Extent: 280

ISBN Print: 9781350062382

ISBN PDF: 9781350062399

ISBN EPUB: 9781350062405

DOI: https://doi.org/10.5040/9781350062412

Imprint: Bloomsbury Academic

Series: Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation

Illustrations: 10 bw illus

Dimensions: 234 x 156 mm

An Unnatural History of Religions (2019)

An Unnatural History of Religions examines the origins, development, and critical issues concerning the history of religion and its relationship with science. The book explores the ideological biases, logical fallacies, and unwarranted beliefs that surround the scientific foundations (or lack thereof) in the academic discipline of the history of religions, positioning them in today's 'post-truth' culture.

Leonardo Ambasciano provides the necessary critical background to evaluate the most important theories and working concepts dedicated to the explanation of the historical developments of religion. He covers the most important topics and paradigm shifts in the field, such as phenomenology, postmodernism, and cognitive science. These are taken into consideration chronologically, each time with case studies on topics such as shamanism, gender biases, ethnocentrism, and biological evolution.

Ambasciano argues that the roots of post-truth may be deep in human biases, but that historical justifications change each time, resulting in different combinations. The surprising rise of once-fringe beliefs, such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscientific claims, and so-called scientific creationism, demonstrates the alarming influence that post-truth ideas may exert on both politics and society. Recognising them before they spread anew may be the first step towards a scientifically renewed study of religion.

Advance Praise

“In his deeply informed book, Leonardo Ambasciano takes to task conventional history of religions, arguing that it is driven by too many value-laden assumptions. We need to revamp our thinking drastically in the light of our post-Darwinian understanding of ourselves and the world. Even for those of us not completely convinced, again and again the author challenges us to rethink long-held assumptions – especially those too congenial to our personal values! We should all read this book.”

– Michael Ruse, Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy, Florida State University, USA

“Should we keep nomenclatures such as 'history of religion(s)'? Why (or why we should not) employ a postmodernist outlook in the study of religion? What does science have to offer to the study of 'religion'? Whether one agrees with Ambasciano's approach and replies to such complex questions or not, it is undeniable that his splendid work will require hard work to be challenged. A unique book.”

– Nickolas P. Roubekas, Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, University of Vienna, Austria

“The History of Religion as an academic field is full of bullshit, according to Ambasciano. And we know that the amount of energy needed to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it. The author generously lends us a lot of that energy, and the result is a must-read for anyone seriously interested in the cultural phenomenon of religion.”

– Massimo Pigliucci, K.D. Irani Professor of Philosophy, City College of New York, USA

“An Unnatural History of Religions demonstrates the ambivalent character of the study of religion. Despite the field's attempt to detach itself from an apologetic tenor, theological, religious, and pseudo-scientific biases continue to loom large. Ambasciano explains the resilience, while not giving in to ‘Abandon all hope, ye who enter here.’ The book is richly informed, beautifully clear, and lucidly argued advocating the need to awaken from the sleep of reason.”

– Anders K. Petersen, Professor, Department for the Study of Religion, Aarhus University, Denmark

Reviews & Citations

“The unnatural history of religions is, for good or ill, quite natural for the type of animal we are, a fact accounting for the tenacity of the supernatural in human life and society. Rightly or wrongly, Ambasciano believes this tenacity stands in the way of a truly scientific study of religion. Accordingly, he hopes his book will encourage more to adopt both methodological naturalism and philosophical naturalism. Whether or not he is successful in this endeavor, An Unnatural History of Religions will surely challenge many in the academic study of religion, and that would be a good thing.”

– Thomas B. Ellis (Appalachian State University, NC), in Journal of the American Academy of Religion 87(3) 2019: 926–929. https://doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfz051

“According to Leonardo Ambasciano and his recent book An Unnatural History of Religions, there is no field as historically dominated by pseudoscience as the study of religion, and that is painfully obvious in the modern field as socio-scientific approaches to the study of religion continue to lose ground.”

– David Robertson (Open University, UK), online opening lecture at the XXXIII Jahrestagung der Deutschen Vereinigung für Religionswissenschaft (DVRW) in Hannover, 10 September 2019

“Ambasciano is really worried - and I think this is worthy of all the respect: if the world and Europe [are heading] toward what [the author] terms ‘the night of pseudoscience’, I think he can rest assured that the IAHR [International Association for the History of Religions] and the EASR [European Association for the Study of Religions] will not go gently into that good night.”

