The reasons behind the cultural persistence of religious beliefs throughout human history and prehistory still generate unanswered questions requiring scientific explanations. Within the framework of the cognitive science of religion, this article reviews experimental evidence supporting human predisposition for religious thinking and focuses on the hypothesis that a reason why religious belief...

Because the effects of religion or religiosity on physical activity (PA) and sedentary activity (SA) are unknown, weekend accrual of PA and SA was measured among Jewish adolescents (N = 437) attending religious day schools in two large cities in the western United States. Participants completed the Self-Administered Physical Activity Checklist and demographic and religious questionnaire items. ...

Despite a growing interest in the ways spiritual beliefs and practices are reflected in brain activity, there have been relatively few studies using neuroimaging data to assess potential relationships between religious factors and structural neuroanatomy. This study examined prospective relationships between religious factors and hippocampal volume change using high-resolution MRI data of a sam...

The question of churches resorting to the courts to influence public policy is one that concerns the appropriate role of the courts and the appropriate conduct of religious authorities. I agree with Skene and Parker that there is no principled legal reason to exclude such interventions out of hand; but my comments are principally addressed to the political and religious reasons for being rightl...

This article presents an overview of both the processes and the results of an international, interdisciplinary, and interreligious feminist study of "good sex" that resulted in a volume by the same name. We argue that religion (including its secular equivalent, i.e., global capitalism) remains a powerfully influential cultural force that shapes people's lives, in general, and sanctifies their b...

Previous studies suggest that religious prayer can alter the experience of pain via expectation mechanisms. While brain processes related to other types of top-down modulation of pain have been studied extensively, no research has been conducted on the potential effects of active religious coping. Here, we aimed at investigating the neural mechanisms during pain modulation by prayer and their d...

Patrick McNamara has made a thoughtful and nuanced contribution to a growing field centered on questions concerning brain activity required for, and involved in, religious life. In a field spanning the disciplines of neuroscience and religious studies it is often hard to find a perspective that has been thoroughly developed on both frontiers for the obvious reason that both are so expansive. Bu...

Historians of Indian religion agree that in the time between the seventh and fifth centuries BC a fundamental change in the orientation of religious life occurred. among various groups of religious thinkers, both orthodox and unorthodox, new theories developed about human action and its role in relation to repeated births and deaths. These thinkers’ theories on how the world is constructed and ...

Christianity strongly encourages its believers to surrender to God and to judge the self from God's perspective. We used functional MRI to assess whether this religious belief is associated with neural correlates of self-referential processing distinct from that of non-religious people. Non-religious and Christian participants were scanned while performing tasks of personal-trait judgments rega...