[OPEN ACCESS TARGET ARTICLE WITH COMMENTARIES AND RESPONSE] We develop a new model of how human agency-detection capacities and other socio-cognitive biases are involved in forming religious beliefs. Crucially, we distinguish general religious beliefs (such as *God exists*) from personal religious beliefs that directly refer to the agent holding the belief or to her peripersonal time and space (such as *God appeared to _me_ last night*). On our model, people acquire general religious beliefs mostly from their surrounding culture; however, people (...) use agency-intuitions and other low-level experiences to form personal religious beliefs. We call our model the Interactive Religious Experience Model (IREM). IREM inverts received versions of Hyperactive Agency-Detection Device Theory (HADD Theory): instead of saying that agency-intuitions are major causes of religious belief in general, IREM says that general belief in supernatural agents causes people to seek situations that trigger agency-intuitions and other experiences, since these enable one to form personal beliefs about those agents. In addition to developing this model, we (1) present empirical and conceptual difficulties with received versions of HADD Theory, (2) explain how IREM incorporates philosophical work on indexical belief, (3) relate IREM to existing anthropological and psychological research, and (4) propose future empirical research programs based on IREM. (shrink)

The cognitive science of religion is a rapidly growing field whose practitioners apply insights from advances in cognitive science in order to provide a better understanding of religious impulses, beliefs, and behaviors. In this book Ilkka Pyysiäinen shows how this methodology can profitably be used in the comparative study of beliefs about superhuman agents. He begins by developing a theoretical outline of the basic, modular architecture of the human mind and especially the human capacity to understand agency. He then goes (...) on to discuss examples of supernatural agency in detail, arguing that the human ability to attribute beliefs and desires to others forms the basis of conceptions of supernatural agents and of such social cognition in which supernatural agents are postulated as interested parties in social life. Beliefs about supernatural agency are natural, says Pyysiäinen, in the sense that such concepts are used in an intuitive and automatic fashion. Two dots and a straight line below them automatically trigger the idea of a face, for example. Given that the mind consists of a host of such modular mechanisms, certain kinds of beliefs will always have a selective advantage over others.theological concepts are usually elaborate versions of such simpler and more contagious folk conceptions. Pyysiäinen uses ethnographical and survey materials as well as doctrinal treatises to show that there are certain recurrent patterns in beliefs about supernatural agents both at the level of folk-religion and of formal theology. (shrink)

The most habitual and common use of the term natural corresponds to that which is – or could be – property of our experience, irrespective of whether that experience is mental or physical, viz. whatever can be known, perceived, determined and categorized by human mind, after it has bumped into and passed through the channels of our senses. The cooperation between our intellectual and sensual capabilities in relation to the usurpation of what is considered to be “natural”, is extremely crucial (...) for us to presume something as such, even if we are not familiar with – or sympathetic to – the duality of the Kantian Theory of Knowledge. That is inasmuch as the human mind, to be specific, is characterized by the intrinsic ability to conceive and contemplate on beings or events, which anything but belong to the natural order of things, beings such as Pegasus or the Valkyries, for instance, and counterfactual realities like the Purgatory or the Valhalla. (shrink)

Both intention-based and causation-based definitions of the miraculous make reference to the term ‘supernatural’. Philosophers who define the miraculous appear to use this term in a loose way, perhaps meaning the nonnatural, perhaps meaning a subcategory of the nonnatural. Here I examine the aetiology of the term ‘supernatural’. I consider three outstanding issues regarding the meaning of the term and conclude that the supernatural is best understood as a subcategory of the nonnatural. In light of this clarification, (...) I argue that a prominent causation-based definition of the miraculous should be revised so as not refer to the supernatural. I further argue that authors of intention-based definitions of the miraculous need to consider whether or not they should continue to refer to the supernatural, in their definitions of the miraculous, in light of the conclusions discerned here. (shrink)

