When the secular becomes religious

Along with artistic expression and a scientific curiosity about the environment, religion evolved in humans during humanity’s earliest years. Religious cave paintings from ancient cultures attest to the early evolution of religion and the centrality of religion in the culture. Fast forward to the present day, and religion no longer holds the central place in the common culture as it once did. Yet, those parts of the brain attuned to religion remain. The result? As BBC presenter Alex Riley found out, commercial products such as Apple can trigger the “religious” parts of the brain in their devotees.

Age and the end of religion

Sociologists continue to debate whether religion in the West will eventually die out or whether it will survive. On the one hand, from 1990 to the present, a surge of people have increasingly self-identified as “non-religious.” On the other, Generation X appears to be more religious than their parents. Sociologist Philip Schwadel (University of Nebraska-Lincoln) suspects that age plays a key role in determining if religion is ending, and finds mixed results.

Why altruism wins

Evolution. Survival of the fittest. Red in tooth and claw. These familiar phrases all point to one aspect of evolution: its merciless ferocity. Yet, biologists have found altruism in several species of mammals, an unexpected surprise given the seemingly individualistic nature of evolution. Is altruism merely an anomaly, a fluke of nature, or does something deeper lie beneath? Evolutionary biologist Laurent Keller (University of Lausanne) and roboticists Markus Waibel and Dario Floreano (both from the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale of Lausanne) have run computer simulations that may reveal the evolutionary benefit of altruism.

College students: religion and science aren't enemies after all!

To read the titles of bestsellers on religion and science, you’d think that the two are mortal enemies: The God Delusion, Darwin on Trial, Breaking the Spell. And then there are the seemingly endless magazine articles, television specials, and op-ed columns that paint the relationship between faith and reason as one of interminable conflict. But do most normal people actually believe this story of conflict and strife? New research from Pennsylvania State University suggests that, in fact, an overwhelming majority of college students see religion and science as coexisting peacefully.

How we pray

Most have long recognized that political liberals and conservatives have different outlooks on life. More precisely, research indicates that liberals tend to emphasize provision and conservatives tend to emphasize protection. Naturally, psychologists Kathrin Hanek (University of Michigan), Bradley Olson (National Louis University), and Dan McAdams (Northwestern University) wanted to see if these preferences would emerge in prayer. Much to their surprise, they found that while liberals’ prayers did in fact stress provision more than conservatives’, the prayers of both liberals and conservatives laid equal emphasis on protection.

Guilt hurts – in more than one way

Guilt: it’s no fun. Knowing that we’ve harmed or let down someone we care about leads us to feel blue, self-conscious, and eager to make amends. However, many psychologists have suggested that the emotion of guilt is actually a highly useful social tool, because it inspires people to reach out in an attempt to repair injured relationships. But what if the work people put into making things right comes at the expense of others who haven’t done anything wrong at all?

Pushing the limits of scientists

The life of an aspiring scientist is grueling: long hours in the lab, little sleep, and the rest of the time is spent desperately trying to publish results. Even when young scientists formulate a solid theory, supported by valid experiments, journals find their work inadequate. What more do they want? They want scientists to conduct tangential follow-up experiments. Well, now one scientist is fighting back. Biologist Hidde Ploegh (Whitehead Institute of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology) objects that the increased burden journals put on scientists hinders the peer review process.

Can we be good without God?

The Book of Proverbs says, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom…” (Proverb 9:10). While “wisdom” remains a term that eludes the grasp of scientists, scientists have “morality” well within their reach. That is, they have devised methods to measure people’s morality. The next question is, “Is the fear of the Lord also the beginning of morality?” A study by psychologist Quentin Atkinson (University of Auckland) and anthropologist Pierrick Bourrat (University of Oxford) finds that, in fact, belief in God does correlate with higher moral standards.

IN FOCUS: This is not a pipe

Anyone who has had the pleasure to sit down to a satisfying pipe of flame-cured Virginian tobacco (along with a touch of perique in the mixture) will stand in eternal debt to the indigenous peoples of the North American continent. They developed not only the sacred weed but also the pipes best suited for production of the “good thoughts” that inevitably accompany the pleasure of smoking the sacred substance. This pipe is more much than a pipe: it is a connection to the divine.

Dreams and religion

In the many discussions on the new cognitive science of religion, one never hears mention of the relation of dreams to religion. Yet dreams have always been central to the religious mind. The early anthropologists of religion (like Tylor and Frazer) and scholars in the Freudian and Jungian psychoanalytic traditions all pointed to dreams as a source for religious consciousness. Kelly Bulkeley’s recent excellent review of Dreaming in the world’s religions: A comparative history (New York University Press, NY; 2008) makes it abundantly clear that dreams were central to religious experiences in virtually all of the world’s major religious traditions.