Neuroscience
- Findings From The First Study To Compare The Minds Of Gods
One explanation for the ubiquity of religion is that it fostered advantageous cooperation among our ancestors. The human mind readily develops belief in supervisory god-like entities and these beliefs help promote in us cooperative, moral behaviour....
- Science & Religion @ Hampshire
Hampshire College's Science and Religion has sponsored some great lectures in the past academic year. I just learned that videos are available for two of the lectures at Google Video. Way to go, Hampshire! Here's what you can see: Natural and...
- The "cancer Faith" Study
An interesting study released earlier this week attracted the attention of many bloggers and commentators. It's basic premise is that religious patients with advanced cancer are more likely to opt for aggressive end-of-life treatment. In other words,...
- Why Idiotic Research Is Bad For Science
This is a partial repost of a previous blog as I wanted to have a separate post outlining one of my postgraduate experiences of scientific research for a paper, and how it can be scuppered when Creationist/ID papers start entering research databases....
- My Research Interests
A question which I often get relates to my research interests: What are they? They ain't as easy to explain, unlike most people, because I'm actually interested in a wide variety of stuff. But I can tell you what drove me into this field which...
Neuroscience
Does Religion Make You Nice?
HOT OFF THE PRESS! (3 Oct 2008)
The very latest issue of the Science journal has published a review of religious prosociality.
This is an issue that has an indirect connection with my recent Masters thesis. What a pity this wasn't published a little earlier, as I could have incorporated some of this data into my thesis.
But never mind, I'll read this review and criticise it here soon.
In plain English (as per the abstract): This review examines the evidence for religious prosociality, in other words, the extent to which religion goes in ensuring you're a "good guy". Do you help people and do favours for them because of your natural niceness, or because your religion tells you to? While surveys find a correlation between religiosity and helpful behaviour, experiments have found that this correlation occurs mainly in context where the reputation of the 'helper' is enhanced. In other words, religiously-motivated helpers want to do good and be seen doing good. Other experiments find that religious thoughts reduce the inclination to cheat and increase helpful behaviour towards random strangers.
I don't know what the rest of it means (re devotion and trust, morally concerned deities, etc) as I'll have to read it to find out. But this is a taste!
- Findings From The First Study To Compare The Minds Of Gods
One explanation for the ubiquity of religion is that it fostered advantageous cooperation among our ancestors. The human mind readily develops belief in supervisory god-like entities and these beliefs help promote in us cooperative, moral behaviour....
- Science & Religion @ Hampshire
Hampshire College's Science and Religion has sponsored some great lectures in the past academic year. I just learned that videos are available for two of the lectures at Google Video. Way to go, Hampshire! Here's what you can see: Natural and...
- The "cancer Faith" Study
An interesting study released earlier this week attracted the attention of many bloggers and commentators. It's basic premise is that religious patients with advanced cancer are more likely to opt for aggressive end-of-life treatment. In other words,...
- Why Idiotic Research Is Bad For Science
This is a partial repost of a previous blog as I wanted to have a separate post outlining one of my postgraduate experiences of scientific research for a paper, and how it can be scuppered when Creationist/ID papers start entering research databases....
- My Research Interests
A question which I often get relates to my research interests: What are they? They ain't as easy to explain, unlike most people, because I'm actually interested in a wide variety of stuff. But I can tell you what drove me into this field which...