– Tim Jensen, IAHR President (University of Southern Denmark), 17th Annual Conference of the EASR - “Religion: Continuations and Disruptions”, Opening lecture, 25 June 2019, https://www.uttv.ee/naita?id=28634

“There is nothing new about this split in the field between those who see our field as analyzing social processes and those who see it as about being better humans, as Leonardo Ambasciano’s recent book demonstrates most clearly.”

– David Robertson, “Real People, on the Ground.” Studying Religion in Culture, 27 March 2019, https://religion.ua.edu/blog/2019/03/27/real-people-on-the-ground/

“[Rudolf Otto] also held that religion was a unique phenomenon ‘sui generis’ (of its own kind) and thus it should and could only be understood in its ‘own terms’. How that belief might lead on to a secure epistemic footing for the study of religion is also a mystery, but the history of the history of religions has been a peculiar at times quite religious one and views analogous to Otto’s have surfaced in many contexts (Ambasciano 2019).”

– Jeppe Sinding Jensen (Aarhus University, DK), What Is Religion? Second Edition. Abingdon and New York: Routledge, 2020, p. 24.

“[…] historian of religion Leonardo Ambasciano (2019: 172) has astutely pointed out that ‘science and democracy are intertwined.’ They both empower people and encourage critical thinking. This is why, he adds, right-wing reactionaries and conservative forces exert enormous amounts of effort and resources to ‘delegitimize science’ and its significance in human life.”

– Homayun Sidky (University of Miami, OH), Religion, Supernaturalism, the Paranormal and Pseudoscience: An Anthropological Critique. London and New York: Anthem Press, 2020, p. 2.

“In an article summarising the argument of his book, An Unnatural History of Religions, Leonardo Ambasciano characterises the History of Religions as ‘The Sisyphean Discipline’ […]. [Ambasciano] argues that attempts to place the study of religion on a firm scientific foundation have been repeatedly undermined by the resurgence of folk religious ideas driven by precisely the evolved features of human cognition that are the historical causes of religion itself (xiv). […] [One of the main problems] in religious studies [is] the presence of theology in the academy. Departments of Mathematics do not have to contend with Departments of Numerology who might claim to be studying the same thing as the mathematicians. […] the Sisyphean aspect to our task [is] the constant need to explain what we do, and how it differs decisively from what is done by theologians, whether they are inside the academy or not.”

– Will Sweetman (University of Otago, NZ), “Sisyphus and I: Or, Theologians I Have Known in Three Decades as Religionswissenschaftler”, in Journal for the Academic Study of Religion 32(2-3) 2019: 145-165. https://doi.org/10.1558/jasr.40132

“The best recent account of ‘Eliadology’ and its dismantling is that of Ambasciano (2019).”

– Juraj Franek (Masaryk University, CZ), Naturalism and Protectionism in the Study of Religions. London and New York: Bloomsbury, 2020, p. 191.

“I strongly recommend readers who think that a study-of-religion(s) R[eligious] E[ducation] (as well as ‘Jensen’s scientific approach’) is too scientific (or not scientific enough), to consult Ambasciano’s book […]. I put my hope in this very discipline or field and in critical scholars like Ambasciano, Lincoln, Martin, Geertz, Wiebe, and a host of other scholars of religion. There is, as remarked by Werblowsky, always place for improvements.”

– Tim Jensen, “‘Jensen’s Scientific Approach’ to Religion Education”, in CEPS Journal 9(4) 2019: 31-51, p. 41, note no. 12. https://doi.org/10.26529/cepsj.707

“I sette capitoli che compongono il libro sono il tentativo di spiegare come [la presenza di pregiudizi socio-cognitivi e di ipoteche ideologiche e antiscientifiche] abbia[no] generato danni tanto ingenti da ritenere urgente un ripensamento radicale della metodologia preponderante fra gli storici delle religioni. Ma invertire la rotta di una nave non è facile e occorre anzitutto sapere come la nave è attualmente guidata, quindi indicare chiaramente le nuove coordinate di navigazione. Il libro [di Ambasciano] si occupa di entrambe le cose, in modo chiaro e coinvolgente, […] sottolinea[ndo] la necessità del dialogo inter-disciplinare per uscire dalle secche.”