Cooperation for the public good is vulnerable to exploitation by free-riders because it always pays individuals to exploit the social contract for their own benefit. This problem can be resolved if free-riders are punished, but punishment is itself a public good subject to free-riding. The fear of supernatural punishment hypothesis (FSPH) proposes that belief in supernatural punishment might offer a solution to this problem by deflecting the cost of punishment onto supernatural forces and thereby incentivizing cooperation. FSPH (...) is supported empirically by ethnographic data, but this work has so far focused on (1) institutional cooperative traits which may not reflect individual choices on how to behave in everyday social interactions and (2) threat of punishment from all-powerful moralizing high gods rather than other agents capable of supernatural punishment. Here, we consider the FSPH using variables which are linked to individual interaction and expand the number of variables measuring belief in different forms of supernatural punishment. Our findings do not fit these more general FSPH predictions. We suggest there may be something special about the link between moralizing high gods and institutional enforcement of cooperation that is not captured by these other variables. (shrink)

A ghost is a supernatural being that is typically described as capable of appearing to, speaking to, and even doing harm to a person. But it is also described as a being that you cannot touch or affect in the usual ways. Lots of things seem weird at first, but humans don't think of them as supernatural. It's easy to see how material things interact with each other. After all, they are, by their very essence as things filling (...) space, things that cannot merge into each other. Descartes' view is not just a philosophical speculation; it is also a scientific hypothesis. Although Descartes' reasons for dualism are based primarily in deep philosophical meditation, his reason for identifying the pineal gland as the seat of the soul is based in his investigation of the human brain where Descartes finds an anatomical explanation for some obvious facts about human perception. (shrink)

The Supernatural universe consists of both supernatural and natural beings and elements. The spernatural beings include God, archangels, minor gods, leviathans, angels, reapers, demons, and spirits. The natural beings are humans and other organic life. To see the differences between naturalist thinking and supernaturalist thinking, two possible explanations of a mental illness should be compared. A naturalist explanation would use neurobiology to explain mental illness as driven by brain anomalies either in structure or chemistry. By contrast, a (...) class='Hi'>supernatural explanation of mental illness might involve the possession of the person by an evil spirit or demon. Due to the fact that organisms are self‐replicating, and replication cannot be perfect in the material world, genetic codes must evolve. A naturalist could hypothesize that souls self‐replicate through the very same biological process that delivers all our children, since whenever we replicate we tend to also increase the total number of souls. (shrink)

Current evolutionary and cognitive theories of religion posit that supernatural agent concepts emerge from cognitive systems such as theory of mind and social cognition. Some argue that these concepts evolved to maintain social order by minimizing antisocial behavior. If these theories are correct, then people should process information about supernatural agents’ socially strategic knowledge more quickly than non-strategic knowledge. Furthermore, agents’ knowledge of immoral and uncooperative social behaviors should be especially accessible to people. To examine these hypotheses, we (...) measured response-times to questions about the knowledge attributed to four different agents—God, Santa Claus, a fictional surveillance government, and omniscient but non-interfering aliens—that vary in their omniscience, moral concern, ability to punish, and how supernatural they are. As anticipated, participants respond more quickly to questions about agents’ socially strategic knowledge than non-strategic knowledge, but only when agents are able to punish. (shrink)

In this paper I shall assess Clarke’s assertion that all definitions of miracles that purport to satisfy the criterion of religious inclusiveness should substitute the term ‘supernatural’ for ‘non-natural’. In addition, I shall attempt to strengthen Clarke’s conception of the supernatural by offering an analysis of what it means for something to be ‘above’ nature. Lastly, I shall offer a new argument as to why Clarke’s intention-based definition of miracles is necessarily less religiously inclusive than Mumford’s causation-based definition.

