For quite some years, devout disciples of Richard Dawkins basked in the perception that evolutionary studies would prove religions to be false and harmful. But in 2002, evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson published "Darwin's Cathedral. Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society", leading to new perspectives of scientific study...
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Of course, we don't have specific Genes inheriting the specific musics of Jazz and Beethoven or the languages of French and Chinese. But there is no scientific doubt that we have the genetically heritable traits of musicality and the abilities to speak - which then have to be acquired and formed into concrete, cultural forms in order to confer their benefits. And the same is true of religiosity and religions... (More)
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In the sad and ongoing "Culture Wars" between religious and secular worldviews, extreme proponents of religions and atheisms are misusing science, especially distorting evolutionary studies - instead of using them to better understand each other. (More)
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There are still many people around who claim an inevitable enmity between science and religions. But in the last years, scientists from different fields and backgrounds started to explore religiosity (here defined as behavior toward supernatural agents) from the perspective of evolutionary theory. We agree that questions of existence or nonexistence of supernatural agents as ancestors, spirits, bodhisattvas or God may be beyond the scope of empirical sciences, but that we may explore religious behavior, its workings and functions with the same scientific respect and curiosity as any other natural, biocultural trait (i.e. musicality or speaking). (More)
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