The literature on religion, spirituality, and the encounter with what exceeds finite modeling has organized across philosophy, theology, anthropology, cognitive science, and the historical-critical study of religions. The framework engages the principal positions by name; each is taken up again at [§8.14.5](<8.14.5 What is Concluded.md>) once the structural account is in view.

*Theistic realism.* Plantinga (1967, 1974, 2000), Swinburne (1979, 2004), Alston (1991), and the contemporary analytic-theology tradition develop accounts on which the central religious referents — God, divine action, religious experience — are mind-independent realities that religious traditions track with varying success. The position has been refined into reformed epistemology (Plantinga), natural theology (Swinburne), perceptual epistemology of religious experience (Alston), and other variants. The framework reads theistic realism as correctly identifying that the religious traditions are tracking something real, while supplying the structural reading: what they are tracking is the structural fact that Nature is always larger than any model of it — the encounter is real; the metaphysics each tradition formed about its referent is the best translation the tradition's recursive depth could carry, not the referent itself.

*Cognitive science of religion.* Boyer (2001), Atran (2002), Barrett (2004), and the broader cognitive-science-of-religion tradition develop accounts on which religious belief and practice are explained by features of evolved cognitive architecture: hyperactive agency detection, minimally counterintuitive concepts, theory-of-mind extension to non-human agents. The framework reads CSR as correctly identifying the cognitive architecture that shapes how the encounter is registered and articulated, while supplying the structural reading: the architecture conditions *how* the encounter is registered and what concepts get applied to it; what is registered is the encounter with what exceeds finite modeling, which exists structurally whether or not the architecture is in place.

*Religious-experience epistemology.* James (1902), Otto (1917), Stace (1960), and contemporary refinements (Alston 1991; Forman 1999; Yandell 1993) developed accounts on which religious experience is a distinctive epistemic category that warrants belief in specific religious propositions. The framework reads religious-experience epistemology as correctly identifying that the experience is real, while supplying the structural reading: what the experience tracks is the structural encounter with what exceeds modeling; the specific theological propositions experiences are taken to warrant are vocabulary-bound rather than directly justified by the experience.

*Perennial philosophy.* Huxley (1945), Schuon (1953), and the perennial-philosophy tradition hold that the world's religious traditions converge at their mystical core on the same underlying truth, with surface differences reflecting cultural translation of the common substance. The position has been refined and contested (Forman 1999 in defense; Katz 1978 in critique). The framework reads perennialism as correctly identifying real convergence at the structural level (the encounter with what exceeds modeling is the same across traditions) while denying the further claim that mystical content converges on a specific positive metaphysics: what converges is the *structural feature* of the encounter; what diverges is the conceptual articulation of what is encountered.

*Social-constructionist accounts of religion.* Asad (1993, 2003), Smith (1998), and the broader genealogical-critical tradition argue that *religion* as a category is a Western academic construction projected onto disparate cultural phenomena that do not naturally form a kind. The framework reads constructionist accounts as correctly identifying that *religion* in the academic sense is a partly-constructed category, while supplying the structural reading: what is *not* constructed is the encounter with what exceeds finite modeling and the recursion that takes the encounter as an object; the category *religion* picks out a culturally-specific subset of the larger structural phenomenon.

*Apophatic and mystical traditions.* Pseudo-Dionysius, Eckhart, Sufi traditions (Ibn Arabi, Rumi), Advaita Vedanta, Zen, and contemporary refinements (McGinn 1991; Sells 1994) develop accounts on which the encounter with the divine exceeds any positive theological articulation — the only adequate response is negation (*via negativa*, *neti neti*). The framework reads apophatic traditions as picking up structural facts: the encounter exceeds any model the recursion can form, so any positive theological articulation under-describes it. The structural reading endorses what apophatic traditions are doing at the structural level.

*Religious pluralism.* Hick (1989) developed an influential pluralist account on which the world's religions are equally valid responses to the same underlying transcendent reality, with their differences reflecting human cognitive variation. Heim (1995), DiNoia (1992), and others developed alternative pluralist positions. The framework reads pluralism as correctly identifying that traditions track something real and that their differences reflect variation in the tracking, while supplying the structural reading: what is tracked is the structural encounter; the traditions are equally responsive to it at the structural level while differing in the metaphysical articulation each carries.

*New Atheism and naturalist critique.* Dawkins (2006), Harris (2004), Hitchens (2007), and the broader naturalist-critique tradition argue that religious belief is unwarranted, harmful, and should be replaced by naturalistic alternatives. The framework reads New Atheist critiques as correctly identifying that the supernatural-metaphysics of classical religion fails (the inversion forecloses it), while denying the further claim that what religion has been responding to is illusory: the structural encounter with what exceeds modeling is real; what fails is specifically the tradition's metaphysical articulation of what the encounter was *of*.

*Archaeological and historical-critical evidence.* A growing literature documents the deep prehistory of religious behavior — Neanderthal burials (Pomeroy et al. 2020), Bruniquel cave constructions (Jaubert et al. 2016), Iberian red-ochre marks (Hoffmann et al. 2018, contested), the Trinil engraving (Joordens et al. 2014), the historical-critical reconstruction of the ancient Near Eastern religious context (Smith 2002; Stavrakopoulou 2022; Sommer 2009; Römer 2015). The framework engages this literature substantially in the cluster-root, with the cross-cultural and archaeological record supplying confirmation of the depth-gradient and recursion-depth account of religion's emergence.

*Religious naturalism.* A position from Spinoza through Dewey to contemporary developments (Crosby 2002; Stone 2008; Goodenough 1998) holds that the religious response is appropriate but that its object is Nature itself, properly understood. The framework reads religious naturalism as essentially the position it is developing, supplied with the structural account: the encounter is with Nature in its modal depth, with the religious response appropriately responsive to what Nature actually is rather than to a supernatural source.

The literature on spirituality divides over theistic realism, cognitive-science-of-religion, religious-experience epistemology, perennialism, social-constructionism, apophatic and mystical traditions, religious pluralism, New Atheism, the archaeological-historical record, and religious naturalism. The framework commits to specific answers on each; they are taken up again at [§8.14.5](<8.14.5 What is Concluded.md>) after the structural account is in view.


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← [8.14 Spirituality](<8.14 Spirituality.md>) | [8.14.2 What is Required](<8.14.2 What is Required.md>) →
