Research On Religion » religion

So Long and Thanks for Listening

tonygill — Sun, 24 Jun 2018 08:00:25 +0000

After eight years, and 372 unique episodes, Dr. Anthony Gill – professor of political science at the University of Washington and Distinguished Senior Fellow at Baylor University’s Institute for Studies of Religion – retires the microphone and moves on to other pastures. In a short, ten-minute monologue Tony explains why he decided to end the show at this time and thanks Baylor’s ISR, his guests, and the listeners for tuning in. It is also noted that over the next three months, there will be a “Top Twelve” countdown of the host’s favorite episodes with brief descriptions of why that episode ranked as it did. At the very end, he shares the two most important things he learned along the way. Recorded: June 19, 2018.

Given that Tony has rarely been able to showcase his own work, below is a list of writings and other podcasts related to the academic work that he does.

Robert Nelson on Environmentalism as Religion

tonygill — Mon, 21 May 2012 08:00:29 +0000

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Can environmentalism be considered a religion? And if so, what are the implications for the separation of church and state when it comes to the contemporary environmentalist agenda? Prof. Robert H. Nelson, professor of public policy in the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland and a Senior Fellow at The Independent Institute, answers these questions in a fascinating interview that is a bit different than our normal fare. After Bob details his background working for the US Department of the Interior and how he came to write about environmentalism as a religion, we engage in a debate about what constitutes “religion.” Tony presses Prof. Nelson about the issue of whether or not a “religion” requires a transcendental being to be truly a religion, a characteristic that Bob doesn’t see as necessary. Our discussion covers how other secular ideologies, such as Marxism, can be construed as religions. We then begin to look at why environmentalism qualifies as a theology, documenting the Christian origins of the modern ecology movement. We review a number of the important figures in the environmental movement — including Henry David Thoreau, Aldo Leopold, David Brower, Rachel Carson, and Paul Ehrlich — and how some of these individuals (particularly Thoreau and Leopold) overlayed a moral and spiritual ethos over the natural environment giving it a different status than how economist of the past viewed it as a set of natural resources to be developed. Through the course of this discussion, Prof. Nelson discusses how environmentalist thinking develops ideas about creation, “end times” (often apocalyptic), and various rituals and sins that the movement has created. We conclude by looking an interesting argument Prof. Nelson has made about the separation of church and state and how it applies to the environmental movement. To the extent that environmentalism is a religion, what is the role of proselytization in schools and the state ownership of public lands that may be thought of as “holy shrines.” Recorded: May 7, 2012.

Justin Barrett on the Naturalness of Religious Belief

tonygill — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 08:00:52 +0000

Do human beings have an innate tendency to believe in God or the supernatural? Or are we merely “blank slates” at birth, only later to be filled with religious beliefs by our cultural institutions? And to what extent is “theology” natural or unnatural to the human mind? Dr. Justin Barrett, a cognitive psychologist at Fuller Theological Seminary (Pasadena, CA), addresses these issues and presents the surprising results from a number of experiments conducted on small children meant to sort out whether religion is natural or learned. Although the science of cognition includes some difficult jargon, Dr. Barrett is remarkably adept at using analogies and explaining concepts and theories in a way that anyone can understand. We begin by defining religion and Prof. Barrett indicates that by that term his is primarily thinking about religious belief and some of the basic actions that follow from that belief. He is not referring to the institutional scaffolding that we usually associate with “church” or “denomination.” Our discussion then follows to the definition of what it means to have a belief or behavior be “natural.” He covers six conditions that psychologists frequently use to define something as “natural” or “innate” to humans, and we talk about how things such as language, music, and walking satisfy these criteria. We then cover some broad categories of beliefs and behaviors that cognitive psychologists often consider to be “natural,” such as our “naive understanding of physics” (i.e., how objects move), how we detect conscious agents in our environment, and our theory of mind. Religion then becomes our topic of focus and Justin shows how very young children exhibit beliefs in the supernatural that build upon many of these criteria and categories. Along the way, he highlights a number of experiments conducted on infants and toddlers that demonstrate that religion does indeed appear to be something that comes natural to humans, and that our understanding of it is only tamped down later in life. We then turn to the issue of theology, a structured explanation of the supernatural that requires “unnatural” practice and the development of expertise. Prof. Barrett makes clear that the “unnatural” aspect of theology does not mean that theology is inherently “bad,” just that it requires a broader institutional and cultural context to help us develop and learn these concepts. We do, though, discuss what happens when theology often leads in directions that are counterintuitive to our natural religious beliefs, and how that can have potentially important social effects. Tony suggests that this might be an underlying cause for many of the schisms that we see in religious history; when theologies develop to a point that seem to contradict our natural inclinations about the supernatural people will often seek to get back to the “fundamentals.” Prof. Barrett points to scholarship done by other researchers on “theological incorrectnes” and “the tragedy of the theologian.” All told, this is a fascinating discussion that has important implications for our understanding of whether or not the world is becoming more secular. Recorded: October 6, 2011.