The Psychology of Prayer: A Scientific Approach, co-authored by Bernard Spilka and Kevin Ladd, a member of the SSRC’s New Directions in the Study of Prayer advisory committee, will be released in September.
Posts Tagged ‘psychology’
September 19th, 2011
The home of the syndrome
posted by John D. BoySam McPheeters travels through the Holy Land in search of the “Jerusalem syndrome” for Vice.
September 14th, 2011
Nothing is ever lost: An interview with Robert Bellah
posted by Nathan Schneider
Both an influential scholar and a public intellectual, Robert Bellah is one of the foremost sociologists of his generation. His books and articles have set in motion lasting conversations about the role of religion in public life, both in the United States and around the world. Since retiring from thirty years of teaching at the University of California, Berkeley, Bellah has been at work on his most ambitious book yet, the recently released Religion in Human Evolution (Harvard University Press).
October 25th, 2010
Human morality
posted by Jessica PolebaumAt the NYTimes.com blog “The Stone,” Frans de Waal, C. H. Candler Professor in Psychology and Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center at Emory University, writes on the roots of human morality, using a series of fascinating examples from research on primate behavior to illustrate man’s natural attraction to “the good.”
February 8th, 2010
“American depressions”
posted by Ruth BraunsteinAt Tikkun Magazine, Harriet Fraad points to five sources that have “devastated the American moral, economic, psychological, and social landscape.”
September 20th, 2008
Mind sciences and religious change in America
posted by Christopher WhiteLike others in this discussion, I’m not sure that recent neurological studies will dramatically change contemporary religious belief or practice, though my reasons are more historical than philosophical or psychological. To put it simply, American Christians and Jews—Brooks‘s embattled Bible believers—have shown themselves remarkably adept at harmonizing new scientific insights with older religious notions and practices. Let me offer three historical examples that illustrate this, and a few final comments concerning the astonishing survival power not of a generic new religion (neural or otherwise) but of an older, doctrinal one: Christianity. […]
July 18th, 2008
Which cognitive revolution?
posted by Justin L. BarrettDavid Brooks, in his New York Times op-ed column “The Neural Buddhists,” offers speculations about how the “cognitive revolution” will impact religious belief. He goes on to cite studies by Andrew Newberg and others studying brain states that correlate with particular religious practices and experiences and then speculates as to what such research might mean for undercutting or bolstering particular religious commitments. Specifically, he suggests that doctrinal and theistic religions may be more threatened by contemporary science in this area than mystical religions. I suppose there is little harm in speculating, but we should get our “revolutions” straight. [...]
June 30th, 2008
Medical materialism revisited
posted by Wayne ProudfootA century ago, in “Religion and Neurology,” the opening chapter of The Varieties of Religious Experience, William James argued against a “medical materialism” that would reduce religious experiences to their neurological causes for the purpose either of dismissing them or confirming them. Since that time, many have tried to understand religion through the study of religious experience and, like James, many have given special attention to mysticism. New techniques for the study of the brain have brought great advances, but David Brooks’s New York Times column “The Neural Buddhists” and the work of Andrew Newberg, to whom he refers, stand squarely in the tradition James was criticizing. [...]
May 30th, 2008
The cognitive revolution and the decline of monotheism
posted by Kelly BulkeleyTo appreciate the cultural impact of the “cognitive revolution” discussed by David Brooks in his New York Times op-ed column “The Neural Buddhists” (May 13, 2008), we need to be clear about what has and has not been revolutionized by neuroscience. Brooks gets the research essentially right, but he overlooks some key issues raised by “neural Buddhism” that make me question his view of its future effects on religion and culture. [...]
Subscribe to the RSS feed for psychology