This chapter first discusses what it would be for something to be supernatural. I argue that there are good reasons not to reject supernaturalism. The essay then considers whether there is an interesting connection between atheism and the supernatural. One topic central to this question is that of whether atheistic belief can be rationally tied to the rejection of belief in anything supernatural. I argue that it cannot, because – as we will see – it is highly (...) implausible that the world encompasses no supernatural properties. (shrink)

A ‘scientific worldview’ is commonly seen as contradictory to belief in supernatural forces, and there is little research on the supernatural beliefs of individuals who identify with science. In this article, we investigate the supernatural explanations of science-oriented individuals in domains of fundamental concern (suffering, death, and origins), and how supernatural causality is reconciled with belief in science. The open-ended responses of 387 Finns were analysed. The results show that science-oriented Finns endorsed both religion-related and more (...) secular supernatural beliefs (such as belief in evolution as a purposeful process). Following the coexistence model, science-oriented Finns applied synthetic and target-dependent reasoning. In addition, many who invoked supernatural explanations integrated supernatural causality with science. Two forms of integrated reasoning were found: 1) supernatural agency as the ultimate cause and scientific theory as the proximate cause, and 2) a similarity-based heuristic, as seen in afterlife beliefs appealing to the law of conservation of energy. (shrink)

Robert Larmer and Alvin Plantinga have argued that modern physics is compatible with the idea that the physical universe is open to God’s supernatural action and that such action would not involve any violation of laws of nature. Thus, they have concluded that supernatural miracles are compatible with modern science. I argue that their line of reasoning is based on an incorrect interpretation of conservation laws and that supernatural miracles would involve violations of laws of nature.

This paper examines three ancient traits of religion whose origins likely date back to the Upper Paleolithic: ancestor worship, shamanism, and the belief in natural and animal spirits. Evidence for the emergence of these traits coincides with evidence for a dramatic advance in human social cooperation. It is argued that these traits played a role in the evolution of human cooperation through the mechanism of social scrutiny. Social scrutiny is an effective means of reducing individualism and enhancing prosocial behavior. Religion’s (...) most ancient traits represent an extension of the human social world into the supernatural, thus reinforcing within-group cooperation by means of ever-vigilant spiritual monitors. Believing that the spirits were always watching may have helped reduce the number of non-cooperators within a group while reinforcing group behavioral norms, thus allowing humanlike levels of cooperation to emerge. (shrink)

Brown, Jean Review(s) of: Indexer please enter the following minimum information (where available): TITLE, AUTHOR(S) and ISBN for each book reviewed.Supernatural selection: How religion Evolved, by Matt J. Rossano Oxford Press. 2010.

I criticize 5 arguments for the conclusion that religious belief is unreliably formed and hence epistemically tainted. The arguments draw on scientific evidence from Cognitive Science of Religion. They differ considerably as to why the evidence points to unreliability. Two arguments conclude to unreliability because religious belief is shaped by evolutionary pressures; another argument states that the mechanism responsible for religious belief produces many false god-beliefs; a similar argument claims that the mechanism produces incompatible god-beliefs; and a final argument states (...) that the mechanism is offtrack. I argue that the arguments fail to make the case for unreliability or that the unreliability can be overcome. (shrink)

An invited commentary on Ara Norenzayan's Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict, focusing on whether early China constitutes an exception to his general theory.

Traditionally, the term ’God’ has been understood either as a proper name or as a description. However, according to a new view, the term God’ in a sentence like "Jesus Christ is God" functions as a kind term, much as the term ’tiger’ functions in the sentence "Tigger is a tiger." In this paper I examine the claim that divinity can be construed as a ’supernatural’ kind, developing the outlines of an account of the semantics of God’ along these (...) lines, and suggest that it might solve an important philosophical problem concerning the Incarnation. (shrink)

Atran & Norenzayan's (A&N's) target article effectively combines the insights of evolutionary biology and interdisciplinary cognitive science, neither of which alone yields sufficient explanatory power to help us fully understand the complexities of supernatural belief. Although the authors' ideas echo those of other researchers, they are perhaps the most squarely grounded in neo-Darwinian terms to date. Nevertheless, A&N overlook the possibility that the tendency to infer supernatural agents' communicative intent behind natural events served an ancestrally adaptive function.

