The Neurosciences of Religion: Meditation, Entheogens, Mysticism
Religion is a complex neurocognitive experience that includes rituals, social groups, and other dimensions not easily replicated in a lab or isolated in individual human minds.
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The New Sciences of Religion: Outside In and Bottom Up
What is thought to be on the inside of religion and what is thought to be outside is something we should continually question. We need to push on these boundaries.
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Sleepless in Tehran
Through Metanexus Institute, I had helped to organize a delegation of Western scholars to participate in this International Congress on Religion and Science. This was the first conference of its kind to be held in the Islamic Republic of Iran.
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Biocultural Evolution in the 21st Century
When we talk about biocultural evolution in the 21st century, my bet is that religion broadly understood will take center stage as the most important and unpredictable variable for better or worse.
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Human Creativity: Expanding Complexity and Evolutionary Discontinuities
Examining human creativity within the context of natural history and cultural evolution.
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Photographic Images on Handmade Paper
Artist Statement I am a photographer and papermaker. I have been immersed in the complexities of handmade paper for many years, exploring the unique structural and textural qualities of the material. Incorporating photography into my work by printing directly onto the handmade paper opens an entirely new realm of expression for me. I now use…
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Avoiding Babel: Including the Scientist in the Judaism and Science Dialogue
In the early days, after the great flood that destroyed the whole world and everything upon it, a king named Nimrod ruled over all the people. And Nimrod, perhaps through his own arrogance, or perhaps from unsanctioned curiosity, led his people in constructing a tower to reach into heaven. Because the people all spoke one…
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More than Cinematic Entertainment in Three Dimensions: Thoughts Provoked by James Cameron’s Avatar
Like millions of others I succumb to peer pressure when it comes to seeing movies: Not just the media and reviews, but a goodly number of friends exert subtle pressure on me to see the movies I decide to see, and Avatar was no exception. I did not regret the three hours of my life,…
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Serenity Prayers: Theme and Variation on Life’s Tough Judgment Calls
I’m a Taowinist, a cross between a Taoist and a Darwinist. I remember the night I realized it. I was reading Alan Watts on Taoism and this sentence jumped out at me: The lifestyle of one who follows the Tao must be thought of as a form of intelligence. That is, knowing the patterns, structures,…
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Berlusconi’s Ego-Land
“Nothing would count as a fulfillment in a world in which literally nothing is important but self-fulfillment.” —Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self One of the less positive exports of American popular culture is the penchant, especially on the part of the very young (say between the ages of 18 and 30), for a sort…