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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...

April 2021

April 30, 2021

The Joys and Challenges of Interdisciplinary Research

Academia can be a fiercely jealous environment — jealous, that is, of the boundaries between...

December 2020

December 31, 2020

Academia and I Have Decided to Leave Each Other

Even stronger than the feeling of regret is the giddy anticipation of what comes next,...

November 2020

November 09, 2020

The Voice of Scientific Authority Is Aghast…and Clueless

It took four days after the 2020 U.S. presidential election for the country to identify...

April 2020

April 27, 2020

Liberal Democracy, Science, and the End of the End of History

Are we living through the end of the end of history – that is, the...

March 2020

March 21, 2020

Scientific Conflict About the Coronavirus Lockdown

As the coronavirus pandemic sweeps the world, shutting down entire countries and threatening the worst...

March 16, 2019

How to Do Interdisciplinary Work that Works

This past weekend, a group of senior scholars met for a colloquium in Boston to...

February 2019

February 22, 2019

Religion, Postmodernism, and Science™: Frenemies

Religion, science, and postmodernism are usually seen as enemies. But each of these ideologies holds...

November 2018

November 29, 2018

Why Postmodernism and Science Can’t Stand Each Other

I’m freshly back from Denver, where the annual conference of the American Academy of Religion...

October 2018

October 26, 2018

What Is Religious Studies? Or: No, Grandma, I Am Not Going to Be a Pastor

By trying to rid themselves of theology, religious studies scholars have paradoxically also banished science...

August 2017

August 15, 2017

Science Is Classist. Here’s a Solution

Science is an incredible thing. But classism and prejudice against working-class people are endemic in...

August 03, 2017

Science and democracy go hand-in-hand – and democracy is in danger

Science and democracy are mutually entwined. Both require independent thought and reasoned consensus. When democracy...

July 2017

July 18, 2017

Call for fellows: Sinai and Synapses

A few years ago, out of the blue, a rabbi named Geoff Mitelman wrote me...

May 2017

May 22, 2017

Science and religion really are in conflict, people

The culture of science breaks ties with the past, while religion cherishes them. So for...

February 2017

February 14, 2017

Why colleges need (a few) more conservative professors

Liberals can teach students about the bad side of hierarchy – oppression. Conservatives can teach...

April 2016

April 18, 2016

Why the world needs liberals

Cultural liberalism is valuable. More than that: it’s something to feel patriotic towards. I’m lucky...

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 07, 2015

How separate are science and religion, anyway?

Eric Metaxas’s "scientific" argument for God makes religion too literal, placing it squarely in science’s...

July 2014

July 21, 2014

Nerd culture, the new aristocracy

Nerd culture is a form of aristocracy. Try mentioning that you study religion in a...

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...

June 19, 2014

Theories of religion: The early years

This week we’re looking at three early anthropologists who believed that cultures evolve from “primitive”...

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...

March 06, 2014

Being powerful makes you think analytically

There’s a causal relationship between social pecking order position and analytical cognition – so it’s...

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 19, 2014

Sinai and Synapses: A video about studying religion

Together with my friend and colleague Tim Maness, I made a couple of videos last...

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 31, 2013

Farewell to Ian Barbour

Ian Barbour, the physicist and religious studies scholar who passed away at the end of...

November 2013

November 11, 2013

What’s the Point of the Humanities? A Response to Pinker and Wieseltier

Science is sexy, confident, and universally adored—the star quarterback of our intellectual culture. But the...

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...

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...