Cognitive Science Approaches to the Biblical World

Call For Papers: In the 2015 Annual Meeting, the Mind, Society and Religion section will organize two sessions on the theme “Cooperation, Manipulation, and Violence: Evolutionary Perspectives on Ancient Texts”, and a third, open session. In recent decades, scholars of religion have increasingly begun to draw on insights and theories from biological sciences to understand and explain the roots of human religiosity and morality. Some biologists and evolutionary scientists, in turn, have become interested in questions about human nature, origins of morality, altruism and prosociality, in other words, the kinds of questions that have traditionally been discussed by theologians, philosophers, and scholars of religion. How can these biological and evolutionary perspectives on religion and morality help biblical scholars and historians of religion to understand ancient texts and people who produced and used these texts? The first session will focus on the work of Frans de Waal, well-known primatologist and ethologist (Emory University, Atlanta), whose pioneering work on empathy among primates has led him to ask fundamental questions about human cooperation, prosociality and the origins of morality. This session is pre-arranged and organized in cooperation with the AAR Cognitive Science of Religion group and the International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion. For the second session, we invite paper proposals that focus on the theme “Cooperation, Manipulation, and Violence” using cognitive and evolutionary approaches to biblical materials or promoting dialogue between these and other approaches in biblical studies. The third session is open to proposals relating to any research focus stated in the description of the program unit.

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