– Roberto Alciati (Università degli Studi di Firenze, IT), “Una diversa storia delle religioni”, in Historia Magistra. Rivista di storia critica 12(32) 2019: 156-159.

“[In An Unnatural History of Religions,] Ambasciano scrutinises the systematic failure of history of religion as a scientific discipline, tracing the dead-ends that the field ended up in during the twentieth century. He also considers some of the reasons why those paths were taken while others were left untaken. As such, he is exploring territory that lies on the mostly uninhabited borderlands of philosophy of science, sociologies of science and religion, and the cognitive sciences of science and religion. […] As Ann Taves has observed, there is nothing special about religion that might justify limiting the insights gained by this research. This means, in particular, that the research carried out will also cast light on questions of how it is that culture and cognition have been able to interact to produce scientific knowledge. Ambasciano – by looking at an example of a scientific discipline that sought to understand religion but, in the process, came to be overly influenced by religious considerations – presents us with an excellent case study. Somewhere in the future there may be a mature cognitive social science. So long as it does not end up getting side-tracked.”

– Konrad Talmont-Kaminski (Bialystok University, PL), “The Cognitive Science of the History of Science”, in Religio 28(1) 2020: 31-36. http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/142825

“The problems of History of Religions and modern Religious Studies – which Ambasciano describes as the prominence of pseudoscience – are not problems to be solved, but something baked into the very logic of religion as a category, and Religious Studies as a discipline. This was a point made forcefully by Timothy Fitzgerald in The Ideology of Religious Studies, but in the twenty years since its publication, the possibility of establishing a new, critical study of the discourse on religion does not seem to have improved. […] An Unnatural History of Religions shows that critical and cognitive approaches can work together in order to establish a post-colonial approach to the study of ‘religion’.”

– David Robertson, “‘When the Chips Are Down’: A Response to Ambasciano”, in Religio 28(1) 2020: 21-30. http://hdl.handle.net/11222.digilib/142824

“Secularism is often defined as an antagonistic ‘force which sets itself in opposition to religion, and which shows signs of becoming increasingly militant’ (Davie and Woodhead 2009: 524; cf. Wagner 2010: 3). However, at its most basic level, secularism is merely ‘an account or ideology that demarcates something as secular, notably but not only one advocated by the state’ (Lee 2015: 42). Yet in practice, the political secularism that is intrinsic to many modern democracies – and often seen as a proxy for ‘liberalism’ (Lee 2013: 588) – typically involves a normative commitment to state neutrality in matters of religion (Dalferth 2010). And even the briefest of explorations of the disparate ‘secular’ structures in the United States, UK, France, Norway or India will demonstrate that secularism is profoundly contextual. The normative entanglements of these terms have led some to describe secularization theory, and even the academic study of religion more broadly, as ‘secularist’ (Fitzegrald 2000b; Josephson-Storm 2017; Ambasciano 2019).

– Cristopher R. Cotter, The Critical Study of Non-Religion: Discourse, Identification and Locality, London and New York: Bloomsbury 2020, pp. 24-25.

“The naturalist approach favoured by Taves and cognitive scientists of religion in general can be understood as a reaction to what was seen as a failure of nerve in the study of religion (Wiebe 1984; Arnal, Braun, and McCutcheon 2014; Ambasciano 2019).”

– Konrad Talmont-Kaminski, “Primitive Theories of Religion: Evolutionism after Evans-Pritchard”, in e-Rhizome 2(1) 2020: 1-18. https://doi.org/10.5507/rh.2020.001

[Book included in the bibliographic resources of the new edition]

– Robert S. Ellwood (University of Southern California), Introducing Religion: Religious Studies for the Twenty-First Century. Fifth Edition. Abingdon, UK and New York: Routledge 2020.

“In his book […], Leonardo Ambasciano (2019: 176) calls the approach in question the ‘unnatural history of religions,’ an endeavor characterized by a subjective approach and an anti-scientific and fideistic partiality, that is, a perspective that construes faith as something independent of reason or rationality. Moreover, such a view creates what the philosopher and cognitive scientist Daniel Dennet […] refers to as ‘the academic smokescreen’ that has served to impede the scientific analysis of religion as a naturalistic phenomenon.”

