The Psychology of Religious Knowing

by Fraser Watts, Mark Williams

Overview

The book seeks to describe the psychological processes that are involved in arriving at religious knowledge. The view that direct knowledge is impossible in the religious domain, only 'faith' possible, is rejected. It is argued that the ways in which people come to know other things, in particular how people arrive at personal insights, is close at many points to how they arrive at religious insights. The psychological processes involved in religious knowing are described in the terminology of contemporary cognitive psychology.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521033848
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	03/08/2007
Pages:	180
Product dimensions:	5.47(w) x 8.46(h) x 0.43(d)

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements; 1. Introduction; 2. Psychological research on religion; 3. Psychoanalytic approaches to relgious experience; 4. Faith and knowledge; 5. Analogues of religious knowing; 6. Emotional regulation and relgious attentivness; 7. Self knowledge and knowledge of God; 8. The interpretation of experience in prayer; 9. Concepts of God; 10. Recapitulation; Notes; Index.