Purpose:To test the hypothesis that supernatural agents appear in nightmares and dreams in association with evidence of diminished agency within the dreamer/dream ego.Methods:Content analyses of 120 nightmares and 71 unpleasant control dream narratives.Results:We found that SAs overtly occur in about one quarter of unpleasant dreams and about half of nightmares. When SAs appear in a dream or nightmare they are reliably associated with diminished agency in the dreamer. Diminished agency within the dreamer occurs in over 90% of dreams that (...) have overt SAs. In about half of nightmare reports the SA appears suddenly with no clear emergence pattern. In some two thirds of unpleasant dreams, however, the SA emerged from a human character. The SA’s gender was indeterminate in most dreams with SAs but the SA communicated with the dreamer in 24% of nightmares and only 13% of unpleasant dreams. In most nightmares, the SA intended to harm the dreamer and in one third of nightmares the dreamer was the victim of physical agression by the SA. SA intentions in unpleasant dreams were more varied and actually benign in 13% of cases.Conclusion:Supernatural agents reliably appear in nightmares and unpleasant dreams in association with diminished agency in the dreamer. Diminished agency in an individual may facilitate supernatural agent cognitions. (shrink)

The final chapter of Peter Winch's book on Simone Weil discusses Weil's idea of supernatural virtue. Weil uses this language in connection with certain exceptional actions: actions of a kind which are for most of us, most of the time, simply impossible. She is particularly struck by cases in which someone refrains from exercising a power which they have over another: in which, for example, someone refrains from killing or enslaving an enemy who has grievously harmed him and who (...) is now at his mercy. We could also speak of cases in which someone helps an enemy, or a stranger, at very real cost, or risk, to himself. In such cases Weil speaks of the ‘supernatural’ as being at work. (shrink)

Advances in technology might seem to help to temper belief in the supernatural, but it turned out that they served, for example, to prove the existence of the otherworldly. The appearance of photography was perceived by spiritualists as a possible way to demonstrate the existence of spirits. The reusing of stacked plates, the duration of the exposure, illumination, etc. often added details to the new photograph, so unintentionally additional images fell into the photograph, causing confusion. The article considers cases (...) of falsification of collisions of people with supernatural forces, imprinted on photos of XIX, XX and XXI centuries. as well as videos from the 20th and 21st centuries. Only 37% of the photos and 63% of the videos were falsified intentionally – exposure, editing, counterfeiting, scenery or acting actors, while 53% of the photos and 29% of the videos were unintentionally. It was an accident, a game of light and shadow, spoiled photo/video. Presented as supernatural can have a resemblance to a human figure, or be a spot, a shadow. Most of the evidence of encounters is unintentional, in the daytime, outside. The article examines the progress of technologies through which you can create fake pictures. Especially in modern times, the development of digital technologies had reached a level where it was impossible to distinguish between real and edited images. (shrink)

Thinking about God often leads to thinking about ‘God’. And it has never been completely clear how best to understand this little English word. Traditionally, ‘God’ has been taken to be either a description or a name. However, a third option has recently captured the attention of philosophical theologians. It is claimed that just as one should think of, say, ‘humanity’ as a kind term, so one should think of ‘God’, or perhaps ‘divinity’, as a kind term. But given the (...) tight link between semantics and metaphysics, if one is tempted to understand ‘humanity’ or ‘divinity’ as kind terms, then one will naturally begin to think of humanity and divinity as kinds. Characterizing divinity this way, a primary task of philosophical theology is to give a characterization of the divine kind-essence. In this paper, I want to consider the claim that divinity is profitably construed as a kind-essence, and argue that the way that this has typically been understood is not altogether adequate. I shall then present and develop an alternative understanding of this kind-essence approach that takes the analogy of `supernatural kinds’ and natural kinds much more seriously. I will conclude by considering some objections. (shrink)

I propose, in partial response to the rich essays by Millican & Thornhill-Miller and Salamon that religious traditions are too diverse to be represented either by a cosmological core or even an ethical. Religious sensibility is more often inspirational than explanatory, does not always require a transcendent origin of all things, and does not always support the sort of humanistic values preferred in the European Enlightenment. A widely shared global religion is more likely to be eclectic than carefully ‘rational’, and (...) is likely to be opposed by a more overtly ‘supernatural’ project founded in revelation. (shrink)

