The need to belong can motivate belief in God. In Study 1, 40 undergraduates read bogus astrophysics articles "proving" God's existence or not offering proof. Participants in the proof-for-God condition reported higher belief in God (compared to control) when they chronically imagined God as accepting but lower belief in God when they imagined God as rejecting. Additionally, in Study 2 (72 unde...

Experimental studies of the cultural evolution of language have focused on how constraints on learning and communication drive emergence of linguistic structure. Yet language is typically transmitted by experts who adjust the input in ways that facilitates learning by novices, e.g. through child-directed speech. Using iterated language learning of binary auditory sequences, we explored how lang...

The automatic induction of scripts (Schank and Abelson, 1977) has been the focus of many recent works. In this paper, we employ a variety of these methods to learn Schank and Abelson’s canonical restaurant script, using a novel dataset of restaurant narratives we have compiled from a website called “Dinners from Hell.” Our models learn narrative chains, script-like structures that we evaluate w...

1. God exists in the understanding. 2. God might have existed in reality (God is a possible being). 3. If something exists only in the understanding and might have existed in reality, then it might have been greater than it is. 4. Suppose God exists only in the understanding. 5. God might have been greater than he is. 6. God is a being than which a greater is possible. 7. The being than which n...

PHILOSOPHY Ever since the time of Pascal men have feared that the 'God' worshipped by believers and the 'God' contemplated by philosophers were somehow different. The former was personal, historically active, slow to anger and plentiful in mercy: the latter was dubiously able to be described in personal terms at all, and infinite in such a way as to baffle the imagination. The 'God' of the form...

Two chitosan samples (medium molecular weight (MMCHI) and low molecular weight (LMCHI)) were investigated as an enzyme immobilization matrix for the fabrication of a glucose biosensor. Chitosan membranes prepared from acetic acid were flexible, transparent, smooth and quick-drying. The FTIR spectra showed the existence of intermolecular interactions between chitosan and glucose oxidase (GOD). H...

Despite the cultural ubiquity of ideas and images related to God, relatively little is known about the effects of exposure to God representations on behavior. Specific depictions of God differ across religions, but common to most is that God is (a) an omnipotent, controlling force and (b) an omniscient, all-knowing being. Given these 2 characteristic features, how might exposure to the concept ...

Violent people often claim that God sanctions their actions. In two studies, participants read a violent passage said to come from either the Bible or an ancient scroll. For half the participants, the passage said that God sanctioned the violence. Next, participants competed with an ostensible partner on a task in which the winner could blast the loser with loud noise through headphones (the ag...