Practice your willpower
It turns out willpower is something that can improve with practice. No wonder religions have rituals that force you to do the homework…
From Time.com, February 23, 2012:
Lent and the Science of Self-Denial
The hidden health benefits of religious rituals that require willpower
What is religion for?
Preliminary results are starting to come in from the multinational project called Explaining Religion. From The Economist April 23, 2011 edition:
Religious studies: The good god guide
Tentatively, scientists are asking: exactly what is religion, and what is it for?
“Theory of mind” required for belief in god
According to Jesse Bering, you need a “theory of mind” in order to believe in a supernatural being — supported by fascinating psychological experiment, described below. Great read.
Signs, signs, everywhere signs: Seeing God in tsunamis and everyday events
By Jesse Bering | Sunday, March 13, 2011
Explaining Religion
“Explaining Religion” is a three-year European scientific collaboration involving scholars from 14 universities. Some of their intriguing experiments are detailed in the article below.
From The Economist, Mar 19th 2008:
Science and religion have often been at loggerheads. Now the former has decided to resolve the problem by trying to explain the existence of the latter
Sense of control and religion
I was reading David Ropeik‘s blog “The perception gap: An explanation for why people maintain irrational fears” and came across this paragraph:
“…When we are uncertain, as are parents with autistic kids, we grab on to anything that answers our questions, because that sense of knowing affords us a reassuring feeling of control. Control is vital to anyone who is afraid, worried, uncertain…”
A sense of knowing allows us to predict the future, and thereby giving us control (whether imaginary or real). Being a better predictor of future is definitely a great help in survival — an evolutionary advantage, so it’s not surprising that humans have a built-in need for control. The problem is that not everything is predictable, making us feel less in control and therefore unhappy. Religion fills in that gap beautifully. The basis for most (all?) religions is that there is a supernatural being (god) that controls all the things we can’t predict. We can increase our sense of control by appealing to this god (praying, sacrificing, etc.) who will on occasion grant our wishes. Which explains why religious people are happier than the unbelievers — they believe they have control over the unpredictable when the unbelievers have to accept that there is nothing they can do to affect the unpredictable. This could also explain why it is so hard to give up faith: you’re asking someone to give up some of their control.
Sex and the Bible
Not exactly what I thought it’s going to be. Just shows how important it is to go to the actual source and try to understand it in the context of the times. From Time magazine, Sunday, Oct. 31, 2010:
What the Bible Has to Say About Sex
Suffering leads to belief in god
It seems misery loves supernatural explanations…
Excerpt from “Bering in Mind”‘s God’s in Mississippi, where the gettin’ is good:
…. In an article soon to be published in Personality and Social Psychology Review , Harvard psychologists Kurt Gray and Daniel Wegner argue that human suffering and God go hand-in-hand because our evolved cognitive systems are inherently unsatisfied with “sh*t happens” types of explanations (that is to say, reality). The main gist of their argument is that, since we’re such a deeply social species, when bad things happen to us we immediately launch a search for the responsible human party. In being morally vigilant this way–in seeking to identify the culpable party–we can effectively punish blameworthy, antisocial people, thus preserving our group’s functional cohesion and preserving each individual’s genetic interests. That’s all fine and dandy, say Gray and Wegner, when someone punches us in the face, steals from us or sleeps with our girlfriend; but when our misfortune is more “abstract” (think cancer or a tsunami) and there’s no obvious single human agent to blame, we see the hand of God.
Your brain on religion
Religion can be very useful: reduced stress, lower anxiety, improved cognitive abilities. But nothing comes without a price: religion hinders the ability to fix your mistakes.
From The Globe and Mail, March 5, 2009:
This is your brain on religion
Believers record lower levels of anxiety, which can boost performance but also hinder the ability to fix mistakes, study finds
Politics drives religion
Decoding God’s Changing Moods
About
Although it started out as a means of practising expressing myself, this blog is turning out to be more of a compendium of interesting information I come across. One of these days I’ll have to actually write something as opposed to cut and paste. 
