‘Religion and Science’ Category

Princeton Project: Evolution and Human Nature

The Center of Theological Inquiry at Princeton will convene an interdisciplinary research team of theologians and scientists in residence during 2012-2013 to address questions of nature and nurture raised by the biological evolution of human beings. The project is entitled “Evolution and Human Nature” and will be led by two Senior Research Fellows: Celia Deane-Drummond, University of Notre Dame, and Dominic Johnson, University of Edinburgh. The work of the research team will include international symposia and seminars with leading scholars such as Melvin Konner, Emory University, Sarah Coakley, University of Cambridge, Simon Conway Morris, University of Cambridge, Wentzel van Huyssteen, Princeton Theological Seminary, Niels Gregersen, University of Copenhagen, and Angela Creager, Princeton University.

The Center of Theological Inquiry welcomes proposals to explore how the explosion of new research in evolutionary biology, psychology, and anthropology is challenging and changing our understanding of human nature and development, not least in relation to religion and theological accounts of the human condition. Our field of inquiry encompasses these evolutionary and human sciences, theological anthropology, practical theology, psychology of religion, religious studies, and the history and philosophy of science. Applications will be considered from scholars in relevant disciplines offering fresh thinking on the topic, including the core questions of nature and nurture and the relationship between religion, culture, and human evolution. How have the human capacities for religion and culture evolved? What do theology and the sciences contribute to our understanding of the evolution of human beings over time? How might philosophy and theology engage the assumptions in the science of human evolution?

The Center of Theological Inquiry will award 8 Research Fellowships of up to $70,000 and 2 Postdoctoral Fellowships of $40,000. Applications will be considered for the full year or a semester, with fellowships awarded pro rata. The full Request for Proposals (RFP) and the required application forms will be available for downloading from our website (under PROGRAM / APPLY) from September 1 - November 30, 2011. The closing date for applications and all supporting documents is November 30, 2011. Applications may be submitted by mail to the Center or electronic attachment to apply@ctinquiry.org. Only completed applications received by the November 30, 2011 deadline will be considered.

CTI is also announcing the research topics for Years 2 & 3, as part of its three year Project on New Approaches in Theological Inquiry, 2012 - 2015, under the leadership of Robin Lovin, Southern Methodist University, and Friederike Nüssel, Heidelberg University: 2013-14 - Religious Experience & Moral Identity, and 2014-15 - Law & Religious Freedom (in collaboration with the Law and Public Affairs Program at Princeton University). The Requests for Proposals for these two years at CTI will be announced in the spring of the preceding year. The Center of Theological Inquiry will also award 8 Research Fellowships of up to $70,000 and 2 Postdoctoral Fellowships of $40,000 in each of these two years.

The Research Fellowships for all three years of this project are supported by a major grant from the John Templeton Foundation.

Cold Feet: On Applying Research from the Cognitive and Evolutionary Sciences of Religion

Guest blog by Richard Sosis

I recently attended a fascinating one-day seminar at Georgetown University’s Berkley Center on the implications of the cognitive and evolutionary sciences of religion (CESR) for religious freedom. I had never considered whether my research, or the collective body of work in CESR, had implications for the protection of religious freedom, so I was intrigued by what the event would offer. To attend, I was even willing to take off my sandals, tuck in my shirt, and sport the fashionable, but seldom used, jacket I purchased for my job interviews more than a decade ago. The primary question the seminar sought to explore was: If religion is indeed natural to humanity, as is generally claimed by CESR researchers, should it be afforded special political protections safeguarding its expression?

The seminar was funded by the Templeton Foundation and graciously hosted by Thomas Farr and Timothy Shah, both extraordinary scholars who impressively balance their academic pursuits with active engagement in the Washington D.C. political environment. The seminar consisted of two morning presentations, the first by Justin Barrett of Oxford University, and the second by yours truly, followed in the afternoon by extensive discussion and debate. The hosts invited about a half-dozen discussants from diverse backgrounds in philosophy, biology, psychology, and theology, including our own talented polymath, Jeff Schloss, who remarkably embodies all these backgrounds in one somatic casing.

