Vigorous debate about the advantages and disadvantages of using the term ‘belief’ regarding ancient states of mind and cognition has had a profound effect on the field of ancient history (and others, such as anthropology) in recent decades. This chapter considers which of these are still relevant and which are mutual misunderstandings, and which issues have, in effect, been resolved indirectly (such as injunctions to use different words for greater clarity). The opportunities offered by cognitive science of religion (and some limits) are set in a broader context of the study of religion. Behind many of these debates (and misunderstandings), it is argued, secular hegemony intrinsically seeks to ‘contain’ religion (taken pragmatically to be the assertion of the actual existence of divinities). This insoluble tension exerts an unceasing influence on our formulation of questions and answers in history. Recently, we have seen a fruitful greater sympathy for religion and ‘believers’ develop, while an appropriate secular distance from empathy is still maintained, notwithstanding the fact that empathy may contribute to an openness to greater sympathy and understanding: the tension does, and will, persist.

This chapter surveys the wide range of definitions of belief in recent scholarship and explores the potential of the cognitive science of religion for generating new approaches. It rejects the assumption that it is possible to talk about the presence or absence of ‘belief’ in Greek religion in a monolithic way, such that the Greeks either believed wholly in their gods or they did not, and challenges the related assumption that beliefs combine to form stable, internally consistent systems. It draws on a range of concepts from cognitive science to explore how contradictions between beliefs and between beliefs and experience might be managed and argues for a dynamic, contextual and plural understanding of Greek religious belief.

From the late nineteenth century onwards, Greek and Roman religion was increasingly characterised as ritualistic and collective, with little role for belief, while belief itself was increasingly associated with Christianity. By the 1990s, the dominant view in classical studies aligned closely with functionalist traditions in the wider study of religion, linking Greek and Roman religion with social cohesion and identity, and rejecting belief as an irrelevance. Since then, fresh arguments have emerged, some drawing on the cognitive science of religion, which reject the association of belief with Christianity and argue that a culturally neutral, purely propositional sense of believing is both possible and necessary. However, work in anthropology and early modern history, particularly on the emergence of ‘propositional religion’ during the Reformation, suggests that the concept of belief continues to carry complex cultural baggage. Despite recent developments, the debate over how best to represent the religious experience of the Greeks and Romans remains open.

Behaviorists, social learning theorists, evolutionary psychologists, cognitive psychologists, and neuroscientists have all brought their theories and methods to the study of human religious experience. This chapter explores how these approaches have added texture, depth, and data to the psychology of religion. We see that while most traditional behaviorists thought religious behavior did not require special theorizing, some psychologists of religion have relied heavily on classical conditioning, reinforcement contingencies, shaping, modeling, and other concepts from learning theory to explain religious life. Social cognitive theory has also been influential. In recent decades, an approach called the cognitive science of religion has built on work in evolutionary theory and cognitive psychology. This approach suggests that successful religious beliefs and practices have thrived precisely because they fit well with existing cognitive architecture – even though that architecture originally emerged for evolutionary reasons entirely unrelated to religion. The chapter concludes with an assessment of several approaches to religion grounded in biology and neuroscience.

How do we experience ritual? What role does this experience play in the perception and codification memory? This chapter begins by considering the relationship between senses, cognition, and memory in ritual experiences, in particular, the complex interplay between ritual performance, emotions, and material objects, together with the limitations of script-based approaches to surviving accounts. Situating the volume within current debates on religious ritual in the ancient world from the perspectives of cognitive science of religion and sensory studies, this chapter explores how variability in ritual experiences can be assessed through cognitive approaches to rituals as lived experiences. Having outlined why this volume is timely, necessary, and how it contributes to challenging established views and furthering debate surrounding ritual experiences in the Roman world, the introduction also addresses the challenges of cognitive assessments and how these challenges are met across the volume, through a variety of different contexts and approaches. Lastly, the introduction briefly presents each of the five case studies, drawing on common themes and issues explored in each case study, and considering the global relevance and transdisciplinary applications of scholarship in this volume.

The key idea of Reformed Epistemology is that religious beliefs can be rational even if they are held noninferentially, without being based on arguments. The first part of this chapter clarifies in more detail what Reformed Epistemology says and how the view has evolved in three stages over the past forty years. The first stage was concerned with ground-clearing and initially characterizing the view; the second stage included book-length definitive statements of the view by William Alston and Alvin Plantinga. The third stage consists of twenty-first-century developments of the view, connecting it with, among other things, the cognitive science of religion, cognitively impacted experiences, epistemic intuition, and religious testimony. The second part of the chapter briefly presents three important objections to Reformed Epistemology – having to do with the need for independent confirmation, belief in the Great Pumpkin, and religious disagreement – and considers what can be said in response to them.

Debunking arguments aim to undermine a belief based on epistemically problematic features of how the belief was originally formed or is currently held. They typically offer at least a partial genealogy for the belief and then point out epistemically problematic features of the genealogy. Many important scholars of religion – from Hume, Feuerbach, and Freud to contemporary scholars in the cognitive science of religion such as Boyer, Bering, and Norenzayan – have attempted to explain human religious belief naturalistically. Do their accounts debunk religious belief? This chapter presents a schema for debunking arguments, briefly summarizes several proposed explanations of religious belief, and outlines several epistemic principles that have been used in debunking arguments. Then, it presents three different debunking arguments for belief in gods and discusses several replies to those arguments, including the religious reasons reply, the classic Plantingean approach to defeat, and epistemic self-promotion.

This final chapter offers a sustained textual analysis of the Day of Atonement ritual in Leviticus 16 and theorizes the effects of ritualized behavior and cognitive and material costs associated with the ritual ceremony. Several important theoretical frameworks from the cognitive science of religion (CSR), which aim to study different aspects of religious ritual in particular, are introduced and applied to the biblical text. These include Lawson and McCauley’s ritual form hypothesis, Whitehouse’s modes of religiosity, Boyer and Lienard’s notion of ritualized behavior, and others. These cognitive theories offer a new set of questions and methods for approaching ritual in ancient Israel, departing from more traditional ritual theory. The chapter analyzes the purification or purgation of the temple and the scapegoat ritual using these theories.

This opening chapter introduces a key set of distinctions in cognitive science and the cognitive sciences of religion between intuitive and reflective types of cognition, implicit and explicit concepts, and cognitively optimal and costly religious traditions. The chapter argues for the importance, relevance, and applicability of cognitive theories and findings for the study of ancient Israelite religion. It is argued that an informed cognitive perspective can illuminate ancient texts, art, and religion, while also acknowledging that such historical materials can be used as valuable fact-checks to critically test and refine current cognitive theories. The chapter envisions a multi-disciplinary endeavor in which historians, biblical scholars, and cognitive researchers contribute to a richer understanding of religion in ancient Israel.

In this chapter, we review recent research from a variety of disciplines to outline the role that collective rituals and religious beliefs play in fostering and maintaining cooperation. We consider ritual and religion as interactive but separate social technologies. First, with rituals we discuss their importance to social learning processes, examine their ability to bond groups through synchrony and shared emotion, and address their role as costly, persuasive signals of commitment. Second, we explore "religion" in the form of beliefs about supernatural agents and look at how such beliefs can contribute to – or hinder – cooperation. We evaluate long-standing claims that religion is a harmful social virus and contrasting recent theories that argue belief in "Big Gods" and "supernatural punishment" are crucial to enabling the cooperation necessary for large-scale societies.