Spiritual Nourishment and Social Bonds Most people go to church to get spiritually fed. The church provides a safe environment where its members can experience the wonders of religious life. Of course, while spiritual nourishment and religious experience are certainly…
Introduction Many church members would attest to the social and perhaps even emotional benefits of participation and belief. Could one of these benefits include prevention of a major depressive disorder (MDD)? This was the question asked by S. Kasen, P.…
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…
Introduction Do liberals and conservatives really see the world differently? Maybe it’s more like they feel it differently. Recent research (e.g., Tomkins 1995) has suggested that conservatives and liberals experience different sorts of emotional responses. Specifically, some emotions, like joy…
Pleasure and Pain as Evolution’s Compass According to Darwinian theory, the point of life is simple: produce more life. But this vast agenda doesn’t always seem to motivate our countless humdrum, daily decisions. Instead, James A. Morris (Royal Lancaster Infirmary,…
Introduction It is examination time in many schools, colleges, and universities and students around the world are seriously stressed out. In the famous university town of Cambridge, England, for example one can almost feel the anxiety in the air as…
Introduction It’s a question many religious parents dread: “When Spot dies, will he go to heaven?” Countless children – and adults – have wondered whether their pets possess spirits, and the debate isn’t likely to go away anytime soon. Still,…
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…
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…
Introduction “You’re not religious because you never go to church!” accuses one friend. “Well, you only go to church to socialize with your friends!” comes the retort. Is the person who goes to church in order to socialize more religious…
In recent years, much ado has been made about mindfulness meditation. Researchers and psychologists have found strong, persistent connections between meditation and enhanced executive cognitive functions – that is, high-level brain processes, like attention switching, planning, and impulse control, that…
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…