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 [...]
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Over at NPR, Alix Spiegel presents a stimulating piece (which you can listen to or read) that asks: Is Believing in God Evolutionarily Advantageous? It seems to me that framing the question in this way suggests certain answers, all of which are neatly ensconced within Western and modern understandings of what constitutes “religion.” The story’s [...]
Tags:Alix Spiegel·cognitive science of religion·cooperation·Dominic Johnson·ethics·evolution of religion·extended kinship·fictive kinship·Jesse Bering·kinship·morality·Plains Indians·punishment·religion as adaptation·religiosity·shamanism·shamanisms·supernatural agents·surveillance
Over at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum has penned a manifesto for the “new agnosticism,” which he sees as an alternative to credulous theism on the the one hand and strident atheism on the other. Rosenbaum’s position deserves considerable merit and has some appeal, but I am not sure I can agree with him on this definition:
Agnosticism [...]
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