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Science On Religion

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Religion News

2019-04-04T16:24:00-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Catholic Marriage Rules May Explain Why Western Societies are So WEIRD

Last updated on: April 4, 2019 at 4:24 pm By Connor Wood

Residents of Western Europe and North America are WEIRD – individualistic, analytically minded, and impersonally cooperative. Why? A new study preprint suggests that the roots of WEIRDness might be in, of all things, the Catholic Church's prohibitions against cousin marriage. Read more

Cultural psychology

Ideology and religion

Scientific study of religion

2019-03-16T12:35:18-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

How to Do Interdisciplinary Work that Works

Last updated on: March 16, 2019 at 12:35 pm By Connor Wood

This past weekend, a group of senior scholars met for a colloquium in Boston to discuss the state of the scientific study of religion. One of the key questions: how do you balance between ecological validity and experimental control? Read more

Cognitive Science of Religion

Evolution of Religion

Scientific study of religion

Religion for Breakfast

science

2019-03-08T13:42:18-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

A Big Weekend in Boston

Last updated on: March 8, 2019 at 1:42 pm By Connor Wood

Religion is a complicated nut to crack. It encompasses some of the most private and personal human experiences as well as the most dazzling, public displays you’ll ever see. Many holy scriptures teach the equal value of all people, yet religious traditions serve as a fount of tribalism. There’s no getting around the contradictions. Fortunately, we can study some of the most puzzling aspects of religion objectively, using the tools of the human behavioral, cognitive, and evolutionary sciences. This is... Read more

Cognitive Science of Religion

Evolution of Religion

Practice of science

Boston

Center for Mind and Culture

2019-02-22T11:14:11-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Religion, Postmodernism, and Science™: Frenemies

Last updated on: February 22, 2019 at 11:14 am By Connor Wood

Religion, science, and postmodernism are usually seen as enemies. But each of these ideologies holds crucial values in common with each of the others – even if there's nothing they all share together. Here's a look at the complex, threeway relationship between Science™ and its two biggest competitors. Read more

Editorial

Ideology and religion

2019-02-07T12:17:45-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

We Trust Religious People More Because They’re Less Sexy

Last updated on: February 7, 2019 at 12:17 pm By Connor Wood

Why do people – even atheists – tend to trust religious believers more? A scientific tool called life history theory may point to the answer. Religious believers are seen as having "slower" life history strategies – more committed relationships, more emphasis on caring for offspring. Read more

Cognitive Science of Religion

Evolution of Religion

Evolutionary psychology

2024-03-12T11:26:17-04:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

What Is Postmodernism? And Why Does It Matter for Science?

Last updated on: March 12, 2024 at 11:26 am By Connor Wood

We're living in a post-truth era. Is postmodernism to blame, as famous philosopher Daniel Dennett argues? In order to answer that question, we have to take a look at what postmodernism actually is. And it's a lot more complicated than anyone told you. Read more

2019-01-10T10:20:33-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Gods Are Everywhere Because It’s Hard to Bargain With Them

Last updated on: January 10, 2019 at 10:20 am By Connor Wood

Why do so many people worship invisible beings, accept the authority of millennia-old texts, or or congregate on weekends in buildings for no apparently practical reason? The cognitive and bio-cultural sciences of religion are burgeoning as researchers attempt to answer these questions in the context of our secularizing culture. According to one popular hypothesis, people naturally tend to be religious because our brains, evolved to survive in the dangerous Paleolithic era, are hyper-sensitive to signals of agency, or personhood –... Read more

Cognitive Science of Religion

Evolution of Religion

Scientific study of religion

Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture"

imagination

institutional cognition

2018-12-23T15:03:33-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

How to “Grow” Shamanism in a Computer Model

Last updated on: December 23, 2018 at 3:03 pm By Connor Wood

Want to try something really difficult? Be a researcher who studies religion in its many forms and facets using weird methods like computer simulations and lab psychology, and then try to explain your work to people who have normal careers. For example, you could go to a party and try explaining a paper my colleagues and I published last week on an agent-based model (ABM) computer simulation that explores why shamanism in some societies is mostly male-dominated, while in other... Read more

Cognitive Science of Religion

Evolution of Religion

Modeling Religion Project

modeling religion project

shamanism

spirit possession

trance

2018-12-11T11:55:10-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Measuring the Evolution Gap between the Humanities and the Sciences

Last updated on: December 11, 2018 at 11:55 am By Connor Wood

According to a recent research report, scholars in the humanities and the hard social sciences disagree about the relevance of genetic and biological explanations for human behavior. Could the two camps find common ground in the idea that *both* genes and culture influence our lives? Read more

Editorial

Evolution

Evolutionary psychology

Practice of science

2018-11-29T18:12:58-05:00

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Why Postmodernism and Science Can’t Stand Each Other

Last updated on: November 29, 2018 at 6:12 pm By Connor Wood

I’m freshly back from Denver, where the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) took place this year. The AAR is the world’s largest academic body focused on the study of religion. It includes everything under its big tent – experts in ancient Daoist texts, Biblical historians, Sanskrit scholars, sociologists of religion, transhumanists, and even – yes – cognitive scientists of religion. Attending the AAR is a little bit like finding yourself in one of those edge-of-the-galaxy bazaars... Read more

Cognitive Science of Religion

Editorial

Practice of science

American Academy of Religion

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