Minds of Gods

Benjamin Grant Purzycki is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark. Theiss Bendixen is a Doctoral Candidate at Aarhus University, Denmark.

I [Eleanor Schille-Hudson] know of no other resource that pulls together such a diverse summary of scientific study on divine minds and I am happy to have this one on my shelf.

• List of FiguresList of TablesList of ContributorsAcknowledgementsIntroduction: Studying the Minds of Gods: State of the Art, Benjamin Grant Purzycki and Theiss Bendixen (Aarhus University, Denmark)1. Toward a Cognitive Science of the Gods: A Brief Introduction Benjamin Grant Purzycki and Uffe Schjoedt (Aarhus University, Denmark)2. Growing the Minds of Gods Emily Burdett (University of Nottingham, UK)3. The Divine Projector: How Human Motivations and Biases Give Shape to Gods’ Minds Joshua Conrad Jackson and Kurt Gray, (University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, USA)4. The Personality of the Divine Kathryn A. Johnson, (Arizona State University, USA)5. Night Visions: The Cognitive Neuroscience of Dreaming about Supernatural AgentsJohn Balch and Patrick McNamara (Boston University, USA)6. Animatism Reconsidered: A Cognitive Perspective Jesper Sørensen and Benjamin Grant Purzycki (Aarhus University, Denmark)7. The Minds behind the Ritual: How “Ordering Gods” Reinforced Human Cooperation Matt J. Rossano (Southeastern Louisiana University, USA)8. The Mind of God and the Problem of Evil: A Cognitive and Evolutionary Perspective John Teehan (Hofstra University, USA)9. From Watching Human Acts to Penetrating Their Souls Anders Klostergaard Petersen (Aarhus University, Denmark)10. Cultural Models of Minds and the Minds of Gods Rita Anne McNamara (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)11. Moralistic Gods and Social Complexity: A Brief History of the Problem Benjamin Grant Purzycki (Aarhus University, Denmark) and Ryan McKay (University of London, UK)12. Game Theoretical Aspects of the Minds of Gods Aaron D. Lightner (Washington State University, USA) and Benjamin Grant Purzycki (Aarhus University, Denmark)13. Accounting for Cross-Cultural Variation in the Minds of Gods Theiss Bendixen and Benjamin Grant Purzycki (Aarhus University, Denmark)14. Environmentalism and the Minds of Gods Adam Baimel, (Oxford-Brookes University, UK)15. Approaching the Minds of the Gods through AI Wesley J. Wildman and Justin E. Lane (Boston University, USA)16. Never Mind the Gods: Explaining Unbelief and Nonreligion Anne Lundahl Mauritsen (Aarhus University, Denmark) and Valerie van Mulukom (Coventry University, USA)NotesReferencesIndex