Berkeley's Passive Obedience presents a fragment of morality. Moral duties are dictated by divine natural laws that the good God gives to all people. This justifies morality but may not motivate right conduct. Only God's commands may properly motivate the agent. Morality guides people from this unhappy world to heaven and has political consequences, especially the citizen's duties of obedience and loyalty to a supreme political authority. Loyalty and obedience to God are virtues that earn eternal happiness. Berkeley is a (...) divine-command theorist who supports a morality focused on a heavenly reward. His moral reflections serve political ends. (shrink)

Soren Kirkegaard and Maurice Blondel are positioned together in a dialogue regarding the vision of the supernatural. Maurice Ashley Agbaw-Ebai draws from this a sharper image of the preeminent place religious experience possesses in human life and thought. Kirkegaard's lament of Christian lack of fervor and Blondel's concern that religion and philosophy no longer interact are both examined and Agbaw-Ebai concludes that they both indicate the same outcome: a "dominant leveling of society" that robs religion of its particularity. This (...) devastates the individual because he is no longer challenged to seek a relationship with God and expose himself to the supernatural. The boundlessness of man must be acknowledged or else his actions will never be understood, and religious experience and philosophy must coexist with mutual reference or self-knowledge will never amount to the discovery of supernatural destiny. And this, asserts Agbaw-Ebai, is the shared urgency of both Kirkegaard and Blondel. Like these philosophers who have preceded him, Agbaw-Ebai exhorts us to never allow the sense of our relation to the supernatural as a settled matter. The philosophy of religion we have inherited does not protect us from having to confront our own subjectivity with autonomy: to be God without God and against God, or to be God with and through God. (shrink)

Spiritual violence is a modern concept expressing the abusive aspects of religion. This article observes the potential for spiritual violence within the rhetoric of the Gospel of Matthew, a principal text of the dominant world religion. Utilizing the supernatural punishment hypothesis of religion as a theoretical background, this cross-disciplinary analysis opens perspectives on the use of religious power in the past and the present.

Belief in souls is only one component of supernatural thinking in which individuals infer the presence of invisible mechanisms that explain events as paranormal rather than natural. We believe it is important to place greater emphasis on the prevalence of supernatural beliefs across other domains, if only to counter simplistic divisions between rationality and irrationality recently aligned with the contentious science/religion debate.

Throughout the prefixed letters and narrative of 2 Maccabees, a frequent overemphasis is discovered on certain concepts within every section or pericope. This is a logical product of such a highly rhetorical work, as this links to the overarching narrative aim of the text. These emphases subsequently lead to the question of their significance specific to this text and its subject matter. This article consequently notes, firstly, that 2 Maccabees deals with sensitive or innovative ideas and moves to drastic ways (...) of conceptualising history in order to substantiate these ideas. It is no surprise, therefore, that in 2 Maccabees 9, one would find an overemphasis on the supernatural drive of world events to prove that the God of the Jews duly and appropriately deals with the enemies of his people. In order to explicate and unfold this process, the main ideas will be highlighted, communicative strategy investigated and the possible impact on the reader and/or hearer outlined. (shrink)

There is overwhelming agreement amongst naturalists that a naturalistic ontology should not allow for the possibility of supernatural entities. I argue, against this prevailing consensus, that naturalists have no proper basis to oppose the existence of supernatural entities. Naturalism is characterized, following Leiter and Rea, as a position which involves a primary commitment to scientific methodology and it is argued that any naturalistic ontological commitments must be compatible with this primary commitment. It is further argued that properly applied (...) scientific method has warranted the acceptance of the existence of supernatural entities in the past and that it is plausible to think that it will do so again in the future. So naturalists should allow for the possibility of supernatural entities. (shrink)

