Why the Templeton Foundation Is a Darn Good Thing

May 17, 2013 By 1 Comment

This week, an article at Slate has been making the rounds in which Sean Carroll, a Caltech physicist, proclaims loudly that he will never accept research funding from the Templeton Foundation. The Templeton Foundation is one of the largest non-governmental funders of scientific research in the world, and it distinguishes itself from other organizations through its interest in religion and its mandate to address the “big questions” like the meaning and purpose of life. Carroll and others believe that this religion-science collaboration stains of the purity of science, and I think this is great. It means there’s more Templeton research funding for me, my colleagues, and others who think that religion needs to be taken seriously.  [Read more...]

Filed Under: Editorial, Science and religion, Scientific study of religion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , 1 Comment

Exploring your religion

May 5, 2013 By

Thinking man

Connor Wood

Religion affects everything – and I mean everything – we do. From debates about global warming or evolution to disagreements about how to educate children, there’s no area of social living that isn’t deeply influenced by our religious commitments. Unfortunately, it’s often difficult to untangle all the different ways that religious beliefs influence social, moral, and practical viewpoints, in part because these issues can be so polarizing. But just because something is difficult doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying! Our Boston University research team has developed a new set of surveys that will shed much-needed light on people’s religious, spiritual, and moral convictions – particularly along the all-important liberal-conservative dimension. We invite you to check them out at ExploringMyReligion.org.

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Filed Under: Ideology and religion, Modern culture and religion, Scientific study of religion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

How the brain escapes the self

April 22, 2013 By

Connor Wood

Religious experiences get described in a lot of ways. People gushingly talk about a profound sense of oneness, about incredible bliss, joy, and ineffable meaning. One thing you almost never hear, however, is that a religious experience made someone more greedy and selfish. No one ever says, “Hey, you know what? I just experienced ultimate spiritual bliss, and boy, did it ever make me focus neurotically on my own struggles, financial problems, and dating insecurities!” Why this incompatibility between spirituality and self-absorption? A team of researchers from the University of Missouri thinks that the reason might be found in the brain, where reduced function in the region associated with self-awareness is correlated with greater spirituality.

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Filed Under: Religion and perception, Science and religion, Scientific study of religion Tagged With: , , , , , , , ,

Religion, Ideology, and Environmentalism: A Tale of Morals

April 11, 2013 By

Connor Wood

We live on planet Earth, and she is allergic to us. Our car exhaust, airplane emissions, and coal-fired power plants are smothering her. Our waste is choking her oceans and streams. These and other looming ecological and environmental catastrophes are the most pressing issues of our time, the problems at which all our collected human genius must be aimed. Or are they? The scientific study of religion and ideology has prompted me, a lifelong liberal, to question many of my most basic assumptions. Among them is the belief that large systems – abstract connections at the level of the planet, the biosphere, the world economy – produce the problems that most demand our attention, genius, and energy.

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How WEIRD are you?

March 27, 2013 By

Connor Wood

WEIRD girl

Imagine that you’re writing an essay about the most important facets of your personality. Do you discuss your personal likes and dislikes, your talents and your ambitions? Or do you talk about your family, your relationships, the community that envelopes you? If you prefer the former, individualistic response, you’re probably a citizen of a WEIRD country – Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. This means, of course, that you’re at a bit of a disadvantage when it comes to understanding how most people worldwide think about family, community, and morality. And new research from Virginia and China shows that you’re also likely to be socially – and, most likely, religiously – liberal.

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Filed Under: Ideology and religion, Modern culture and religion, Scientific study of religion Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , ,

Video games: they have what atheists need

March 6, 2013 By

Connor Wood

Win!

Any regular consumer of Internet content may have developed some stereotypes about atheists. Atheists like Reddit.com. They enjoy cat videos (but then again, who doesn’t?). And they mistake fundamentalist Protestantism for all religion. But while these claims could easily be refuted by hanging out with actual atheists – for instance, many are quite religiously literate, and not all have Reddit accounts – a burgeoning academic field is trying to identify the genuine cognitive and personality differences between atheists and religious believers. In one recent paper, researchers found that atheists strongly preferred video games to board games, and argued that this difference was due to atheists’ reduced inclination for conjuring imaginative worlds.

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Filed Under: Atheism, Modern culture and religion, Scientific study of religion Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Rise in elder Korean suicides: A reminder that religion matters

February 22, 2013 By

Connor Wood

South Korean flag

This week, the New York Times reported in a somber piece that the suicide rate among the elderly in South Korea – one of the world’s most astounding national economic success stories – has risen to catastrophic levels in recent years. The reason for this horrifying trend? The Times cites the collapse of the traditional Confucian family structures that, in ages past, virtually guaranteed that children would care for their elderly parents as an act of filial piety. This tragic story speaks volumes about the relationship between religion, economics, culture, and well-being – a relationship that, if we hope to overcome the challenges of the globalized 21st century, I believe we must learn to understand.

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Filed Under: Editorial, Modern culture and religion, Religious ways of thinking, Secularization Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Journal articles on scientific study of religion available online this month

February 20, 2013 By

Connor Wood

RBB Cover

In 2011, Wesley Wildman, contributor to Science On Religion here at Patheos.com, made an agreement with Taylor & Francis to start publishing a new academic journal, Religion, Brain & Behavior.  The journal’s mission was to provide a centralized venue for the most insightful, methodologically sophisticated, and academically valuable research in the field of the scientific study of religion – a field that’s seen rapid, even explosive, growth in recent years. Since then, Religion, Brain & Behavior has became, in scholar Michael Blume’s words, “THE cutting-edge journal for evolutionary studies of religion.” So we decided to post about the fact that Taylor & Francis is making articles from Religion, Brain & Behavior free for online access and download through the month of February.

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Religious households more likely to save money, plan for the future

February 12, 2013 By

Nicholas C. DiDonato

Family savings

Some see religion as an unnecessary burden because it requires time and money. While time cannot be recovered, money has a way of yielding returns on investment. Research by economists Luc Renneboog and Christophe Spaenjers (both Tilburg University, Netherlands) suggests that religious households tend to save money and plan for the future more than non-religious households, and, further breaking their results down, that Catholics attach greater importance to thrift and less importance to risk than Protestants.

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Filed Under: Ideology and religion, Modern culture and religion, Religion and ethics Tagged With: , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Does suffering drive us to religion? Yep.

February 8, 2013 By

Connor Wood

Sad woman and destroyed house

It’s a puzzling riddle: If God is in charge of everything, then why do people who undergo profound suffering often profess the greatest faith? Shouldn’t they retaliate at God by not believing in him?  The commonsense answer might be “yes,” but the facts seem to say otherwise. New research shows that New Zealanders who suffered from the devastating 2011 Christchurch earthquake actually became more religious afterwards than their fellow countrymen. What’s more, those who lost their faith after the quake suffered significant reductions in their self-reported well-being. [Read more...]

Filed Under: Religion and health, Scientific study of religion, Secularization Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,