Primitive thought, religiosity and higher education

Abstract

For more than two centuries, the social sciences have been subjected to the “irrational actor axiom" in the scientific study of religion. Religiosity and religious behavior were explained on the basis of primitive thought, neurotic impulses, and social conditioning; and the decline of religion and religiosity was also seen as the inevitable consequence of scientific enlightenment and technological advancement. From the late 20th century, and especially early 21th century, an increasing set of empirical data from social science research has shown that this traditional approach to the scientific study of religion is defective. Many of these data have seriously challenged the old but still popular social sciences scholarship on "incompatibility of science with religion”, "the gradual decline of religion" and "pathological roots of religious commitment." The research evidence presented in this paper also showed that most of the extensive literature on the relationship between university education and the reduction of students' religiosity, which was dominated by the secularization paradigm and the incompatibility of science with religion, does not have the necessary empirical support. Also, analyzing the data on the religiosity of Muslims in Iran showed that the difference in religiosity of the population was more affected by their religious background of their family rather than by studying at the university.

Keywords

• primitive thought
• religiosity
• higher education
• conflict of science and religion
• secularization