For the study of religion and culture from an evolutionary perspective

Related Websites

“Our purpose in establishing the Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, and Culture (HECC) is to create a research and training hub that will simultaneously advance understanding of the human species within the framework of Darwinian evolutionary theory, and encourage evolutionary scientists to incorporate cultural learning and cultural evolution in explanations of human thought and behavior…”

“The Cognition, Religion, and Theology project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation and aims to develop the cognitive science of religion field – a rapidly developing area of interdisciplinary research – by providing training, web resources, and research funding for scholars wanting to become involved in cognitive science of religion research. The project seeks to support scientific projects that promise to yield new evidence regarding how the structures of human minds inform and constrain religious expression including ideas about gods and spirits, the afterlife, spirit possession, prayer, ritual, religious expertise, and connections between religious thought and morality and pro-social behavior…”

“Funded by a research grant from the European Commission, the ‘Explaining Religion’ (EXREL) project is a three-year interdisciplinary research initiative that seeks to understand both what is universal and cross-culturally variant in religious traditions as well as the cognitive mechanisms that undergird religious thinking and behaviour. EXREL is large-scale and ambitious in scope, integrating the world’s leading centres for psychological, biological, anthropological, and historical research on religion…”

“The leadership of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion (IBCSR) has an immodest vision for transforming current and future religion-science interactions, a transformation powered by the clarity of its ideas and the quality of its research. Our ultimate aim is to contribute to a revolution in the cultural understanding of religion through rigorous research-based knowledge of its nature and functions in individuals and groups…”

“Founded by the Queen’s University, Belfast in September 2004, the Institute of Cognition and Culture (the ICC) is one of the world’s first multidisciplinary centres for research in the cognitive science of culture. This is a new and rapidly growing field in which scholars seek to explain patterns of cross-cultural variation using the methods and theories of the behavioural sciences (especially, experimental and evolutionary psychology). Our postgraduate programmes enable students to develop an advanced knowledge and understanding of the theoretical and research traditions and techniques associated with the study of cognition and culture…”

“The website of the International Cognition & Culture Institute has, as permanent features, a blog meant to stimulate and news meant to inform. While more personal posts are obviously for the blog, and more impersonal one for the news, there is no strict demarcation between these two functions, and, on the homepage of the site, posts to the blog and posts to the news are intermingled…”

A new journal with the expressed aim of providing “a vehicle for the advancement of current biological approaches to understanding religion at every level from brain to behavior. RBB unites multiple disciplinary perspectives that share these interests. The journal seeks empirical and theoretical studies that reflect rigorous scientific standards and a sophisticated appreciation of the academic study of religion. RBB welcomes contributions from a wide array of biological and related disciplines, including cognitive science, cognitive neuroscience, evolutionary psychology, social psychology, evolutionary anthropology, social neuroscience, neurology, genetics, demography, bioeconomics, neuroeconomics, physiology, developmental psychology, psychology of religion, moral psychology, archaeology, mimetics, behavioral ecology, epidemiology, public health, cultural evolution, and religious studies. In summary, RBB considers high quality papers in any aspect of the brain-behavior nexus related to religion.

The Religion, Cognition and Culture (RCC) research unit explores the dynamic interrelationships between religion, cognition and culture from both top-down and bottom-up disciplinary approaches. Its scientific methodology is explicitly interdisciplinary and draws on and practices laboratory methods as well as fieldwork, textual, iconological and archaeological methods in close cooperation with its partners in psychology, the neurosciences and the humanities…”

“If religious beliefs and behaviors promoted survival and reproduction in our ancestral past, then they may have been favored by natural selection over human evolutionary history. This would mean that religious beliefs and behaviors are adaptive, and that religion evolved as a natural product of Darwinian selection. The “Evolution of Religion” project is dedicated to exploring this hypothesis using scientific methods from psychology and evolutionary biology…”

“Wikireligiosus.eu has been created as a Peer-to-Peer-Wiki-Project for a seminary in Religionswissenschaft (scientific study of religion) at Jena University by Michael Blume, inviting scientists, students and volunteers from abroad since the winter of 2009. Its focus is the evolutionary exploration of religiosity and religions. You want to contribute your work and to network it with those of others? As a teacher or student, you are seeking a way of bringing valuable workload to global scientific use? As a volunteer, you want to make a difference by contributing your abilities, gaining scientific insights in the process? And you want to do all of this in a secure wiki strictly restricted to peers, and therefore protected against vandalism? Then, apply by mail, get your password – and join the scientific adventure!…”