Recent functional neuroimaging data, acquired in studies of religious experience, have been used to explain and justify religion and its origins. In this paper, we critique the move from describing brain activity associated with self-reported religious states, to explaining why there is religion at all. Toward that end, first we review recent neuroimaging findings on religious experience, and s...

theoretical expectations. The assumption is that along with modernization and economic development, adherence to religious world views (seen to be a relic of the past) gradually dissipate, as they have in other advanced societies. But they haven’t in the United States. In fact, the importance of religious commitments and religious organizations to American society increased over the last severa...

Religion and spirituality exert a significant role in the lives of many individuals, including people with schizophrenia. However, the contribution of religion and spirituality to various domains (psychopathology, explanatory models, treatment seeking, treatment adherence, outcome, etc.) has not received much attention. In this article, we review the exiting data with regards to the relationshi...

After long neglect, the subject of religion has received growing attention in the economics profession over the past two decades. One of the reasons is that it has proven diffi cult to explain the levels of economic development of many nations around the world without reference to a national culture, and many of these cultures have been signifi cantly infl uenced by religion. Contrary to a wide...

BULLETIN FOR THE STUDY OF RELIGION 7 ity: A Fetschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson, edited by Timothy Light and Brian C. Wilson, 27–43. Leiden: Brill. Fitzgerald, Tim. 2006. “Bruce Lincoln’s ‘Theses on Method’: Antithesis.” Method and Theory in the Study of Religion 18: 392–423. ———. 2010. “Religion and Violence: A Psychoanalytic Inquiry.” In Chasing Down Religion: In the Sights of History and...

How did religion evolve? What effect does religion have on our moral beliefs and moral actions? These questions are related, as some scholars propose that religion has evolved to enhance altruistic behavior toward members of one's group. I review here data from survey studies (both within and across countries), priming experiments, and correlational studies of the effects of religion on racial ...

The main goal of the workshop is to introduce CSS members to topics that are cutting edge in the cognitive science of religion. The papers draw on a variety of methodologies and disciplines, which is one of the main characteristics of the cognitive science of religion. Even though the focus is on religion, the researchers are involved in broader issues relevant to cognitive science. So the expe...

Although religion deals with humankind’s ultimate concerns, such as universal compassion or the quest for divine peace and perfection, to some people the psychological study of religion and spirituality may seem only marginally relevant to positive psychology. In part, this could be because of the negative stances that many theorists have taken toward religion. For instance, Freud (1927/1953) c...

BACKGROUND Despite expansive medical literature regarding spirituality and medicine, little is known about physician beliefs regarding the influence of religion on health. METHODS Semistructured interviews with 21 physicians regarding the intersection of religion, spirituality, and medicine. Interviews were transcribed, coded, and analyzed for emergent themes through an iterative process of q...