The New Sciences of Religion

An excerpt from Chapter 4 of The New Sciences of Religion: Exploring Spirituality from the Outside In and Bottom Up (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) Pages 89 – 91. Another evolutionary approach to explaining religion revives group-selection theory or, more properly, multilevel-selection theory. Selection works not just at the level of individual genes but also on networks of genes, individual phenotypes, groups

A fuller taxonomy of religious experience needs to be developed, detailed, and correlated with different brain states and cognitive theories of religion.

Recent observational studies indicate a significant, mostly positive connection between religiosity and better health, though it would be difficult to isolate what aspect of religion and spirituality plays the significant role.

The most important stories that humans tell, retell, and reframe are the ones people do not generally recognize as stories at all. These are referred to as "metanarratives." These master stories are the stuff of ideologies, religions, nationalisms, and cultures.

Today, an informed philosophy of science would also need to talk about information as a metaphysical concept.