LESSONS FOR RELIGIOUS EDUCATION FROM COGNITIVE SCIENCE OF RELIGION

Religious Education, Spring 2005 by Brelsford, Theodore

Prominent religious beliefs are also memorable. This point has an intriguing nuance. If a belief is completely intuitive-which is to say that it occurs to one's mind quite automatically, it is not likely to be memorable, even if it is important. This is because there is no need to store it in memory, because it is already stored in our unconscious intuitions. We do not need to remember to flinch when a bird flies toward us. We do need to remember to not swerve off the road when a cat runs out in front of our car. That which is counterintuitive requires remembering.

One more observation from the cognitive science of religion is relevant: religious beliefs tend to be counterintuitive. Or, actually, they are a combination of the intuitive and counterintuitive. Religious beliefs are counterintuitive elaborations on one or more spiritual intuitions. For example, a basic awareness or sense of the supernatural may be intuitive. Studies show, for example, that children of atheists (at least in the West) express a sense of God as readily as children of various religious believers (cf. Rizzuto 1981).8 As already noted, human beings have a natural intuitive sense of agency in the world at large. But all specific beliefs about God become counterintuitive. God is a being without a body, or a being who is all knowing, or a single being with three persons, or a being independent of existence, or whatever (even while we intuitively know that all beings have bodies and limited knowledge, and three cannot be one, etc.). Specific beliefs about God always have counterintuitive elements. Counterintuitive does not mean that something is non-sensical or not true, it simply means that it is not intuitive-it does not occur to mind automatically. Caterpillars becoming butterflies is counterintuitive. This is what makes butterflies fascinating and wondrous. Being counterintuitive is part of what makes religious beliefs both intriguing and important. If there were not counterintuitive elements, we would probably not bother remembering, or perhaps even be able to remember, the concept. Being counter-intuitive and containing lots of useful and significant inferences makes beliefs worth remembering.

Doctrinal and Imagistic Modes of Remembering and Transmitting Religious Ideas

How will we remember? This moves us more directly toward concerns for religious education. Two basic strategies in human communities for remembering and carrying on religious beliefs are doctrines or formal teachings, and rituals or routinized practices. Recent work by Harvey Whitehouse (2000, 2002, 2004) helps illumine the psychological and educational payoffs, as well as the pedagogical challenges of what he terms the two "modes of religiosity": the doctrinal and the imagistic. These "modes of religiosity" refer to basic forms of religious expression and revolve around patterns of transmission of religion. The doctrinal mode entails highly routinized ritual action, oft-repeated linguistic communications, and otherwise carefully regulated formal teachings. The imagistic modes involve low frequency but highly arousing ritual action that prompts creative and spontaneous interpretive reflection. The power of the imagistic mode is that vivid sensory stimulation may be associated with the experience, which aids with memory and provides rich materials to the mind for making relevant inferences. The problem is that meaning in the imagistic mode tends to be imprecise and/or readily variable. Thus, meaning is unstable in imagistic transmissions and expressions of religiosity. The power of doctrinal modes of religious transmissions and expressions is that meaning may be coherently preserved and reiterated across long stretches of time and space. The problem is that doctrinal religiosity can become boring or mundane. In Christianity, traditional catechisms are classic expressions of the doctrinal mode. The evangelical revival meeting is an expression of the imagistic mode.