivalence" of religion.³⁴ I must say that this idea, which has already gained sufficient circulation and personally seems to me the most productive (and, by the way, relieves or at least mitigates evaluative awkwardness), is rarely heard by both theorists and their critics.

Bibliography/References

Appleby, S. (1999) The Ambivalence of the Sacred. Religion, Violence and Reconciliation. London etc.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Asad, T. (1993) Genealogies of Religion: Discipline and Reasons of Power in Christianity and Islam. The Johns Hopkins University Press.

^34. Cp. Appleby, S. (1999) The Ambivalence of the Sacred. Religion, Violence and Reconciliation. London etc.: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.

Atran, S. (2002) In Gods We Trust: the Evolutionary Landscape of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press.

Beckford, J. (2003) Social Theory and Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Boyer, P. (2001) Religion Explained: the Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books.

Burkert, W (1972) Homo Necans Interpretationen altgriechischer Opferriten und Mythen. Berlin: De Gruyter.

Burkert, W (1986) Homo Necans: the Anthropology of Ancient Greek Sacrificial Ritual and Myth. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Burkert, W (1996) Creation of the Sacred. Tracks of Biology in Early Religion. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press.

Girard, R. (1972) La violence et le sacre, Paris: Grasset.

Guthrie, S. (1995) Faces in the Clouds. A New Theory of Relgion. Oxford University Press.

Harris, M. (1980) Cultural Materialism. New York: Vintage Books.

Lewis-Williams, D. J. and Pearse, D. (2005) Inside the Neolithic Mind: Consciousness, Cosmos and the Realm of the Gods. London: Thames and Hudson.

Lawson, S. and McCauley, R.N. (1990) Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Luhmann, N. (2000) Die Religion der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkampf.

Newberg, A., DAquili, E. and Rause, V. (2001) Why God Won't Go Away. New York: Ballantine Books.

Pyysiainen, I. (2003) How Religion Works: Toward a New Cognitive Science of Religion. Leiden: Brill.

Rappaport, R. (1968) Pigs for the Ancestors. New Haven: Yale University Press.

Rappaport, R. (1999) Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity. Cambridge University Press.

Riesenbrodt, M. (2007) Cultus und Heilversprehen. Eine Theorie der Religion. Munich: C. H. Beck.

Rue, L. (2005) Religion is not About God: How Spiritual Traditions Nurture our Biological Nature and What to Expect when They Fail. New Brunswick, London: Rudgers University Press.

Smith, J.Z. (1999) "Religion, Religions, Religious", in M.Taylor (ed.) Critical Terms of Religious Studies, pp. 269 - 284. Chicago and London: The University of Chicago Press.

Stark, R. and Finke, R. (2000) Acts of Faith: Explaining the Human Side of Religion. Berkeley: University of California Press.

Stausberg, M. (ed.) (2009) Contemporary theories of religion: A critical companion. Routledge: London and New York.

Tweed, T. (2006) Crossing and Dwelling: a Theory of Religion. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Whitehouse, H. (2000) Arguments and Icons. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Wilson, D. (2002) Darwin's Cathedral: Evolution, Religion and the Nature of Society. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

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