In response to Stephen Davis’s criticism of our previous essay, we revisit and defend our arguments that the Resurrection hypothesis is logically incompatible with the Standard Model of particle physics—and thus is maximally implausible—and that it cannot explain the sensory experiences of the Risen Jesus attributed to various witnesses in the New Testament—and thus has low explanatory power. We also review Davis’s reply, noting that he evades our arguments, misstates their conclusions, and distracts the reader with irrelevancies regarding, e.g., what (...) natural laws are, what a miracle is, and how “naturalism” and “supernaturalism” differ as worldviews. Contrary to what Davis claims (even in his abstract), we do not argue that “if the Standard Model of particle physics is true, then the resurrection of Jesus did not occur and physical things can only causally interact with other physical things.” Davis distorts our claims and criticizes straw men of his own creation. (shrink)

No doubt the years hunting monsters and saving the universe have had their toll on the Winchesters, but their toughest and most gruesome battles are contained in this book. Think Lucifer was diabolically clever? Think again. No son is more wayward than the one who squanders his intellect and academic career pursuing questions as poignant as “Half-awesome? That’s full-on good, right?” Gathered here for the first time since the formation of Purgatory, a collection of research so arcane and horrific that (...) it would make even the late, great Bobby Singer blush. _Supernatural and Philosophy_ tackles all the big ideas in the long-running hit show _Supernatural_, covering thorny issues in a fun and accessible way. Even those unfamiliar with the show will find fascinating insights into Heaven, Hell, Angels, Demons, God, and Lucifer. A unique collection of insights into the many philosophical, religious, and paranormal topics in the hit TV show, _Supernatural_ Accessible treatment of thorny issues for a general audience Written by philosophical fans of the show, for philosophical fans of the show Those unfamiliar with the show will still find fascinating insights into Heaven, Hell, Angels, Demons, God, Lucifer, and Good and Evil Contributors tackle issues ranging from the biological classifications of monsters, to the epistemological problems of ghost hunting. (shrink)

The Theistic Argument from Intentionality (TAI) is a venerable argument for the existence of God from the existence of eternal truths. The argument relies, inter alia, on the premises that (i) truth requires representation, and that (ii) non-derivative representation is a function of, and only of, minds. If propositions are the fundamental bearers of truth and falsity, then these premises entail that propositions (or at least their representational properties) depend on minds. Although it is widely thought that psychologism—the view that (...) the fundamental truth-bearers are mind-dependent—was refuted by Frege, a psychologistic view of propositions has been undergoing a revival. However, this new psychologism suffers from a problem of scarcity—finite minds cannot generate enough thoughts to play the role of fundamental truth-bearers. This objection paves the way for a revised version of the TAI: only an infinite mind can furnish enough thoughts to play the role of propositions. (shrink)

Within the cognitive science of religion, some scholars hypothesize (1) that minimally counterintuitive (MCI) concepts enjoy a transmission advantage over both intuitive and highly counterintuitive concepts, (2) that religions concern counterintuitive agents, objects, or events, and (3) that the transmission advantage of MCI concepts makes them more likely to be found in the world’s religions than other kinds of concepts. We hypothesized that the memorability of many MCI supernatural concepts was due in large part to other characteristics they possess, (...) such as their frequent and salient association with moral concerns and the alleviation of existential anxieties, and that without such characteristics they would fail to be memorable. We report the results of three experiments designed to test the relative contributions of minimal counterintuitiveness, moral valence, and existential anxiety to the memorability of supernatural ideas. We observed no main effects for minimal counterintuitiveness but did observe main effects for both moral valence and existential anxiety. We also found that these effects did not seem to stem from the greater visualizability of morally valenced concepts or concepts that concerned existential anxieties. These findings challenge important claims made by leading researchers regarding MCI concepts within the cognitive science of religion. (shrink)

If God is omniscient then he knows contingent facts. If he exists a se, then his knowledge of facts must not depend on them. How then does he know them? I take seriously Aquinas’ view that God’s knowledge is the cause of things. I argue that “things” includes both entities and situations, that God’s knowledge of them is his knowledge of his unimpedable will, and that the view does not threaten human freedom. God’s knowledge is thus like my knowledge of (...) my linguistic stipulations, except that whereas my knowledge is dedicta, his is de reo. (shrink)

