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For decades, the Russian population is declining due to low birth rates and (comparatively) low life expectancies. The communist regime of the Soviet Union suppressed and destroyed most religious traditions and communities - and family structures along the way. Although the Russian State recently tried to raise the fertility levels with money, there's a long way to go to stop the demographic implosion. But there's an interesting and telling exception from the perspective of evolutionary studies. While no non-religious populations... Read more
In the wake of the fruitful explosion of Evolutionary Studies of Religion, Evolutionary Studies of Atheism are making inroads, too. I was glad to be able to blog about Dominic Johnson's respective hypotheses last summer and recently about a ground-breaking paper by Ara Norenzayan and Will M. Gervais. Although we are beginning to understand the emergence and expansion of non-religious worldviews better than ever, a major question remains: Are human populations lacking any beliefs in superempirical agents doomed to demographic... Read more
Parental investment is an important topic in the evolution of sexes and genders throughout nature. It focusses not on purportedly "fixed" traits, but explores the contributions of parents to the wellbeing of their offspring. As the peacock is the beloved symbol of sexual selection, pointing to males competing for female choices, proponents of parental investment are emphasizing many animals with higher male contributions such as many birds right to the seahorse with "reversed" sexual roles. Established science history is crediting... Read more
She was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and fought (finally successfully) for her right to study theology as he had done. She became a renowned speaker for women's rights and the abolition of slavery. She was ordained to be the first woman pastor in the USA and she married happily and became a mother of six. And as if all this wouldn't have been enough, she wrote several remarkable books on science, religion & philosophy, endorsing evolutionary theory as an... Read more
Its name is "Religion, Brain & Behavior", it is published by Taylor & Francis - and it quickly became THE cutting-edge journal for evolutionary studies of religion! Being a member of the IBCSR (Institute for the Bio-Cultural Study of Religion), I am enjoying every issue and found lots of thoughts and data relevant to my work. But now, I got a notification that all published articles which ever appeared on RBB are free for download throughout February 2013! I mean,... Read more
One of the great scientific chances of the Web is the possibility of interfaculty and international dialogue. As I had posted "It's about fertility, stupid!" about the reproductive potentials of religiosity, anthropologist Jonathan Mair answered with three blogposts of his own, each containing some critical questions to the field of study in general and my contributions therein. I'll gladly try to answer now, hoping that the debate will be informative for readers enjoying the exchange of arguments. Blogpost 1: Is... Read more
Since I explored the Amish for a better understanding of religious fertility potentials, I have published some articles and a (German) eBook to inform my scientific colleagues as well as a broader public about this Anabaptist tradition. You may take the sciebook's title as a wonderful example of words lost in translation: The German term "Die Amish" is simply meaning "The Amish" in German, whereas it may look like a sinister wish in English (which it isn't, of course! I... Read more
Today is a great day. No, not (only) because those pseudo-scientific and greedy doomsayers have been proven wrong (again) by the very fact of a peaceful December 22nd, 2012 (in Germany, that is). My happiness hormones were sent flying by the lead story of the major German weekly DER SPIEGEL - about our Evolutionary Studies of Religion. Credit: http://www.spiegel.de/ ... Read more
Religiosity (defined as behavior towards superempircal agents) is today clearly adaptive: Members of competitive religious communities are building stronger families with more offspring worldwide as their secular neighbours of the same education and income levels. This is observable in empirical studies, censusses worldwide, as well as in case studies (i.e. Amish, Hutterites, Mormons, Orthodox Jews). In contrast, non-religious populations and those religious communities who do not build and support families inevitably succumb to cultural evolution (i.e. late Greek and Roman... Read more
For very good reasons, Germans became very reluctant about merging religious and national symbols after World War II. For many, it was a great experience to see that you could be emotionally attached to your own country and to be inviting to others at the same time during the Soccer World Championship 2006. Thanks to the creativity and contacts of the German honorary consul Harald Klein in Brazil, the Catholic church agreed to advertise the upcoming year of German-Brazil-friendship by... Read more
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