Religion, Brain & Behavior

The journal Religion, Brain & Behavior offers researchers and readers with thoughtful work on religion. It is the journal of the Institute for the Bio-Cultural Study of Religion. The current issue has a target article on "Understanding atheism/non-belief as an expected individual-differences variable" by Catherine Caldwell-Harris, and commentary from 17 scholars, including William Bainbridge, Ralph Hood Jr., Lee Kirkpatrick, and many others whose ideas are worth reading.

Alzheimer's and Purpose in Life

Science Daily reports on a study indicating that people with high purpose in life fare better when facing the neural plaques and tangles associated with the early stages of alzheimer's disease. Whether or not you read the original report in Archives of General Psychiatry, the Science Daily summary is worth reading.

"Brain on God", from NPR

National Public Radio offers an introduction to the brain's role in religious experience. The site might be useful to share with your students, or as a way to see how this aspect of the psych of religion is represented in the media. Visit it when you have a chance. (Given that it has been a Very Long Time since I posted, you might need to awake from your reverie first.)

Neurotheology on NPR

National Public Radio interviewed Andrew Newberg at length about his work on brain imaging when people meditate. Listen to the interview here.

Neuroscience on 60 Minutes

Take 12 minutes and view this story that was broadcast last night on the CBS News program 60 Minutes. It may sound like science fiction that someone could control a computer, or a robotic arm, only by thinking about it, but it isn't. There is no direct link to religion, but I wanted to let you know about it nonetheless. This is a science story that is worth your time, and watching the video is much better than reading about it.

Sam Harris

Sam Harris is well known for his criticisms of religion and Christianity. He maintains a high profile on the internet, and with books such as The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason and Letter to a Christian Nation he has become a prominent atheist.

You may not know that he is also working on his Ph.D. in neuroscience at UCLA. Harris has apparently been making progress on his research, despite his writing on religion. In fact, the current issue of Time reports that he is publishing a paper in the Annals of Neurology, a very highly-regarded journal in the field. The publication reports on his research studying the brains of 14 people as they consider sentences indicating varying degrees of objectivity and subjectivity. Apparently the distinction between objective and subjective may not be as clear-cut as we would like to think.

More interesting to psychologists of religion is what the article says of Harris's next study. He plans to examine whether religious beliefs differ from other types of beliefs. He hopes to learn whether religious belief and faith are treated differently by the brain than are beliefs regarding more mundane things, such as beliefs about cars.

If you are interested in psychology and religion, the Time article on Harris is worth a quick visit.