The evolved brain: Understanding religious ethics and religious violence

Abstract

We are living in the midst of one of the greatest periods of intellectual discovery in the history of religious studies. Scholars from anthropology, psychology, evolutionary biology, neuroscience and philosophy are developing a cognitive science of religion which promises to revolutionize and profoundly deepen our understanding of religion. Scholars have tried for centuries to lay bare the empirical bases for religious beliefs but, without disparaging those efforts, it is only with the development of the cognitive sciences that we can move beyond arm-chair speculation or merely phenomenal descriptions of religion and develop an empirically grounded explanation for religious belief and behavior.