Justin opened the seminar with an insightful talk on naturalism from the perspective of cognitive science. Drawing on Robert McCauley’s forthcoming book, Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not, Barrett defined naturalness as “thought processes or behaviors that are characterized by ease, automaticity, and fluency.” McCauley distinguishes between two basic types of naturalness: maturational and practiced naturalness. Maturational naturalness arises as a natural consequence of normal development, such as learning to walk or talk. Practiced naturalness, on the other hand, arises not through the normal course of physical and psychological development, but rather through repeated practice and training, such as learning to play a musical instrument. Justin argued that religion is situated toward the maturational end of the naturalness continuum, whereas in my talk which followed, I argued that religion was more appropriately categorized toward the practiced end of the continuum. I’m not sure there was really much of a difference in opinion, but rather the particular perspectives we took on the issue reflected the distinct vantage points of our individual disciplinary approaches, cognitive science and evolutionary anthropology respectively.

Concerning religious freedom, I argued that regardless of one’s position in such a debate, religion’s naturalness, whether maturational or practiced, was not an adequate foundation for building an argument in support of protecting religious expression. Even if religion lies on the maturational side of the naturalness continuum, as Barrett and McCauley contend, it is not at the far end of the continuum with other basic human rights, such as the right to freedom from torture, the right to water, and so forth. Religious freedom is indeed a human right, but it is not a basic right; for other rights can be enjoyed without it. Nonetheless, I suggested that CESR might be valuable in situations where religious and secular values conflict, such as issues of environmental conservation, homosexuality, veiling, etc. Most religious-secular conflicts emerge as a consequence of misunderstanding and a lack of appreciation of individuals’ commitments to their respective values. CESR may be able to help resolve religious-secular conflicts by offering an understanding for religious adherents of how secular values can become sacred, and providing compelling materialist explanations of religion to secular individuals who otherwise, and understandably, find commitments to religious behaviors and beliefs utterly bizarre.

Speaking of utterly bizarre religious behaviors, during my visit to Georgetown I received a phone call from a National Geographic reporter - unbeknownst to either of us until the end of our conversation, she was only blocks away - who was interested in my thoughts concerning a recent study on firewalking published in PNAS. In this study, the authors showed that heartbeats of firewalkers and spectators who were kin or friends of the firewalkers synchronized during the ritual, whereas those not socially connected to the firewalkers did not synchronize. Although not tested, it is possible that the synchronized heartbeats result in increased levels of bonding and cohesiveness. It is a fascinating result since I suspect most of us had previously assumed that such effects were limited to ritual performers who engage in collective singing, chanting, or movements. The reporter asked me what the implications of such rituals were for our own society, suggesting that in our fragmented society maybe we could use such rituals to create a sense of shared community that is currently lacking. I could feel my feet burning as I considered how to respond. She was indeed correct that the shared rituals in American society - watching fireworks on July 4th, respectful parades on Memorial Day, etc. - are not nearly as evocative or solidarity-building as firewalking rites, yet I wasn’t prepared to endorse coal hopping as a cure for our societal ills. I suggested that different societies require different levels of cohesion, depending on their need to solve problems of cooperation. Our society has stable social, economic, and political institutions that solve many problems of cooperation for us, whereas in societies lacking these strong institutions, religious rites can serve a similar function, binding the community together to solve cooperation problems inherent in social life. Moreover, religious systems are organic and typically do not respond well to attempts at artificial engineering.

It is exciting to live in a time when evolutionary models are seriously considered by the public as well as policy-makers, and I have no doubt that those active in this area, such as David Sloan Wilson (Binghamton Neighborhood Project) and Rafe Sagarin (Natural Security), are making important academic and societal contributions. CESR, however, is a relatively new field of study that is not as developed as other areas in the evolutionary sciences. Therefore, as CESR work moves into applied realms, I think we need to be cautious about the advice we offer. Religion is a complex system that we are only beginning to understand. As with all complex adaptive systems, changing one part of the system is likely to have effects on other parts of the system. Without understanding the feedback mechanisms that enable religious systems to respond adaptively to changing environmental conditions, we are at risk of offering solutions and changes that will likely yield unintended consequences. But just in case my colleagues don’t share my concerns and are offering extensive counsel to policy-makers and the public, I think I’ll keep my sandals on.

Richard Sosis kindly allowed us to post here a more complete manuscript on this topic, written with Jordan Kiper and entitled “Sacred versus Secular Values: Cognitive and Evolutionary Sciences of Religion and Religious Freedom“, which will appear in a conference volume.

The God Instinct

Jesse Bering’s new book, The God Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny and the Meaning of Life, has just been published in the UK.

