"The boundary between religious belief and the practice of psychiatry is becoming increasingly porous," say the editors in the Preface to Religion and Psychiatry: Beyond Boundaries...
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February 22, 2010
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October 6, 2009
Brain patterns of belief
Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith, has just published a second brain imaging study of religious belief.Harris and his colleagues were interested in two questions. Firstly, how does the brain process ideas of 'belief' and 'disbelief' - and does it differ when you are talking about religious beliefs or other kinds of beliefs.Secondly, which bits of the brain evaluate religious beliefs, and do
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September 21, 2009
When it Comes to Trusting Authority, Moral Conviction and Religiosity Part Ways
One of the consistent elements in political discussions is the influence of religious belief on attitudes toward government. And typically it’s assumed that a high degree of religiosity is synonymous with a high degree of moral conviction – they’re popularly thought to go hand-in-hand. So, if someone’s attitude toward governmental auhtority is influenced by his or her rel
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July 9, 2009
Why some countries are more religious than others
After nearly two years of blogging on other people's peer-reviewed studies, it's a refreshing change to now be blogging on one of my own! My paper, Is Personal Insecurity a Cause of Cross-National Differences in the Intensity of Religious Belief?, is now out in the Journal of Religion and Society (web, pdf).The paper is a statistical analysis of the causes of religiosity at a national level (in o
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