Religious Knowledge from the Perspective of Cognitive Sciences

Episteme has an important role in cognitive activities including religious knowledge because it clearly affects the degree of human’s beliefs. The main parts of religious knowledge are the beliefs related to the soul, the world, the one God or multiple Gods. Although we mostly pretend that religious beliefs are acquired beliefs and thus we focus on them, but some religious knowledge may have biological or even completely spiritual bases. It seems that the role of the episteme related to religious knowledge is not less central than the role of earthly knowledge. Some experimental evidences show that episteme is rooted in some specific systems of brain. The theories of body related episteme have a great significance in cognitive psychology, social psychology and neurology. Body related episteme has a great role in religious perspectives, religious beliefs and religious deeds. It cannot be claimed that being related to body explains everything about the role of episteme in religious experience, but it has a great effect on explaining this complicated phenomenon.