– Homayun Sidky, Science and Anthropology in a Post-Truth World: A Critique of Unreason and Academic Nonsense, Lanham, MA and London: Lexington Books 2021, p. 160

“Although more evidence is needed, this research suggests atheistic belief, even when defined as being ‘without god beliefs,’ is unlikely to be absent in prehistoric times. Atheism as an explicit identity, however, may be less likely to appear in these small-scale societies, due to the gods being relatively unimportant to people’s existence and circumstances (Boyer & Baumard, 2016), especially when more emphasis is placed on group rituals and behavioral commitments (Purzycki & Sosis, in prep). In addition, given religion’s wellspring of coercive social control, individual level skepticism or outright atheism may have gone unexpressed (Ambasciano, 2019).”

– Thomas J. Coleman III (Coventry University, UK), Kyle Messick and Valerie van Mulukom, “New Cognitive and Cultural Evolutionary Approaches to Atheism”, in The Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion, J. E. Lane and Y. Lior (eds), London and New York: Routledge (forthcoming). https://psyarxiv.com/ze5mv/

“An Unnatural History of Religion[s] propose une mise en récit [...] du développement de l’H[istoire des] R[eligions] et attire l’attention du lecteur sur l’influence de certains intérêts religieux dans l’élaboration de l’horizon disciplinaire propre à cette discipline. Cette reconstruction historique a le mérite de rappeler l’importance qu’il y a à connaître l’histoire d’un domaine d’étude pour qui veut comprendre les tensions qui le traversent. Elle offre ainsi une mise en garde utile à tous les chercheuses et chercheurs qui se veulent, comme le recommandait J. Z. Smith, ‘continuellement réflexifs’ (Jonathan Z. Smith, Magie de la comparaison, Genève, Labor et Fides, p. 23). Cependant, l’aspect le plus intéressant et novateur de cet ouvrage est ailleurs, à savoir, d’une part, le recours aux biais de la cognition humaine pour comprendre le succès de certaines idées et, d’autre part, la critique des tendances postmodernes qui animent (surtout aux USA) la discipline.”

– Andrea Rota (Universität Bern, CH), ASDIWAL. Revue genevoise d’anthropologie et d’histoire des religions, 15 2020: 195-198, p. 197.

“As identified by Ambasciano, these [scil. the “several shared assumptions” behind the History of Religions as an approach] are a methodological commitment to diachronic and synchronic comparison; a tendency towards classification through the identification of similarities and, less often, differences; religion seen as a motive and generally beneficial force in the evolution of human culture(s); stressing the uniqueness and independence of religious phenomena, and the resulting need for a unique discipline; and, despite the name, the primary method is phenomenological rather than historical.”

– David Robertson, Gnosticism and the History of Religions, Bloomsbury, London and New York: 2021, p. 3.

“According to Leonardo Ambasciano, it was theological discourse that had dictated the research agenda in [the] study of religions (the history of religions) for many decades […]. An apt formulation by Leonardo Ambasciano can help emphasize how cognitive research differs from phenomenology [a list of five points summarising An Unnatural History of Religions, pp. 163-167, follows]. […] mistrust of experimentation persists in the humanities, in spite of the fact that many disciplines originally considered as humanities such as sociology, psychology, economics and even linguistics use mathematical modeling of human behavior. In recent years, this type of modeling has begun to gain traction even in classic humanities such as historiography [What Is Cognitive Historiography, Anyway? is cited].”

– Tomáš Bubík (Palacký University Olomouc, CZ), “A Cognitive Perspective in the Study of Religions”, in Academic Study of Religions in a Cognitive, Anthropological and Sociological Perspective, T. Bubík and J. Havlíček (eds.), Olomouc: Olomouc University 2021: 9-77: 18, 30, 35.

