Evolutionary Religious Studies

CTI announces fellowships and post-doc positions

IFM — Sat, 30 Jul 2011 13:48:32 +0000

The Center of Theological Inquiry, at Princeton University, is launching a three year research Project on New Approaches in Theological Inquiry. Funded by the John Templeton Foundation, the theme for the first year is Evolution and Human Nature (2012-2013) and the discussion will be led by Celia Deane-Drummond (University of Notre Dame) and Dominic Johnson (University of Edinburgh).

For more information visit the CTI site or view the CTI announcement here.

BRSP City Wide Survey is launched

IFM — Fri, 08 Apr 2011 16:05:03 +0000

After several months of development, the Binghamton Religion and Spirituality Project (BRSP), in conjunction with the Broome County Council of Churches, launched its city wide survey on Tuesday. Using GIS the BRSP team will be able to literally map the religious and spiritual landscape of the Binghamton area. The information collected will be combined with data from the Binghamton Neighborhood Project to provide an unprecedented view of how religion and spirituality factors in to the every day lives of individuals and neighborhood dynamics.

Michael Blume on religion, evolutionary biology and the work of David Sloan Wilson

IFM — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 01:27:58 +0000

Michael Blume discusses the ‘importance of religion for evolutionary biology’ on a new blog posting on SciLogs.

“… The first scientist to propose testable hypotheses concerning the biocultural evolution of religiosity (biological predisposition to behave towards superempirical agents) and religions (cultural traditions relating to superempirical agents) has been Charles Darwin. But although some classic scholars of religion such as Emile Durkheim fruitfully worked in that field, it finally succumbed to heated polemics of religious vs. antitheists as well as the natural vs. social sciences. Until some years ago, when it was finally brought up again by evolutionary biologists for the sake of their own field…”

Read the full posting here.

Atheists a dying breed?

IFM — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 17:29:45 +0000

A story appeared recently in The Sunday Times (UK) featuring work by Michael Blume on religious demography. In a nutshell, religious adherents tend to produce more offspring (2.5) than secular their counterparts (1.7, below replacement). While access to the original news story requires a paid subscription, it has draw many comments on the Richard Dawkins Foundation website that make for interesting reading.

Atheists trump many believers in religious knowledge

IFM — Tue, 28 Sep 2010 15:34:31 +0000

A new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center found atheists and agnostics outperform many theists when it comes to general of knowledge of the big religions in existence today. Those identifying as Jewish or Mormon also landed at the top in the survey. Example questions include “the Koran is the Islamic Holy book” and “Joseph Smith was a Mormon”. The survey results have appeared in many news outlets, for example, read about it here in the New York Times.

“Why I no longer believe religion is a virus of the mind”

IFM — Fri, 17 Sep 2010 14:56:19 +0000

Sue Blackmore has written a piece for the Guardian explaining why she no longer supports the view that religious systems, first arriving on the scene as cognitive by-products, levarge humans to propogate themselves often at a cost to the host.

The reason for the change in perspective? A series of compelling arguments presented at the recent Explaining Religion confernce held in Bristol, UK. It’s not often a scientist so publicly admits a “mistake”, so kudos for Sue in this respect.

Religion, Brain and Behavior – Call for papers

IFM — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:55:41 +0000

Another reminder that Religion, Brain and Behavior is now calling for papers. The journal accepts high quality articles tackling religious phenomena at all levels of inquiry from brain to behavior and is published in association with the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion.

More information about the journal can be found on the RBB website.

New article for discussion

IFM — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:41:56 +0000

The next article up is:

Atran, S. & Henrich, J. (2010)The Evolution of Religion: How Cognitive By-Products, Adaptive Learning Heuristics, Ritual Displays, and Group Competition Generate Deep Commitments to Prosocial Religions. Biological Theory, 5 (1):18-30.

Head over to the discussion forum to start commenting.

New feature – general discussion forum

IFM — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 13:39:16 +0000

After much tweaking, the ERS website now has two discussion forums available to members. The first is dedicated to the article discussion series and gives ERS members an array of options for posts and comments. The second is a general discussion forum in which community members can chat about anything related to the field of evolutionary religious studies.

For the moment both forums are closed to the public and members have been sent an email with login instructions. If you experience any problems or would like to join the ERS Community of Interest, don’t hesitate to contact Ian MacDonald.

Did the Devil Make Them Do It?

IFM — Mon, 21 Jun 2010 15:32:24 +0000

Not sure… but that’s the title of the newest article up for discussion here on the ERS site, one in which the authors explore the putative link between religion and prosocial behaviour.

Anderson, L., Mellor, J. & Miylo, J. (2010) Did the Devil Make Them Do It? The Effects of Religion in Public Goods and Trust Games. Kyklos 63(20): 163-175.

ABSTRACT: In research on 144 undergraduate students, the authors found that the frequency of other-regarding behavior in canonical public goods and bi-lateral trust games was unrelated to religious affiliation; further, only weak evidence was found for a correlation between attendance at religious services and other-regarding behavior in those games. Researchers conclude that, contrary to popular wisdom and several recent observational studies, religion is not strongly associated with increased cooperation and trust in the controlled experiments.