Science and the Future of the Study of Religion

Profs. Edward Slingerland, Evan Thompson, and Jeffrey Kripal have written works that engage the perspectives of cognitive science and neuroscience and challenge the boundary between the study of religion and the experience of it. Their respective works pose fundamental challenges to the way that religion has traditionally been studied. They join UC Berkeley faculty Robert Sharf (D. H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies, Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Chair of the Center for Buddhist Studies) and David Presti (Senior Lecturer of Neurobiology, Molecular and Cell Biology) who are currently co-teaching “Consciousness: Buddhist and Neuroscientific Perspectives.” Professor Sharp moderates this panel discussion on science and the future of the study of religion.

• Neuroscientists at the Cusp: The Materialist Paradigm and Mind Beyond Brain
Jeffrey Kripal, Professor and J. Newton Rayzor Chair of Religious Studies, Rice University, Houston

• Religious Studies in the Age of Consilience: New Approaches Drawn from the Cognitive and Evolutionary Sciences
Edward Slingerland, Professor of Asian Studies and Canada Research Chair in Chinese Thought and Embodied Cognition, University of British Columbia, Vancouver

• Buddhism and Cognitive Science
Evan Thompson, Professor of Philosophy, University of British Columbia, Vancouver
Numata Visiting Professor, Center for Buddhist Studies, UC Berkeley

Jeffrey J. Kripal holds the J. Newton Rayzor Chair in Philosophy and Religious Thought at Rice University. He is the author of Comparing Religions (Wiley-Blackwell, 2013); Mutants and Mystics: Science Fiction, Superhero Comics, and the Paranormal (Chicago, 2011); Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred (Chicago, 2010); Esalen: America and the Religion of No Religion (Chicago, 2007); The Serpent’s Gift: Gnostic Reflections on the Study of Religion (Chicago, 2007); Roads of Excess, Palaces of Wisdom: Eroticism and Reflexivity in the Study of Mysticism (Chicago, 2001); and Kali’s Child: The Mystical and the Erotic in the Life and Teachings of Ramakrishna (Chicago, 1995).

Edward Slingerland is Professor of Asian Studies and Canada Research Chair in Chinese Thought and Embodied Cognition at the University of British Columbia, where he also holds adjunct appointments in Philosophy and Psychology. His research specialties and teaching interests include Warring States (5th-3rd c. B.C.E.) Chinese thought, religious studies, cognitive science, ethics, and the relationship between the humanities and the natural sciences. He is currently also Principle Investigator on a large Canadian government grant on “The Evolution of Religion and Morality” and Director of the Cultural Evolution of Religion Research Consortium (CERC), and his latest book, Trying Not To Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity (Crown/Random House) will be published in March 2014.

Evan Thompson is Professor of Philosophy at the University of British Columbia and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada. He is the author of Waking, Dreaming, Being: New Light on the Self and Consciousness from Neuroscience, Meditation, and Philosophy (Columbia University Press, 2014), and Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind (Harvard, 2007).

Robert Sharf is the D.H. Chen Distinguished Professor of Buddhist Studies in the Department of East Asian Languages and Cultures, and Chair of the Center for Buddhist Studies, at the University of California, Berkeley. His primary area of research is medieval Chinese Buddhism, but he has also published on East Asian Esoteric Buddhism, Buddhist material culture, Buddhist modernism, ritual studies, and the study of religious and meditative experience.

Introductions: Mark Csikszentmihalyi, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures and BCSR Director, UC Berkeley; Robert Sharf, Professor of East Asian Languages and Cultures, UC Berkeley