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religion and reason as natural phenomena
Browsing All Posts filed under »superstition«
On Astrology
An old post of mine – from the middle of 2007 – has recently been replied to by someone who takes their astrology very seriously. Anthony Louis, who has published books on astrology and tarot, runs quite an active blog on the topics. His somewhat curious response is quite short so I’ll quote it in […]
Malinowski’s magic, Skinner’s superstition
January 11, 2012
Just finished a first draft of an article that is to go into a volume edited by Dimitris Xygalatas and William McCorkle. The volume is to be called Mental Culture: Toward a Cognitive Science of Religion and is to show how modern cognitive science of religion is connected back to traditional approaches to the study […]
Randomised response technique is cool
August 3, 2011
Anyone who has ever talked to me about science has probably heard me get all excited about all sorts of methodologies. I am particularly likely to get all flushed by very simple methods that manage to get at something that seemed hard to get good data about. I have on several occasions on this blog […]
Abstract for ISORECEA
July 9, 2010
My Czech colleague, Ales Chalupa, who organised the very valuable meeting on cognitive science of religion I attended last year is co-organising another, much bigger meeting this year. The International Study of Religion in Central and Eastern Europe Association conference will take place in December of this year and is to have a section devoted […]
Aarhus talk
June 9, 2010
At the end of last month I went for a couple of days to Aarhus to give a talk on how the magic/religion distinction can be explained in terms of a dual inheritance model of religion. The Religion, Cognition and Culture people there also know Christophe Heintz and we set it up so that both […]
Common Sense Atheism interview
May 13, 2010
Luke Muehlhauser runs a podcast series of interviews with various philosophers and scientists that focuses on issues connected to atheism – one of his previous guest was Graham Oppy, who is an Australian atheist philosopher of religion and, as it happens, the guy who helped John Bigelow supervise my doctorate. The discussions tend to be […]
Abstract for talk in Aarhus
May 10, 2010
On May 21st I will be giving a talk in Aarhus to the Religion, Cognition and Culture people in Aarhus. Here is the abstract: Explaining the magic/religion distinction using a dual inheritance model The dual inheritance model of religion seeks to explain it as based upon cognitive byproducts that have been co-opted for prosocial functions. […]
Desirability of religion in Budapest
February 11, 2010
I got back from Budapest yesterday. I spent a couple of days hanging out with my friend Christophe, who is now working there, and Central European University is clearly a great place. I even got to see the cognitive development centre they have. The departmental seminar was on Tuesday and it started with a group […]
In the works
January 27, 2010
I have been working on the much delayed habilitationschrift recently but, also, have been writing a few other things that are tied to the book and are responding to things others have written. One thing I have mentioned is a Behavioral and Brain Sciences commentary on an article by Ryan McKay and Dan Dennett concerning […]
Does Barrett think that Superman is a counterintuitive concept?
December 11, 2009
Still working through Barrett’s Why Would Anyone Believe in God? with my cognitive science of religion class. We’ve got to chapter 6 in which Barrett considers the traits of the christian deity and I have found myself gobsmacked by the argument that Barrett presents. He considers in turn the christian claims that their deity has […]
Just Another Deisidaimon 
January 12, 2012
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