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March 2021

March 31, 2021

The End of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

Religion and science used to be at each other's throats, especially in the heady days...

January 2018

January 25, 2018

Can secular societies sustain themselves?

Is religion headed for extinction? If we look at the rare conditions that sustain the...

April 2017

April 11, 2017

Cool new research in religion

If you ever want to get seriously frustrated, I suggest getting advanced graduate training in...

March 2017

March 28, 2017

Is a secular America a worse America?

After centuries of being more religious than other Western societies, the United States in the...

January 2017

January 14, 2017

Trump shows why Rationalia would fail

Some think we should live in Rationalia. But Donald Trump shows us what a world...

November 2015

November 03, 2015

No to Reason,™ yes to clear thinking

Connor Wood A couple months ago, I wrote a post here arguing that pure rational...

March 2015

March 18, 2015

Comments aren’t for atheist evangelism

Interreligious tensions in Europe are growing and American religious resistance to evolution slouches on intransigently....

March 05, 2015

Michael Shermer thinks he’s more moral than you

Skeptic thinker Michael Shermer believes that Western society is becoming more moral because we're very...

October 2014

October 29, 2014

Theology: It matters.

Theological conflict is already everywhere. We're just not calling it theology. And we don't have...

September 2014

September 23, 2014

The Sam Harris backlash: is sex real?

We should be suspicious of sweeping claims about sex differences. But for there to be...

July 2014

July 28, 2014

Informal Study Finds Bloggers Can’t Tell Fact from Fiction

A study shared widely in the TwitFaceBlogosphere says that religious children can't tell fact from...

July 07, 2014

Is religion good or bad for the world?

Across studies, there’s a regular but modest positive correlation between religiosity and prosocial behavior, and...

May 2014

May 27, 2014

4 neat theories of religion

Here's Part 1 of a list of very smart and interesting people with profound theories...

March 2014

March 31, 2014

Don’t understand religion? Experiment with it.

As William James reminded his readers a century ago, our internal mental states and attitudes...

February 2014

February 11, 2014

The Nye-Ham debates, or why fundamentalism exists

The people who think the world was created in six days six thousand years ago...

January 2014

January 06, 2014

Does atheism arise from wealth?

is atheism a luxury of the wealthy? Yes. But this isn't simply because the wealthy...

October 2013

October 18, 2013

A friendly reminder: Science isn’t reality. Reality is reality.

The complementary opposite of science isn't religion, but embodiment. Despite their incredible effectiveness, scientific models...

October 11, 2013

Why Are There Atheists?

Certain aspects of personality orientation may naturally lead some people to religious belief and others...

August 2013

August 20, 2013

Steven Pinker: Stop bashing religion. You’re hurting science.

If you force people to choose between traditional meaning and objective knowledge, they will choose...

April 2013

April 29, 2013

Does religious belief make you a better person?

A new survey of the literature on religion and helping behavior calls into question the...

March 2013

March 06, 2013

Video games: they have what atheists need

Who knew? New research from Canada shows that self-styled atheists prefer video games to tabletop...

January 2013

January 04, 2013

Interview: Michael Ruse on Evolution, Creationism, and Religion

Daniel Ansted, contributor to ScienceOnReligion.org, recently conducted an interview with his former mentor and well-known...

December 2012

December 20, 2012

Europeans increasingly drawn to the occult

The U.S. is backwards and religious, while Europe is filled with enlightened atheists. Right? Not...

December 13, 2012

Why atheist scientists bring their children to church

Sociologists Elaine Ecklund and Kristen Lee found that some atheist scientists bring their children to...

October 2012

October 12, 2012

Are autistics less religious? Yes.

New research shows that autistics – and men! – may believe less in God because...

July 2012

July 19, 2012

The evolution of atheism

What’s the evolutionary purpose of atheists? Political scientist Dominic Johnson suggests no less than 10...

May 2012

May 19, 2012

Few scientists see science in conflict with religion

Do scientists actually think that religion is all bunk? Sociologist Elaine Eklund has done the...

May 14, 2012

Atheism: a personality profile

Jonathan Morgan For half a decade, the cognitive science of religion has sought the evolutionary...