Cognitive Science of Religion, 2015: Year in Review

Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 2014

Zygon®, 2012

In June 2011, the Institute on Religion in an Age of Science (IRAS) considered the topic "Doing Good, Doing Bad, Doing Nothing: Scientific and Religious Perspectives on Human Behavior." Plenary speakers discussed evolutionary, biological, and neurological roots of bad and good behavior (Melvin Konner); unconscious prejudice (Mahzarin Banaji); cultural production of evil and how hope arises in suffering (Cheryl Kirk-Duggan); causes and consequences-neurological and social-of developmental trauma (Laurie Pearlman); social conditions for genocide and mass violence and responses that enable healing and prevent further violence (Ervin Staub); practices for conflict transformation, reconciliation, and peace building (Robert and Alice Evans); and from Eastern religions diagnoses of and prescriptions for overcoming central obstacles to fullness of life (Barbara Jamestone). The papers published here by William Shoemaker, Ervin Staub, and Karl Peters carry forward these evolutionary, neurological, social, and religious analyses and offer ways to become more active in diminishing harmful and nonresponsive behaviors and in enhancing human good.

Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion 1 (2), 2014

Within the last two decades, the cognitive science of religion has gained momentum , and this has led to a call for dedicated experimental studies addressing this level of explanation. However, what does such an experimental turn mean for the study of religion more generally? How does it affect what we study and the methods we use to study it? Does it alter with whom we cooperate, where we publish and what scholarly discussions we take part in? In this article, we discuss how the experimental study of religious phenomena changes the theoretical subject matter and how it involves a new relation between theoretical modeling, methodological reduction and generalization. We argue that, similar to all new approaches, an experimental methodology is likely to alter the study of religion in the short run, but in the longer perspective experimental approaches are likely to take their place beside other approaches that constitute the broader field of the academic study of religion.

Religion: Immediate Experience and the Mediacy of Research; Interdisciplinary studies in Objectives, Concepts and Methodology of Empirical Research in Religion, edited by H.-G. Heimbrock and C. Scholtz. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht., 2007

Written by prominent and up-and-coming scholars, deploying diverse lenses and methodologies from the sciences and humanities, illuminating the complex relationships between human beings, their religious perceptions and practices, and other earthly organisms, through the long process of biocultural evolution since the emergence of Homo sapiens sapiens . . .

Current …, 2003

The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research will continue its Institutional Development Grant (IDG) after its launch in 2008. The IDG is intended to strengthen (or to support the development of) anthropological doctoral programs in countries where the discipline is ...

Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization -- Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 3rd Ed 686p(2017)

Like most writing on human behavior, these articles lack a coherent framework and so I hesitate to recommend this book to anyone, as the experienced ought to have about the same perspective I do, and the naïve will mostly be wasting their time. Since I find most of these essays obviously off the mark or just very dull, I can't generate much enthusiasm for commenting on them, so after providing what I consider a reasonable precis of a framework (see my other articles for an expanded version) I provide cursory comments on the various articles. Those wishing a comprehensive up to date framework for human behavior from the modern two systems view may consult my article The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language as Revealed in Wittgenstein and Searle 59p(2016). For all my articles on Wittgenstein and Searle see my e-book ‘The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Wittgenstein and Searle 367p (2016). Those interested in all my writings in their most recent versions may consult my e-book Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2016’ 662p (2016). All of my papers and books have now been published in revised versions both in ebooks and in printed books. Talking Monkeys: Philosophy, Psychology, Science, Religion and Politics on a Doomed Planet - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071HVC7YP. The Logical Structure of Philosophy, Psychology, Mind and Language in Ludwig Wittgenstein and John Searle--Articles and Reviews 2006-2016 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071P1RP1B. Suicidal Utopian Delusions in the 21st century: Philosophy, Human Nature and the Collapse of Civilization - Articles and Reviews 2006-2017 (2017) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0711R5LGX Suicide by Democracy: an Obituary for America and the World (2018) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07CQVWV9C

The full conference program of the Human Behavior and Evolution Society began on a sunny humid Thursday morning in June in the year 2000 on the Amherst College campus and it didn’t wind down until the following Sunday afternoon. I was privileged to attend presentations by such well-known scholars as Steven Pinker (How the Mind Works), Robert Wright (The Moral Animal), and Richard Dawkins (The Selfish Gene). As impressive as these well-known scholars were (and there were many lesser-known though just-as-able scholars at the conference) I’d come specifically to attend the panel discussion on the use of evolutionary biology in understanding religion. Dan Kriegman was listed as the organizer and its focus would be Kevin MacDonald’s trilogy on the evolutionary strategy of Judaism... That was the year 2000. In 2020, Charles Murray, in 'Human Diversity, the Biology of Gender, Race and Class' explains: "why there is so little about evolutionary psychology in human diversity." At the end of the introduction to the book, he writes: "Hundreds of millions of years of evolution did more than shape human physiology. It shaped the human brain as well. A comparatively new discipline, evolutionary psychology, seeks to understand the links between evolutionary pressures and the way humans have turned out. Accordingly, evolutionary psychology is at the heart of explanations for the differences that distinguish men from women and human populations from each other. Ordinarily, it would be a central part of my narrative. But the orthodoxy has been depressingly successful in demonizing evolutionary psychology as just-so stories. I decided that incorporating its insights would make it too easy for critics to attack the explanation and ignore the empirical reality. I discuss some evolutionary material in my accounts of the peopling of the Earth and the source of greater male variance. That's it, however, ignoring the rest of the fascinating story." The public demonizing of evolutionary psychology began at HBES 2000 and has persisted for over two decades. I wrote a journal of the event, not because I attended as a journalist, but because I was concerned the event would be forgotten.

Current Anthropology