I have argued in the past that there has been a massive failure of nerve in the study of religion in the context of the modern research university; that it failed to live up to the scientific objectives enunciated for the field in late nineteenth-century European academic communities. The "comments" here on the current state of the science (or sciences) of religion constitute, in part, a kind of informal critical history of the field known as "Religious Studies." I suggest here that the overall development of the field might actually indicate a positive trajectory since its inception in late nineteenth-century Europe. This essay, therefore, may mitigate somewhat my recent claim (with L. H. Martin) that it is highly unlikely that the scientific study of religion will actually some day come to dominance in religious studies departments in our modern universities.
Although the scientific study of religion has found a place in the context of the modern university it has seldom found full emancipation from religious and theological agendas. This in large measure accounts for the limited financial resources available for research in the field of "religious studies". Furthermore, the scientific study of religion has little or no visibility outside the context of the modern university and is "off the radar screen" of most science funding agencies. Students of religion, therefore, are often tempted to seek funding for their projects wherever it can be found, including those with clearly stated religious agendas. I argue here that, in the long run, this will have a detrimental effect on the scientific study of religion and, possibly, on the overall agenda of the modern university. and Ačkoli si religionistika na současných univerzitách vydobyla své místo, jen zřídka se jí podařilo dosáhnout plného osamostatnění od náboženských a teologických snah. To platí zejména v případě omezených finančních prostředků na poli "studia náboženství". Navíc je religionistika jen málo viditelná - pokud vůbec - mimo univerzitní prostředí a "radary" většiny grantových agentur ji obvykle neregistrují. Religionisté jsou proto často v pokušení hledat prostředky k financování svých výzkumů, kdekoli je to jen možné, a to včetně organizací nepokrytě náboženské povahy. Zastávám zde stanovisko, podle kterého tento přístup v dlouhodobém horizontu religionistice uškodí a bude mít možná neblahý dopad dokonce i na obraz současného univerzitního prostředí jako celku.
The historical record shows that no undergraduate departments of Religious Studies have fully implemented a scientific program of study and research since such an approach was first advocated in the late nineteenth century – much less has there been any broad establishment of such a disciplinary field of study. And we argue – on cognitive- and neuro-scientific grounds – that such study is not ever likely to occur in that or any other setting. In our judgment, therefore, to entertain a hope that such a development is, pragmatically speaking, possible, is to be in the grip of a false and unshakeable delusion. And we "confess" that we ourselves have been so deluded.
In this paper I briefly outlined what I see as an important deficiency in the attempts to explain religion simply in terms of the cognitive capacities of the human mind, focusing attention in this regard primarily on the work of Pascal Boyer and Justin Barrett. I have shown that neither of these scholars actually provided clear, coherent and persuasive grounds for believing that ordinary everyday cognitive capacities of the human mind can, of themselves, "motivate" the mind's creation of the "supernatural" which is an essential aspect of religion. I then argued that David Lewis-Williams' neuropsychological theory of the origin of religion that takes seriously the alternate states of consciousness and weird experiences that early Homo sapiens would have had to deal with, both psychologically and socially, provided a sound basis on which our ordinary cognitive capacities could create a non-natural world inhabited by "supernatural beings and forces" that could influence life.
This paper is a response to the responses to our paper "Religious Studies as a Scientific Discipline: The Persistence of a Delusion" by Hans Gerald Hödl, Hubert Seiwert, Radek Kundt, Tomáš Bubík, and Kocku von Stuckrad, published in this same issue of Religio: Revue pro religionistiku. Some of the respondents actually overstate our position. We have claimed, and still now claim, that a fully scientific program of "Religious Studies", even if possible, is highly unlikely to ever be achieved.