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December 2021

December 20, 2021

The Natural History of Music

I’m teaching a course on the evolution of music through Scholarium in January and February. Or,...

August 2021

August 31, 2021

Faith and the Evolutionary Predicament

The "scientific image" of humans offered by evolutionary biology is cold, impersonal, alienating…and objective. But...

September 2019

September 25, 2019

Is Morality About Cooperation?

If there’s one thing nearly all people can agree on, it’s that some actions are...

December 2018

December 11, 2018

Measuring the Evolution Gap between the Humanities and the Sciences

According to a recent research report, scholars in the humanities and the hard social sciences...

September 2018

September 29, 2018

Cooperation Thrives When We (Mostly) Prefer People We Already Know

Despite how it may seem, we humans are extraordinarily good at cooperation. We take care...

June 2015

June 03, 2015

Animals evolve. People evolve. Can groups evolve?

It seems as if, evolutionarily speaking, groups are real entities. Mathematical modeling and lab studies...

May 2015

May 20, 2015

Religion and evolution, part deux

Rollicking debates about evolutionary theory are crucial for understanding how religion evolved – because many...

June 2014

June 28, 2014

How do we make meaning of evolution? By admitting its uncomfortable truths.

the most vital trait of evolution is also its most difficult: there’s no purpose in...

April 2014

April 07, 2014

Where religion pervades, prejudice reigns

A team of researchers has found that cultures with high levels of everyday religiosity are...

March 2014

March 21, 2014

Is science more “unnatural” than religion?

Is religion more "natural" than science? Cognitive scientist Robert McCauley says yes, because religion depends...

February 2014

February 24, 2014

An historian’s call to understand and engage creationists

We can no longer pretend that the disagreement about the origin of species is only...

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...

December 2013

December 13, 2013

Inclusive fitness, models, and religious evolution

New research in evolutionary theory sheds light on a long-simmering debate in the scientific study...

September 2013

September 04, 2013

Ritual creates tribes…and tribalism

In a lot of ways religion is a Catch-22. It primes us to be strongly...

June 2013

June 08, 2013

Over generations, religion shapes genetics

Research from a multinational team shows that religion has affected the ways that genes are...

May 2013

May 26, 2013

Response to Connor Wood: “Evolved” and “Rational” Aren’t the Same Thing

Nicholas C. DiDonato On this blog, my esteemed colleague and friend Connor Wood recently wrote...

October 2012

October 08, 2012

Creation and science: An interview with Karl Giberson

I'll start with my complaint about Seven Glorious Days: while it's a fun read and...

October 02, 2012

Patheos Book Discussion: Seven Glorious Days

Can scientific and religious accounts of cosmic creation be reconciled? Karl W. Giberson thinks they...

July 2012

July 30, 2012

Painful rituals: good for some, not for others

A new research study from Oxford University shows that rituals associated with different cultural settings...

July 19, 2012

The evolution of atheism

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

June 2012

June 04, 2012

Parasites may have shaped religion’s evolution

Why does religion seem to do so much good for its adherents, but divide societies...

March 2012

March 03, 2012

Why the feud between Darwin and religion?

Connor Wood In 2009, the world marked the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles...

February 2012

February 16, 2012

Not-so-intelligent design

Evolution can sometimes produce characteristics that are, well, no good, from seed beetle genitalia that...