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Did Religion Help the Rise of Civilizations in the Americas?
Religions and the Emergence of Civilizations in the Americas In our contemporary culture, it is often assumed that organized religion is a conservative force that impedes the development of human societies. Depending on one’s allegiances, one may view religion as an obstacle that must be overcome, or as a fortification against society’s descent into chaos. But rarely does anyone stop and ask the question, “To what degree might religion actually contribute to cultural innovation and progress of a society?” Historians in recent years have challenged the modernist assumption that religious institutions are obstacles to human flourishing. Rather than accepting this…
Finding Joy Through Generosity
How God Works Podcast (Seasons 3-6)
Atheism and Unbelief
Towards a psychology and sociology of atheism and non-belief If the world’s estimated 1.1 billion atheists and non-believers were grouped together as their own “religion,” they would be the world’s third-largest, trailing only Christianity and Islam. Any serious psychology or sociology of religion must take into account the beliefs and experiences of non-believers — yet the scientific study of atheism and non-belief has lagged behind the study of religions, with varied forms of non-belief often relegated to being defined by what they aren’t rather than what they are. The John Templeton Foundation enthusiastically supports scientific research that touches on many…
Spirituality and Medicine
Scientists and medical practitioners are taking a fresh look at the ways that patients’ religious beliefs affect their healthcare needs. When we think of the frontiers where religion and science intersect — in conflict, harmony, or confusion — we might envision a philosophical debate at a university, a particle accelerator probing the origins of the universe, or perhaps a high-stakes courtroom battle like the Scopes “Monkey” trial. For most people, though, the realms of the spiritual and the scientific meet most practically on the sickbed. Doctors, nurses, and other health care providers, along with patients and their loved ones, are…
The Science of Forgiveness
Future-Mindedness
Great Expectations: New insights into how and why we think about the future What do you expect to be doing in five seconds? Five months? Five decades? Thinking about the future is a form of mental time travel at which humans are uniquely skilled. Psychologists call it prospection or future-mindedness, and some have argued it offers an invaluable framework for understanding topics ranging from perception, cognition, imagination, and memory to free will and consciousness itself. In a 2013 paper — later expanded into the book Homo Prospectus — University of Pennsylvania psychologist Martin E. P. Seligman and co-authors Peter Railton,…
Can We Know God? New Insights From Religious Epistemology
Are religious beliefs rational? Is knowledge of God even possible? Are the evils we observe in the world evidence against God’s existence? Since the late twentieth century, epistemological questions of this nature have been central to the philosophy of religion. The work of two leading theistic philosophers, Alvin Plantiga and Richard Swinburne, divided the field of research into two distinct research programs. Broadly speaking, the debates between the two camps are representative of two larger positions in epistemology: internalism, according to which the rationality of beliefs is only determined by factors internally accessible to the believer; and externalists, according to…