“[D. S.] Wilson’s approach therefore increases our understanding of this quite natural phenomenon, by addressing one aspect of its evolutionary dynamics. The more times the nail has been hit on the head the better. That is not to say, however, that everything is ‘hunky dory’—concerns about the effects of religion and/or why it is ultimately here are genuine and warranted. Just because something evolved, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s a good thing (Ambasciano 2019, xv). […] a case could be made for James to be considered as a non-Darwinian accommodationist who entertained pro-paranormal and supernatural views (see Ambasciano 2019, p. 32 and 181, note n. 10)”

– Andrew R. Atkinson (Bialystok University, PL), “Is Wilson’s Religion Durkheim’s, or Hobbes’s Leviathan?”, History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 43(1) 2021: 23. https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-021-00375-w

“Ambasciano explores the origins and development of the academic study of religion, pointing out all its alleged ideological biases, logical fallacies, unwarranted beliefs, and ‘pseudoscientific’ foundations. He outlines the most important shifts in the field in chronological order by drawing on well-known studies. […] Ambasciano is very much aware of the literature on the history of HoR. […] [He] does make a strong case that Darwin’s ideas were adopted (and adapted) to characterize incipient comparative studies of religion.”

– James C. Ungureanu (University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI), Isis: A Journal of the History of Science Society (113)1 2022: 219-220. https://doi.org/10.1086/717909

“The question of how to best define religion is the subject of a lively and ongoing interdisciplinary debate involving scholars of religious studies, historians and sociologists, who have developed various phenomenological, structuralist and cognitivist positions (Ambasciano, 2019; Jensen, 2014; Smith, 2004).”

– Marian Burchardt (Universität Leipzig, DE) and Maria C. Giorda (Università Roma Tre, IT), “Geographies of Encounter: The Making and Unmaking of Multi-Religious Spaces - An Introduction”, in Geographies of Encounter: The Making and Unmaking of Multi-Religious Spaces, M. Burchardt and M. C. Giorda (eds.), Cham, CH: Palgrave MacMillan, an imprint of Springer Nature (2022), pp. 1-26; p. 16. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-82525-6_1

“[D]espite a scientific approach to an academic study of religion having been envisioned in the nineteenth century by Max Müller “as a strictly natural science,” just “as astronomy or chemistry is” (Müller, 1888, p. 11), the subsequent 150-year history of that study has been marked by an unscientific, even anti-scientific, trajectory (Ambasciano, 2019).”

– Luther H. Martin (University of Vermont, VT), “Claire White’s An Introduction to the Cognitive Science of Religion: Establishing CSR in University Curricula?”, Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 7(2) (2019/2022): 135–146; p. 143. https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.20459

“The present work has sought to show how the seemingly mystical or otherworldly concept of impurity is firmly rooted in human experience. This claim is consistent with the broader emphasis in the cognitive science of religions on naturalizing religious beliefs [See Leonardo Ambasciano, An Unnatural History of Religions (London: Bloomsbury, 2019)] .”

– Ytzhaq Feder (University of Haifa, IL), Purity and Pollution in the Hebrew Bible: From Embodied Experience to Moral Metaphor, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press (2021), p. 263.

“[The process] continued with Bernard Fontanelle (1657-1648) and Giambattista Vico (1668-1744), who offered naturalist studies of religion, by extension seeking to offer more objective and scientific accounts of the origin and function of religion (Ambasciano 2019).”

– Naser Ghobadzadeh (Australian Catholic University), Theocratic Secularism: Religion and Government in Shi’i Thought, New York, Oxford University Press (2023), p. 161.

“[…] Leonardo Ambasciano […] argues that history of religions has always lacked a shared disciplinary consensus with regarding its methods. He considers this one of the major problems of the discipline (Ambasciano 2019: 4).”

– Indrek Peedu (University of Tartu, Estonia), “Method and Methodology in the Study of Religion: Making Sense of the Diversity”, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion (2023) 1-32. https://doi.org/10.1163/15700682-bja10104

“Leonardo Ambasciano’s book (2019) traces the history of Religious Studies from a unique perspective but it is not a mere history of theories. It is unique because it discusses the social context of the establishment of the discipline and describes the political circumstances that prevail in academia.”

– Miyajima Shunichi (Hokkaido University, JP), “The Scientific Nature of the Study of Religion in the West and Asia”, Journal of the Faculty of Humanity and Human Sciences, Hokkaido University, 19 (2024): 9–13; p. 10.