Epiphenom | The science of religion and non-belief

Conspiracy theories flourish when people feel like things are slipping out of control

September 23, 2015 By Epiphenom

You young ‘uns may not remember the dark days of 1999, when the imminent arrival of the millennium was met with a fair degree of fear and trepidation. And it wasn’t just your usual end-times hysteria. There was actually some real concern that a software bug – the infamous Y2K bug – a could cause all sorts of problems with the software running vital systems. In the dying days of 1999, a survey was undertaken of people’s perceptions and beliefs… Read more

Make people uncertain then remind them about God, and they become more fearful of sin

September 17, 2015 By Epiphenom

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There’s plenty of research about suggesting that feeling uncertain can increase the strength of belief in god in different ways. But what’s not clear is whether belief in god reduces the ill effects of uncertainty, or is a response to it. One theory is that a belief in God provides a kind of reassurance, which reduces anxiety. The research is by no means clear-cut, however. Some research has found the opposite (see: God prompts can scare us into trying to… Read more

Subliminal religious prompts might not make people nicer after all

September 10, 2015 By Epiphenom

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Back in 2007, right when I was starting this blog, a ground breaking study revealed an extra-ordinary finding. What the researchers had discovered was that just giving people subliminal reminders of religion was enough to make them be more generous in a something called the dictator game. The really extraordinary thing was that the same effect was seen in both religious and non-religious people. When I blogged about it at the time, I was a little sceptical about that. It… Read more

What do people think God is actually like?

August 13, 2015 By Epiphenom

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The ancient Greek philosopher Xenophanes once scathingly pointed out that people imagine god to be pretty much like themselves: But mortals suppose that gods are born, wear their own clothes and have a voice and body. Ethiopians say that their gods are snub-nosed and black; Thracians that theirs are are blue-eyed and red-haired. Christian tend to depict their god as a bearded white guy in the sky, and Jesus as a blonde Caucasian. And yet the ‘theologically correct’ Christian god… Read more

Does more education mean more, or less, religion? It depends whether you take intelligence into account.

July 22, 2015 By Epiphenom

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It’s pretty well established now that there is a statistical connection between intelligence and non-belief. The effect is small, but it’s consistent and has been shown many times. Education, however, is a different matter. Some studies show that educated people are more religious, while others find they are less religious. Now there’s an obvious problem here because educated people also tend to be more intelligent – so it’s not clear what’s driving what. To illustrate this, take a look at… Read more

Ask students about religion, and they’ll tell you they drink less

July 15, 2015 By Epiphenom

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Religious people tend to drink less than non-religious people. We know that because, well because when you ask them, that’s what they tell you. But here’s the thing. We know that what people tell interviewers can vary with the circumstances that they find themselves in. Indeed, it can vary quite a lot from reality. People don’t exactly lie. It’s just that how they remember what they do is influenced by their own self image. If they see themselves as a… Read more

Surprisingly, belief that God is in control increases support for government welfare programmes

July 8, 2015 By Epiphenom

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There’s an enduring puzzle about religion and government, and it’s about what effect religions have on government welfare policies. That’s down to an intriguing observation: that more religious countries tend to have a weaker welfare state. Quite why this is so is a matter of dispute. After all, given religion’s association with altruism, you might expect that religion to encourage people to be in favour of having the state give a helping hand. One possibility is that if people feel like… Read more

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