Do You See What I See? Humans have an unusual capacity for detecting faces where none exist. Looking at the clouds or a tree or even a rock can lead someone to imagine a face. Some Christians believe to have…
In recent years, the “free will versus determinism” debate has gained great popularity among both philosophers and non-philosophers alike. People want to know, or at least want to hope, that they have control over their own actions rather than are…
Politics and Body If you watch the news or read the opinion pages, you could be forgiven for thinking that liberals and conservatives are members of completely different species. But why is it that these different groups have such a…
From Shamans to Sovereigns Most accounts of the evolutionary origins of religion refer to the shamanistic complex of behaviors as the first set of behaviors that were recognizably – religious’. According to some scholars, the shamans of the upper Paleolithic (and…
Introduction The word “religion” usually brings to mind complicated belief systems, rituals, and symbolic engagements with a higher reality – all of which seem well beyond the capabilities of animals less intellectually advanced than humans. However, “religion” may not be…
Culture, Evolution, and the Birth of Belief If there’s one thing we’ve learned from the past half-century or so of evolutionary science, it’s that natural selection often works in unexpected ways. The hypothesis that culture itself may develop according to…
Religion as Social Cognition Are religious beliefs fundamentally different, or are they simply the result of cognitive systems built for interactions with other human beings projected onto a supposed supernatural agent? A recent report by Dimitrios Kapogiannis Aron K. Barbey…
You know your libertarian friend? The one who votes Republican but scoffs at “family values,” who posts Ron Paul quotes on Facebook and thinks taxes are a form of theft? Well, thanks to some new research, we now know more…
Introduction – Do Genes Matter? Most people like to think they’ve carefully thought out their positions. They’ll say that they’ve fairly assessed both sides of an issue and have come to their particular position through thoughtful analysis. Well, what if…
As one might expect given the title, Roy Rappaport in Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (Cambridge University Press, 1999) spends a great deal of time exploring the notion of ritual in this book. A majority of the…
Nearly a decade and a half ago, an elite group of scientists gathered in Berkeley, California, to participate in a groundbreaking project called Science and the Spiritual Quest. Their object was to share insights from science’s front lines about the…
For those of us who view some features or aspects of religion (such as ritual or religious experience) as adaptive, their sui generis character presents few obstacles to the scientific study of religion. The evolutionary history of these aspects of…
This bibliography contains important resources from a wide variety of disciplines that have something to offer to the scientific study of the left-right ideological spectrum in politics, religion, and morality. It is not complete but it is extremely useful nonetheless.…