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Religion News

2018-05-17T17:09:44-04:00

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.

Why Do Societies Differ Psychologically?

Last updated on: May 17, 2018 at 5:09 pm By Connor Wood

A team of psychologists think that behavioral ecology can help us understand why Westerners think analytically and residents of East Asia think more holistically: like other animals, we adjust our behavior to match our surroundings. Read more

Cultural psychology

Evolutionary psychology

2018-04-18T12:18:20-04:00

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.

Why Is Shamanism So Common?

Last updated on: April 18, 2018 at 12:18 pm By Connor Wood

A few years back, I wrote a post here called “Spirit Possession: Everyone’s Doing It.” (I was working at the time on a couple of encyclopedia articles on spirit possession cults.*) Spirit possession and shamanism are seriously interesting topics of study, because they shed a lot of light on general questions about the nature and origin of religion. Recently, a PhD student at Harvard, Manvir Singh, published a target article in Behavioral and Brain Sciences on the evolution of shamanism,... Read more

Cognitive Science of Religion

Modeling Religion Project

Scientific study of religion

altered states of consciousness

Behavioral and Brain Sciences

Boston University

Center for Mind and Culture

2018-03-15T11:36:45-04:00

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 Religion and Science Are Like Different Cultures

Last updated on: March 15, 2018 at 11:36 am By Connor Wood

I have a new article up at Orbiter Magazine about the relationship between religion and science. Like I’ve done elsewhere, I stress in this article that there are real tensions – cultural conflicts – between these two types of institution. I also go into the personal dimension of what it’s like to be a religious believer who works in the human sciences. In general, science is dedicated to finding causal explanations of natural phenomena – explanations that reduce, at least... Read more

2018-03-02T11:17:07-05:00

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 I Left the Humanities for the Sciences

Last updated on: March 2, 2018 at 11:17 am By Connor Wood

I didn’t start out as a scientist. As an undergraduate, I majored in English, of all things. On the side I studied German language and literature. My early academic days were filled with iambic meters, memorizing lines from Goethe, and struggling with Middle English. How did I drift into the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion? When I get asked this question at parties, my usual answer is to wait until my interrogator is briefly looking the other direction,... Read more

Editorial

Practice of science

Scientific study of religion

2018-05-08T14:16:26-04:00

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.

Can secular societies sustain themselves?

Last updated on: May 8, 2018 at 2:16 pm By Connor Wood

Is religion headed for extinction? If we look at the rare conditions that sustain the world's most secular countries, it looks like the answer is "no." Read more

Atheism

Editorial

Modern culture and religion

2018-01-11T15:04:28-05:00

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 meaning is more important for humans than comfort

Last updated on: January 11, 2018 at 3:04 pm By Connor Wood

Religion does many things. It can form bonds between people, foment conflicts, and inspire people to sacrifice for higher causes. But one of the most important things that religions do is create meaning. Meaning in life is difficult to define, but people who report more meaning in their lives are psychologically healthier and less likely to suffer from mental illness than those who don’t. Consider the profound distress that many returning veterans face when returning to civilian society from a military... Read more

Editorial

Evolution of Religion

Modern culture and religion

2017-12-13T20:44:33-05:00

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.

Elitism Is a Problem. Being Elite Is the Solution.

Last updated on: December 13, 2017 at 8:44 pm By Connor Wood

It’s almost 2018. We survived the past year, but it was a stormy one. Global politics are more unstable than at any time since the height of the Cold War, and maybe before that. Populist leaders are wresting power away from establishment parties in country after country. And within the United States, political rancor and malfeasance may be leading toward a serious crisis. But behind all these separate problems is one big problem: all around the world, our leaders and fundamental... Read more

Editorial

Ideology and religion

2017-11-22T14:01:22-05:00

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 Religion Is Like Play

Last updated on: November 22, 2017 at 2:01 pm By Connor Wood

Is religion a form of play? I asked this question in a recent article in Orbiter, a new online magazine that tackles the relationship between science and meaning. Taking an evolutionary biological perspective, the article argued that, despite often seeming very serious, religion actually has many features in common with animal play behavior. I also drew on the historian Johan Huizinga’s famous argument that human civilization itself is founded on play to show how religious practices and rituals have many points... Read more

Cognitive Science of Religion

Evolution of Religion

Religion and perception

Religious ways of thinking

2017-10-31T17:43:28-04:00

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.

Yes, religion is connected with morality. Here’s how

Last updated on: October 31, 2017 at 5:43 pm By Connor Wood

One of the most common ideas about religion is that it’s somehow intrinsically connected with morality. Showcasing just how widespread this assumption is, a recent study found that people around the world tend to implicitly (or not-so-implicitly) believe that, compared with religious believers, nonbelievers are less moral and more prone to criminality. One of the study’s co-authors, anthropologist Dimitris Xygalatas, summed up the study’s results last week in the web magazine The Conversation. There, he argued that in fact religion isn’t... Read more

Editorial

Evolution of Religion

Modern culture and religion

Scientific study of religion

2017-10-26T13:16:22-04:00

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.

Individualism Is on the Rise Worldwide

Last updated on: October 26, 2017 at 1:16 pm By Connor Wood

Individualism is on the upswing all across the world, new research shows. How will this change affect the future of religion? Read more

Modeling Religion Project

Modern culture and religion

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