Terry Eagleton has taken aim at Alain de Botton’s oxymoronic new book, Religion for Atheists: A Non-Believers Guide to the Uses of Religion. Eagleton is bulls-eye on the book, which basically argues that although religions are false they are still useful and we can learn from them. Eagleton correctly points out that this sort of [...]
Tags:Alain de Botton·American evangelicals·atheism·Chief Rabbi Lord Sacks·ethics·fundamentalists·funeral industry·Israel·Juliane von Mittelstaedt·Karen Armstrong golden rule·Max Rivlin-Nadler·morals·orthodox Jews·Philip Kitcher·secularization·Terry Eagleton·Thomas Jefferson bible
Someone forgot to tell a group of 15-month-old infants they are flawed and that without proper (religious or moral) instruction, they will be unfair and selfish. Rather than being born this way, they appear to have been born another way: with built-in expectations of fairness and a willingness to share. These are the conclusions reached [...]
Tags:altruism·cooperation·infants·Jessica Sommerville·Marco Schmidt·moral faculty·moral sense·morals·prosocial·sharing
Making and keeping promises is a hallmark of human behavior that many consider to be a cornerstone of “morality.” As such, it is often linked to religion. The linkage is expressly acknowledged by religious groups such as Promise Keepers.
Until recently, I hadn’t given much thought to promises per se or their critical importance to the [...]
Tags:conscience·consciousness·Friedrich Nietzsche·Genealogy of Morals·Making Sense of Nietzsche·memory·memory activation·morality·morals·Promise Keepers·promises·Richard Schacht
Between 800 and 200 BCE, a remarkable series of sages, mystics, and thinkers gave rise to the transcendental traditions that are known today as “world religions.” In 1949, the German philosopher Karl Jaspers identified several themes common to these traditions and described this six hundred year period as the Axial Age: “These movements were ‘axial’ [...]
Tags:Akkadia·Alan Strathern·Assyria·axial age·Buddha·Confucius·Daoism·death·ethics·Hinduism·immanence·Jainism·Jaspers·Judaism·Karen Armstrong·Karl·Mesopotamia·monotheism·morals·Plato·Platonism·Socrates·suffering·Sumerian·Thorkild Jacobsen·transcendence·world rejection
In the inaugural issue of Religion, Brain & Behavior, Jeffrey Schloss and Michael Murray examine the idea that belief in supernatural agents is adaptive because these agents are punishers: supernatural policeman if you will. This policing can have two effects. First, belief in supernatural punishment can enhance within group cooperation. Second, it can reduce cheating [...]
Tags:ancestral environment·Azim Shariff·cheating·cooperation enhancement·essentialism·free riders·Friedrich Nietzsche·functionalism·game theory·Genealogy of Morals·Jeffrey Schloss·Jesse Bering·Lee Cronk·Mario Brandhorst·Michael Murray·morals·neolithic·Paleolithic·punishment avoidance·supernatural punishment·supernatural surveillance
Death is big business. This past year, Americans spent $15 billion on funeral related expenses. Americans are not outliers when it comes to death spending; funeral related expenditures around the world are estimated to be at least this much and probably more. Strangely, the ratio of death spending does not diminish in poorer countries. In [...]
Tags:ancestor cults·ancestor worship·ancestors·bones·burial·Catal Hoyuk·Catalhoyuk·Cree·death·delayed return systems·filial piety·funerals·funerary·genealogy·grave goods·Ian Hodder·J.G. Macqueen·lineages·morals·mortuary·mourning·Native Americans·norms·Ojibway·Paul Hackett·power·rituals·secondary burial·skeletons·spirits·Sunghir·supernatural surveillance
Over at The Economist, our correspondent reports that “religion got it right: pain seems to assuage guilt.” This conclusion is based on an Australian study that primed the usual guinea pigs (undergraduates) with guilt by having them write about something “immoral” or “unethical” they had done. Compared to a non-primed group who wrote about cupcakes [...]
Tags:altered states of consciousness·atonement·Australia·Brock Bastian·catharsis·Christians·control·ethics·flagellants·Francisco de Goya·George Catlin·guilt·Mandans·morals·pain·penitence·punishment·ritualized pain·rituals·shame·spirits·visions
It is no secret that economic debates often have a religious flavor and similar passion; sometimes this flavor is metaphorical but other times is direct. Indeed, there many people — especially in the United States, who explicitly equate their economics with morals and religion.
Some worship at the altar of gold (the gold standard to be [...]
Tags:Adam Smith·Ben Friedman·Bill O'Reilly·David Ricardo·deism·deist·economics·Economics as a Moral Science·economy·free markets·Friedrich von Hayek·Glenn Beck·gold standard·invisible hand·Ludwig von Mises·Mike Huckabee·Milton Friedman·morals·Ron Paul·Rush Limbaugh·Sarah Palin·Theory of Moral Sentiments·Wealth of Nations
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
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