Casey, in Supernatural, alludes to one of the oldest and most resilient arguments against the existence of God, the problem of evil. This problem arises from an apparent conflict between the existence of evil and the attributes that Western theists attribute to God. Casey's challenge to the existence of God is called the logical problem of evil by philosophers. Casey's problem of evil focused on an apparent logical inconsistency between believing in a God that is all‐powerful, all‐knowing, and all‐good, (...) while at the same time believing that evil exists. The soul‐making defense doesn't appear to be enough to solve the problem for Dean. While it seems true that an all‐powerful, all‐good, all‐knowing God would have the power to create a universe with soul‐growth, containing significantly less evil and suffering than the universe of Supernatural, that's just not Dean's world. (shrink)

If God is omniscient then he knows contingent facts. If he exists a se, then his knowledge of facts must not depend on them. How then does he know them? I take seriously Aquinas’ view that God’s knowledge is the cause of things. I argue that “things” includes both entities and situations, that God’s knowledge of them is his knowledge of his unimpedable will, and that the view does not threaten human freedom. God’s knowledge is thus like my knowledge of (...) my linguistic stipulations, except that whereas my knowledge is dedicta, his is de reo. (shrink)

Supernatural illustrates two dominant ideals of masculinity, the warrior and the sovereign. The sovereign has what Isaiah Berlin described as both positive and negative liberty. Negative liberty is freedom from things, like restrictions, restraints, obstacles, coercion, or force. The season finale reveals that this feud is based on an overly simplistic understanding of their two masculine ideals. Positive liberty is the freedom to do things. For the sovereign, this means having the unfettered ability to choose goals and accomplish them. (...) Supernatural is largely about men navigating their masculinity. The characters and the show itself appear to have some vacillating opinions of women and femininity. Love is a paradox in Supernatural with its masculine ideals of strength and independence. But in order to be masculine, one must first and foremost be human. And to be human, one needs love. (shrink)

The present article tests counterintuitiveness theory and methodology in relation to religious dream imagery using data on religious dream content. The endeavor adopts a “fractionated” or “piecemeal” approach where supernatural agent (SA) cognition is held to be a pivotal building block of purportedly religious dreaming. Such supernaturalistic conceptualizations manifests in a cognitive environment of dream simulation processes, threat detection and violation of basic conceptual categorization characterized by counterintuitiveness. By addressing SA cognitions as constituents of allegedly religious dream imagery, additional (...) theorizing and supporting data is presented in a growing body of research in the Cognitive Science of Religion (e.g., Barrett, 2017; Barrett et al., 2009; Hornbeck and Barrett, 2013) and on religious dreaming (McNamara, 2016; McNamara and Bulkeley, 2015). The aim of the article is partly to map and align contemporary theorizing regarding counterintuitiveness and CI schemes with empirical qualification of the prosaic hypothesis about the predominance of supernaturalism in allegedly religious dreaming. This is done by (a) exploring the crucial topic of the pervasiveness of cognitive counterintuitiveness; (b) testing Barrett’s counterintuitiveness coding and quantifying scheme (CI scheme) for counterintuitiveness in the context of religious dreaming by assessing intercoder reliability; and (c) exploring the prevalence and base rate frequency of counterintuitiveness in dream reports. This undertaking aims to contribute to the methodology and understanding of religious dream cognition, as well as to establish the cross-cultural base rates of counterintuitiveness in dreams for future research. (shrink)

There is a prima facie case of unfairness against God unless Self-revelation is given by the deity to all people. The possible replies that God's Self-revelation has always and everywhere been available to everyone through many religions; or that special knowledge of God is a matter of divine gratuity; or that more is expected of those who receive such enlightenment; or that it comes as a moral reward; are found to be wanting. Nevertheless, provided there remains an argument for selective (...) divine Self-revelation in terms of spiritual readiness, the case against God remains unproven. (shrink)