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Book Review: Theology within the Bounds of Language: A Methodological Tour

other subjects would consider religious. Somewhere in the process W. had concluded that “the complex cognitiveemotional journey from intense experience to interpretation to belief formation is generally not reliable” (257). What would make the experience reliable would be if it met three conditions: “a naturalistic cosmology, an ecological-semiotic account of perception as dynamic engagement and a symbolic account of religious cognitions” (257). So where does doing so leave a tradition—its formation and continuation and translocal, historical reliability? W. further relies on the capacity of technology to generate and induce religious experience. The beginnings of this new day for religious experience are already at hand in psychopharmacology, transcranial brain stimulation, and botanicals that can induce psychological results. Although “supernatural agents were once thought essential for explaining RSEs we have no need of that hypothesis any longer” (243). Why? Because we have learned about the mechanisms in the brain that generate these experiences. This makes the supernatural “superfluous” (243). In brief, according to W. three options lay before us: naturalism, supernaturalism, or religious naturalism. He puts himself in the third camp and believes that the flourishing of the human project depends on it . . . and, therefore, on RSEs continuing. If there were no such experiences, values would disappear. Because of our past cognitive liabilities we projected a supernaturalism into them as their cause; now that we have “axiological depth perception” and have come to see the brain’s role in these RSEs we can see that “the sacred task of the religious naturalist is to understand RSEs, to criticize manipulation of them [by presumptive authorities], to raise consciousness about them and to treasure everything that they tell us . . . about ultimate reality” (263–64). Once supernaturalism and superstition have faded away, then a whole new adventure will begin (265). For W., neural knowledge seems to have become the tree of knowledge at the center of the garden. What dies when its fruit is consumed are the religions of the world. Yet human flourishing needs and is contingent on RSEs. This is a difficult combination to connect; even more difficult to prove.