Political views may affect how we pray
Jonathan Morgan On the brink of election season, it’s sometimes easy to imagine that liberals and conservatives inhabit different worlds. But does this mean that they also pray differently? Past...
View ArticleThe religious may fare better when the going gets tough
New research from Butler University correlates religious practice with greater stores of self-regulation, suggesting that religious practitioners may more persistent in the face of some challenges.
View ArticlePrisoners who attend religious services have fewer disciplinary problems
University of Alabama criminologist Kent Kerley argues that frequent attendance at religious services while incarcerated predicts reduced prison deviance.
View ArticleEarn $63,628 worth of happiness: pray
Timothy Tyler Brown (University of California, Berkeley) investigated the value happiness prayer yields for the average individual per year in dollars, and found that the answer is...$63,628.
View ArticleDon’t understand religion? Experiment with it.
As William James reminded his readers a century ago, our internal mental states and attitudes don’t arise independently of our actions. If you want to make peace with the oddity of other people's...
View ArticleReligion and self-regulation: a model (and a trip to Norway)
Last week, I had the good fortune to attend a conference in Norway. For four days, I hung out near the shore of a beautiful lake with around 300 other scholars, caught up with friends, and heard...
View ArticleHow the Brain’s Predictions Shape Religion
A cognitive process called predictive processing may be how the brain generates religious and spiritual experiences, according to a pair of neuroscientists.
View ArticleHow Religion and Science Are Like Different Cultures
I have a new article up at Orbiter Magazine about the relationship between religion and science. Like I’ve done elsewhere, I stress in this article that there are real tensions – cultural conflicts –...
View ArticleSuicide, Modern Life, and Being In Control
I want to talk about suicide. It’s topical. In the past week and a half, two big-time celebrities – the fashion designer Kate Spade and the globetrotting chef Anthony Bourdain – took their own lives,...
View ArticleGods Are Everywhere Because It’s Hard to Bargain With Them
Why do so many people worship invisible beings, accept the authority of millennia-old texts, or or congregate on weekends in buildings for no apparently practical reason? The cognitive and bio-cultural...
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