Science on Religion Research News
How WEIRD are you?
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- Published on 18 March 2013
- Written by Connor Wood
- Hits: 445
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.
Psychology and the religion-science conflict: Part 2
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- Published on 11 March 2013
- Written by Nicholas C. DiDonato
- Hits: 275
Having learned more about how everyday people handle the so-called “religion-science” conflict, psychologists Cristine Legare (University of Texas at Austin) and Aku Visala (University of Oxford) now aim to use their data to critique and inform the standard philosophical approaches to this issue. Philosophers typically, at minimum, categorize religion-science approaches in three ways: conflict, independence, and reconciliation. Legare and Visala find that so few people actually adhere to the first two that only reconciliation plausibly coheres with human cognition.
Psychology and the religion-science conflict: Part 1
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- Published on 02 March 2013
- Written by Nicholas C. DiDonato
- Hits: 299
Talk of the “religion and science conflict” sets a trap: one quickly winds up pontificating about abstract objects as if they were real without any grounding in reality. “Religion” becomes a monolithic abstract entity, whose adherents all behave in the same way, and ditto for “science.” In hopes of looking at the religion-science conflict empirically, psychologists Cristine Legare (University of Texas at Austin) and Aku Visala (University of Oxford) take a psychological approach, concluding that scientific explanations do not replace religious ones. In Part 2 of this post, they critique the standard religion-science discussion.
Video games: they have what atheists crave
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- Published on 27 February 2013
- Written by Connor Wood
- Hits: 308
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.
Does God accept the real you?
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- Published on 21 February 2013
- Written by Nicholas C. DiDonato
- Hits: 301
In the West, the concept of God has a wide range of meanings, including a supernatural person-like agent, an impersonal force, pure actual being, beyond being, and many more. Thus, in applying psychology to one’s perception of God, psychologists typically limit themselves to the first conception. Still, the results can be fascinating. Psychologist Bart Soenens (Ghent University, Belgium) and colleagues applied the study of interpersonal relationships to religiosity and found that how one perceives one’s relationship with God affects whether one approaches religious claims symbolically or literally.
An evidence-based rethinking of the religion-science conflict
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- Published on 18 February 2013
- Written by Nicholas C. DiDonato
- Hits: 333
All too often, people assume that Christians don't know or don't want to know science because science conflicts with their beliefs: Christianity acts as a force for science illiteracy. However, research by sociologist John Evans (University of California, San Diego) suggests otherwise. His findings conclude that (1) Christians know just as much science as the non-religious; (2) conservative Christians favor their religious beliefs over science when the two “conflict” but, from their perspective, the two in fact are not in conflict; and (3) conservative Protestants oppose scientists’ influence in political issues when the scientists disagree with their moral values.
Religious households are more likely to save money and plan for the future
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- Published on 11 February 2013
- Written by Nicholas C. DiDonato
- Hits: 392
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.
Does suffering drive us to religion?
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- Published on 06 February 2013
- Written by Connor Wood
- Hits: 330
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.
Religion as the opiate of the poor: Was Karl Marx right?
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- Published on 01 February 2013
- Written by Nicholas C. DiDonato
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Karl Marx saw religion as an opiate of the poor: it soothed them so that they did not rise up against their capitalist oppressors. For Marx, this short-term relief hardly outweighed the long-term cost of poverty. It turns out that Marx may have been right. Research by political scientists Frederick Solt, Philip Habel, and J. Tobin Grant (all from Southern Illinois University) suggests that greater economic inequality correlates with greater religiosity, a correlation which they argue stems from the rich using religion to discourage wealth redistribution.
Attending religious services predicts reduced deviance in prisoners
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- Published on 25 January 2013
- Written by Nicholas C. DiDonato
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Civil authorities have long wondered what leads some prisoners to reform themselves and go on the path towards good citizenship, while others become lifetime prisoners through repeated offenses. While any answer to this question involves many variables and dimensions, religion’s role continues to be a matter of great dispute. Seeking a balanced analysis, criminologist Kent Kerley (University of Alabama at Birmingham) and colleagues argue that after controlling for demographics, criminal history, and self-control, frequent attendance at religious services predicts reduced prison deviance.
Do you believe in magic? Seriously.
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- Published on 18 January 2013
- Written by Nicholas C. DiDonato
- Hits: 949
No self-respecting defender of science would admit to believing in magic. Science has surpassed magic by providing real explanations. Yet, when put in the right situation, even these defenders betray an affinity for magic. Psychologist Eugene Subbotsky (Lancaster University, United Kingdom) has compiled a series of studies to argue that belief in magic begins in the consciousness of children (who explicitly accept it) and then persists by living in the subconscious of adults (who explicitly deny it).
More Articles...
- Interview: Michael Ruse on evolution, creationism, and religion
- How religious values are passed down
- Belief in the occult growing in Europe
- Why atheist scientists bring their children to church
- How accurate are your subjective impressions?
- Scientific misconduct
- Supernatural agents and social strategy
- Forgiveness may be linked to long life
- Religious conservatism may be rooted in disgust response
- Autism and (ir)religiosity
- Not conservatives but religious people more charitable
- Dalai Lama: We need ethics beyond religion
- Religious doubt related to the frontal cortex
- AAP: Health benefits of newborn male circumcision outweigh risks
- A mystery in the history of Anabaptists
- Does religion always make people closed-minded?
- Is religion disappearing?
- Education’s effect on religion
- Painful rituals: good for some, not for others
- Speaking in tongues: the language of serenity?
