Religious nature of human in the light of cognitive symbolic approach

The article is devoted to the cognitive-symbolic interpretation of the concept of the religious nature of human. The human ability to reproduce religious symbols is considered in the context of anthropological and philosophical observations by S. Langer, D. Sperber, and T. Deacon as, on the one hand, a human need that distinguishes him from animals, and, on the other hand, as a cognitive mechanism that arose as a result of his evolutionary development, associated mainly with his linguistic abilities and social activities. Theoretical observations about the irrational and “illogical” nature of religious symbolism are presented. Religious and scientific reproduction of symbols are compared as different types of abstraction construction. The convergence of artistic and religious symbolic activities is shown. The problem is posed by a comparative study of different types of symbolic activity in art, in myth, and in mathematics. It also indicates the need to develop this issue in line with the study of religious imagination. In the light of the cognitive-symbolic approach, the concept of the religious nature of human is interpreted from a naturalistic point of view as a feature of the human species that arose as a result of cultural and biological evolution.