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Religion and perception

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July 2020

July 31, 2020

Religious Experience and Homo Duplex

Where does religious experience come from? In a new article, I combine Durkheim's concept of...

May 2018

May 25, 2018

Cognitive Style, Religious Beliefs, and Individualism

People whose cognitive style is analytical or reflective are less likely to be religious than...

November 2017

November 22, 2017

How Religion Is Like Play

Is religion a form of play? I asked this question in a recent article in Orbiter,...

September 2017

September 30, 2017

How the Brain’s Predictions Shape Religion

A cognitive process called predictive processing may be how the brain generates religious and spiritual...

February 2016

February 23, 2016

No space for God of the gaps

Scientists rudely keep uncovering more and more reasons for mysterious phenomena. That's why the god...

January 2015

January 24, 2015

Does Eben Alexander “prove heaven?” Sort of.

Instead of going back and forth between true believers in NDEs and skeptics, let’s take...

December 2014

December 04, 2014

A new theory for why Buddhist meditation makes us feel good

Our brains build up stable patterns of activity over time, and these patterns may inhibit...

September 2014

September 09, 2014

Entheogens may expand possible brain interconnections

By releasing the everyday patterns of stable, internal coherence between different regions of the brain,...

June 2014

June 03, 2014

Awesome theories of religion, Part 2

This week, I’m focusing on four thinkers who have advanced our understanding of how ritual...

April 2014

April 14, 2014

Awe increases religious belief

Two researchers from California have found that awe-inspiring images make people believe more in God....

December 2013

December 23, 2013

Is religion anthropomorphism?

Anthropologist Stewart Guthrie argues that religion arises from humans' inborn tendency to anthropomorphize the world...

December 06, 2013

Religion, imagination, and secret worlds

Why do religions seem to create such strong communities? Partly, it's because they help people...

November 2013

November 21, 2013

Religion makes you prejudiced. God doesn’t.

Some kinds of religious priming makes people more prejudiced against minorities. Others seem to make...

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...

September 2013

September 18, 2013

Ritual reduces life’s noise-to-signal ratio

Our world is filled with unspoken social conventions that transform messy, continuous information into clearer,...

June 2013

June 25, 2013

Ritual bypasses conscious cognition

Researchers from Denmark and New Zealand claim that ritual allows cultures to transmit knowledge by...

June 14, 2013

The neurology of spirit writing

Are spirit mediums for real? Who knows? But researchers in the US and Brazil have...

April 2013

April 22, 2013

How the brain escapes the self

Research from the University of Missouri shows that reduced functioning in the right parietal cortex...

April 16, 2013

Rewriting the script: We change our religious memories

Focusing on religious identity, psychologists R. David Hayward (University of Michigan), Joanna Maselko (Duke University...

January 2013

January 18, 2013

Do you believe in magic? Seriously.

Psychologist Eugene Subbotsky (Lancaster University, United Kingdom) has compiled a series of studies to argue...

November 2012

November 28, 2012

Meditation may enhance introspective accuracy

New research from the University of British Columbia shows that certain styles of meditation may...

November 08, 2012

Supernatural agents influence our social strategies

Ever get the feeling you're not alone even when there's no one around? Researchers from...

June 2012

June 25, 2012

Religious beliefs shape perception of stimuli

Why does religion matter? New research from the Netherlands argues that it matters more than...

May 2012

May 21, 2012

Seeing a purpose in nature reduces fear of death

Why does religion help people assuage their fear of death? The answer may be more...