The God Instinct offers Jesse’s surprising and original take on why we believe in God - and how this belief led to our success as a species. Why does even the most committed atheist turn to God when a family member falls seriously ill, or they find themselves in close personal danger? Drawing on his own and others research from a range of scientific disciplines, Jesse explores how people’s everyday thoughts, behaviours and emotions betray an innate tendency to reason as though God were deeply invested in their public lives and secret affairs.
In what is a greatly entertaining and thought-provoking book, he argues that this religious reflex is not an irrational aberration, and that God is not a cultural invention or an existential band-aid, but an intrinsic human trait, developed over millennia, that carries powerful evolutionary benefits.
Breaking new ground, The God Instinct uses science to show that God is not a delusion, but a sophisticated cognitive illusion. Bering reveals the roots of religion in our ability to think beyond our immediate surroundings, and explains why this capacity for belief sets us apart from other animals.
Jesse not only presents serious ideas in an accessible and engaging way, but also takes a more considered, rational approach than the extreme views so often found on either side of the great debate.

The book will published in the USA in February 2011 as The Belief Instinct, by W.W. Norton.

Read a BBC blog on the book, and see new updates at the book’s reviews page

Sosis Launches “Religion, Brain & Behavior”

Richard Sosis (along with Patrick McNamara and Wesley Wildman) have launched a new journal called Religion, Brain & Behavior. The aim of Religion, Brain & Behavior (RBB) is to provide 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. RBB publishes high quality research articles, target articles with about ten solicited commentaries and an author response, case studies, and occasional review articles. Issues are published three times during 2011, and four times annually from 2012 onwards.

Several of our project team are members of the editorial advisory board for RBB.

The Evolution of Religion

Recent years have seen an explosion of interest in the idea that religion may be a product of evolution. Many prominent authors, such as Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, argue that religion is an evolutionary accident—a by-product of big human brains.

We suggest exactly the opposite hypothesis. 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 processes. Religion may thus not be an accident of evolution, but rather an example of evolution.

The “Evolution of Religion” project is dedicated to exploring this hypothesis using scientific methods from anthropology, psychology and evolutionary biology (see our aims). The main adaptive advantages of religion appear to revolve around promoting cooperation. The power of religion to promote solidarity and trust offers a remarkably effective way of solving the thorny problem of  ”collective action”—how to trump individual self-interests and promote collective benefits instead. The dark side of religion’s power to promote cooperation is that, although cooperation works wonders within groups, it can exacerbate differences and conflicts between groups.

An evolutionary approach to religion does not exclude the possibility that supernatural agents are genuine (gods and evolution might coexist). However, it does suggest an alternative scientific hypothesis for the origin and persistence of religion. Evolutionary theories of religion are important because if belief in supernatural agents and related phenomena were subject to natural selection, then religious beliefs and behaviors are likely to be deeply ingrained features of human cognition, difficult to alter and unlikely to disappear from human culture anytime soon. Although it appears that many cultures around the globe are becoming more secular, the proportion of believers is growing, and even atheists are not immune from common perceptions of supernatural causation in everyday life—as E.O. Wilson wrote, “The human mind evolved to believe in the gods. It did not evolve to believe in biology” (Consilience, p.292). Our ability to understand, predict, and intervene in religious conflicts around the world will be incomplete without a solid scientific understanding of religion’s evolutionary origins, adaptive functions, and cognitive mechanisms.

Edinburgh is a fitting base for our project, where Charles Darwin spent two formative years at Edinburgh University Medical School from 1825-1827. Given the times in which Darwin arrived in Edinburgh, it is likely that his creative ideas were fueled by the Scottish Enlightenment. As described by the Head of Collections at Edinburgh University: “We have one of the greatest intellectual fireworks displays that ever happened in Europe. And then one of the greatest minds which the UK ever produces happens to settle on it. You would expect something very important to happen” (How Edinburgh Inspired Darwin’s Origin of Species, The Times, February 2009).

The timing is also fitting—2009 is the anniversary of Darwin’s 200th birthday and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species. It is striking that it has taken a century and a half for scientists to seriously think about whether religious beliefs and behaviors, like other beliefs and behaviors, may be subject to the evolutionary processes that Darwin first revealed.

Edinburgh University is celebrating Darwin’s birthday with a variety of seminars, exhibitions, and tours throughout 2009. We are celebrating by launching a project to address perhaps the greatest challenge yet for Darwinism and evolutionary biology: does its power extend to explaining even the phenomenon that was long thought to lie beyond the realm of science?