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Essay / hh - 1310
A multidisciplinary approach to the study of religion provides a more comprehensive intellectual understanding of religion. Integrating diverse approaches to how religion can be studied across different academic fields from the humanities like anthropology and sociology and sciences like cognitive science and biology, allows for an understanding of religion that does not focus not necessarily just on the historical and theological aspects of how religion can be studied. religion is studied. An important aspect of the study of religion that is often overlooked is religious experience; In an effort to give equal attention to all aspects of religious study, neurophenomenology offers a pathway by which scholars of religion can integrate first-hand religious experience into the way religions are studied. This inclusion of direct experience also helps ease the burden on scholars of religion who must speculate or attempt to explain the intricacies of religious experience and allows practitioners of religion to give potentially more authentic accounts of religious experiences. . Neurophenomenology or the fusion of the embodied approach or the physical nature of the brain and body in cognitive science and phenomenology, methods of investigating and analyzing first-person experience (Thompson 2006; 227 ). Neurophenomenology suggests that the physical aspects of the embodied approach and phenomenology are “complementary and mutually informing” modes of investigation (Thompson 2006; 227). Although neurophenomenology in theory is not fundamentally interested in the study of religion, it is nevertheless interested in the analysis of human experience and its effects on cognitive processes, which can be done by examining religious experience. Using neurophenomenolo...... middle of paper ......ives demonstrate the very unique relationships between evangelicals and God. The first-hand accounts allowed Luhrmann to distinguish between how she, as an observer, perceives the religious experience of others and how they perceive their religious experience. Although Luhrmann's first-hand account of religious experience does not necessarily include cognitive evaluation, neurophenomenology would suggest that it nevertheless does. , keep first-hand religious experience in the conversation. How scholars should approach the study of religion must reflect the multifaceted nature of the discipline. While neurophenomenology may not be the only opportunity the humanities and sciences have to interact and exchange ideas, it nevertheless offers a shift in the way direct religious experience is discussed and used in the way whose religion we study..