Science On Religion -

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

January 9, 2019 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

How to “Grow” Shamanism in a Computer Model

December 22, 2018 By Connor Wood

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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

Measuring the Evolution Gap between the Humanities and the Sciences

December 11, 2018 By Connor Wood

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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

Why Postmodernism and Science Can’t Stand Each Other

November 29, 2018 By Connor Wood

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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

Are Your Political Beliefs Like a Religion?

November 14, 2018 By Connor Wood

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If you’ve gotten into a political argument on Facebook recently, you might be excused for feeling somewhat-less-than-blindingly optimistic about the state of things these days. Whether you’re debating a conservative uncle or liberal colleague, a devout or unbelieving friend, it seems that the gaps between our divergent worldviews are becoming insurmountable. One hypothesis suggests that, as the Western world has become less religious, people have begun falling back on politics for identity and meaning. In other words, our political tribes… Read more

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

October 26, 2018 By Connor Wood

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By trying to rid themselves of theology, religious studies scholars have paradoxically also banished science and scientific explanation rom their studies. Both theology and science, for whatever their other differences, claim to have access to universal, unconditioned truth. The humanities no longer do. Read more

Cooperation Thrives When We (Mostly) Prefer People We Already Know

September 29, 2018 By Connor Wood

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Despite how it may seem, we humans are extraordinarily good at cooperation. We take care of each other’s kids. We help each other move. And, in large complex societies like our own, we (mostly) abide by the rules that make it possible for us to live together in relative peace. Sure, it may seem like developed, Western societies are being torn apart by factionalism and in-fighting, and in many ways they are – but recent political unrest only conceals what… Read more

New Project: Synthesizing Empirical Findings and Theory in the Scientific Study of Religion

September 21, 2018 By Connor Wood

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There are a lot of fields of study in the modern university. You could major in biology or German literature. You could study philosophy, chemistry, or neuroscience, or delve into Slavic languages. But the scientific study of religion – that is, the study of religious beliefs and behaviors using the tools of the cognitive, evolutionary, and biological sciences – is a little different. It’s not a recognized field with its own departments and professors. You can’t really major in it…. Read more

Fun Conference Recap: The International Association for the Cognitive Science of Religion 2018

August 30, 2018 By Connor Wood

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A lot of science happens when scientists are alone. There are the late nights coding data in the lab, with only the clack of the keys for company. There are solo evening walks when, if you’re lucky, a new hypothesis jumps suddenly to mind. But make no mistake – science doesn’t happen in a vacuum. All scientists need communities of fellow thinkers and experimentalists. Earlier this month, I had the pleasure of taking part in just such a community, when… Read more

A Theory of Why Academics and Educated People Are (Getting More and More) Liberal

July 31, 2018 By Connor Wood

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A curious thing has happened over the past few decades in American higher education. The humanities and social sciences – disciplines such as history, cultural anthropology, and sociology – have gone from having a slight liberal tilt to being almost uniformly left-of-center, with the vast majority of professors and researchers in those fields self-identifying as very liberal or even radical. This ideological uniformity has strained relations between the academic world and conservatives, and some thinkers – such as the members… Read more