Looking Past vs. Overlooking Cognitive–Evolutionary Accounts of Religion: A Response to Nathaniel Barrett Jeffrey P. Schloss, Justin L. Barrett, and Michael J. Murray* While emerging cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion have generated important empirical findings and conceptual advances, Nathaniel Barrett is quite right to pursue integration with historical and cultural studies and to challenge the reductionism that is, if not endemic to, at least popularly ascribed to these approaches. However, we argue that in proposing an alternative paradigm, he mischarac- terizes the breadth of the current research program in three ways: (1) it is not wedded to defining religion in terms of supernatural or fictive beliefs, (2) it does not construe the disposition to religious belief as “hard-wired” and context-insensitive, and (3) it does not presume an adaptationist, strongly modular account of mind. On each of these issues, the field displays a wide range of perspectives, and it is precisely the latitude of views that welcomes and indeed has spawned—from its founders to the present—interaction with cultural and historical scholars. *Jeffrey P. Schloss, Department of Biology, Westmont College, 955 La Paz Road, Santa Barbara, CA 93108, USA. Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, Oxford, UK. E-mail: schloss@westmont.edu. Justin L. Barrett, Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, 64 Banbury Road, Oxford OX2 6PN, UK. Centre for Anthropology and Mind, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK. E-mail: justin.barrett@anthro.ox.ac.uk. Michael J. Murray, Department of Philosophy, Franklin and Marshall College, PO Box 3003, Lancaster, PA 17604, USA. Institute of Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, Oxford, UK. E-mail: michael.murray@fandm.edu. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, pp. 1–7 doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfq049 © The Author 2010. Published by Oxford University Press, on behalf of the American Academy of Religion. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org by guest on August 27, 2010 jaar.oxfordjournals.org Downloaded from