Over at the Evolution of Religion Project, Dominic Johnson comments on the first target article which will appear in what promises to be a fantastic new journal, Religion, Brain, and Behavior. Because the first issue has yet to be published, I will have to rely on Johnson’s summary:
Jeff Schloss and Michael Murray have written a [...]
Tags:Abrahamic faiths·Abrahamic God·adaptionist·biological evolution·Christianity·cooperation enhancement·cultural evolution·Dominic Johnson·Islam·Jeff Schloss·Judaism·Michael Murray·moral order·moralizing gods·nationalism·punishing gods·punishment avoidance·Religion Brain and Behavior·Rodney Stark·supernatural agents·supernatural punishment·supernatural punishment theory·unified theory
In the preface to The Picture of Dorian Gray, Oscar Wilde uses a character from Shakespeare’s Tempest to comment on 19th century disgust, a moral emotion:
The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass. The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not [...]
Tags:Answers in Genesis·Caliban·CNN·disgust·Islam·moral emotions·morals·Oscar Wilde·Paul Refsdal·rage·Shakespeare·Taliban·The Picture of Dorian Gray·The Tempest
An intense forest fire in Israel has resulted in 41 tragic deaths. It was started by two teenagers who left a bonfire unattended. Although the real world causation and negligence is clear, one of Israel’s leading rabbis contends that God stoked the fire because many Israelis are not observing the sabbath. By this twisted reasoning, [...]
Tags:bonfire·causation·correlation·fire·Israel·Ovadia Yosef·Pat Robertson
Yet another study has appeared, this one in The Proceedings of the Royal Society, which supposedly shows that religious primes can increase prosocial behavior:
Recent evidence indicates that priming participants with religious concepts promotes prosocial sharing behaviour. In the present study, we investigated whether religious priming also promotes the costly punishment of unfair behaviour. A total [...]
Tags:Charles Efferson·cooperation·costly punishment·deities·Ernst Fehr·fairness·Harvey Whitehouse·morals·neolithic·prosocial·punishment·religious primes·Ryan McKay·spirits·supernatural watchers·surveillance·Wrath of God
This story — about the academic ghost writing industry, wherein students at all levels pay highly or well credentialed professional writers for custom work — is simultaneously fascinating and depressing. It recently appeared in The Chronicle of Higher Education and might shock many professors. I have long been aware of this shadowy field, and am [...]
Tags:academic ghost writers·cheating·Chronicle of Higher Education·custom papers·Dante·ghost writing·paper writing companies·plagiarism·professional writers·seminarians·seminary·The Shadow Scholar
Several months ago, many of us were shocked when it appeared that Jurgen Habermas, one of the world’s leading philosophers and social theorists, set up a Twitter account and opened with this tweet: “It’s true that the internet has reactivated the grass-roots of an egalitarian public sphere of writers and readers.” Alas, it was a [...]
Tags:communication·Durkheim·Eduardo Mendieta·emancipation·ethics·Freud·Habermas and Religion·Jurgen Habermas·metaphysics·morals·primates·rationalization·religious grammar·religious syntax·The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere·The Theory of Communicative Action·Twitter·Weber
In a fascinating story, Dina Kraft reports on the Diddy protege and rapper Shyne, who served 9 years in prison for a nightclub shooting. Shyne is now “Moses Levi” and an apparently serious Orthodox Jew who lives in Jerusalem, where he drives a Lamborghini:
“The science of Judaism” as Mr. Levi refers to it, has become [...]
Tags:Diddy·Dina Kraft·hip hop·Jew·laws·Orthodox Jew·rapper·rules·Sean Combs·Shyne·Talmud·Torah
During an hour long conversation (transcript included), NPR’s Ira Flatow discusses the science of morals with several guests, including Steven Pinker, Sam Harris, and Simon Blackburn. Although I want to be encouraged (and there are many excellent observations), I fear that the “science/morals” debate bears many resemblances to the moribund “science/religion” debate.
Tags:ethics·false dichotomy·Ira Flatow·morals·Sam Harris·science·Steven Pinker·Talk of the Nation·values
Our correspondent at The Economist reviews what looks to a provocative new book by Philipp Blom, A Wicked Company: The Forgotten Radicalism of the European Enlightenment.
Blom sets his book around the happenings of an exceptional Parisian salon — that of Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach — who hosted the likes of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, David Hume, Denis [...]
Tags:A Wicked Company·atheism·Baron Paul Thierry d’Holbach·commonsense dualism·counter-Enlightenment·David Hume·Denis Diderot·enlightenment·godless·magical thinking·materialism·mechanistic·Parisian salon·Phillipp Blom·Rousseau·soul beliefs·Voltaire
Over at The Stone, the primatologist Frans de Waal asks whether we can act “morally” without being “religious.” I quote-bracket these terms because they are not without complication, and we should be careful about using them in the context of such discussions. Regardless, de Waal poses some questions for which we have historical answers. For [...]
Tags:altruistic·Bart Ehrman·chimpanzees·Christianity·ethics·ethnohistory·evolution of morality·Frans de Waal·implicit ethics·Islam·Judaism·Misquoting Jesus·monotheism·Morals Without God·Native Americans·norms·polytheism·primates·primatologist·prosocial·religions of the book·right conduct
