Explaining religious conversion in cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion (CESR)
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| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Religious conversion is still an unmapped and puzzling issue in the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion (CESR). The critical in conversion is autobiographical memory. Autobiographical memory is crucial in shaping and maintaining one's identity while allowing social co-living in certain religious groups. Autobiographical memory enables one to convert – to affiliate to a specific environment and its actors through conversion. The relatively flexible nature of autobiographical memory allows constant "updating" of one's memories and their (re)construction following the collective conversion scheme – the relevant shared semantic structure organizing personal memories and the self of a convert. Over the past thirty years, in the CESR has emerged several theories discussing autobiographical memory from counter-intuitiveness through modes to predictive coding concerning beliefs, rituals, and religious experience. In the theoretical talk, I will go through different CESR theories and evaluate how they can address autobiographical memory as an affiliative mechanism and be up to date with current theorizing in memory studies and accenting the connectedness between its individual and social nature. |
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