Category Archives: Religion

Martin Nowak to lecture on the compatibility of god and the evolutionary process

Posted on March 16, 2013 by Chris Jensen

College of the Holy Cross “Harvard Scientist to Lecture at Holy Cross on God and Evolution” It is amazing to hear someone like Nowak say “God uses evolution to unfold the living world around us”. This is radical stuff for … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Cooperation, Evolution, Religion | Tagged | Leave a comment

Is selective rejection of science really a problem?

Posted on January 18, 2013 by Chris Jensen

In a recent short opinion piece (Scientific American “Creation, Evolution and Indisputable Facts“), Jacob Tanenbaum argues that selectively rejecting evolutionary biology is dangerous to the scientific culture of America. He rightly points out that our populace does not reject science … Continue reading →

Posted in A Major Post, Adaptation, Altruism, Articles, Belief, Cooperation, Evolution, Gene-Culture Coevolution, Human Evolution, Human Uniqueness, Religion, System Stability | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Lee Alan Dugatkin blesses Slate with a piece on Kropotkin

Posted on October 31, 2012 by Chris Jensen

Slate “The Russian Anarchist Prince Who Challenged Evolution” I really appreciate the fact that Dugatkin uses Kropotkin to bring to light that Darwinian evolution has been — even in the time and work of Darwin — a process that was … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Altruism, Articles, Behavior, Biography, Coevolution, Competition, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Evolution, Mutualism, Political Science, Predation, Religion, Taiga (Boreal Forest), Tundra, Web | Leave a comment

Michael Ruse on James Lovelock’s Gaia of 2012

Posted on October 24, 2012 by Chris Jensen

The Chronicle of Higher Education “Saving Gaia From the Greens“

Posted in A Minor Post, Anthropogenic Change, Articles, Biography, Climate Change, Ecological Modeling, Ecosystem Ecology, Ecosystem Services, Religion, Survival, Sustainability | Leave a comment

David Sloan Wilson on Ayn Rand and the delusion of a world without tradeoffs

Posted on October 10, 2012 by Chris Jensen

The Huffington Post “Ayn Rand and Modern Politics” What I really appreciate about this post is its very simple brand of analysis. It asks a simple question and employs a clear methodology to objectively understand a phenomenon (in this case, … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Behavior, Belief, Carrying Capacity, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Ethics, Game Theory, Philosophy, Political Science, Psychology, Religion, Social Norms, System Stability, Web | Leave a comment

Can neuroeconomics help economics become a real science?

Posted on October 6, 2012 by Chris Jensen

The Chronicle of Higher Education “The Marketplace in Your Brain” I think that this article suggests that much of economics is not much of a science. Faced with new information, mainstream economics has failed to update its models of how … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Belief, Economics, Emotion, Evolutionary Psychology, Game Theory, Neuroscience, Psychological Adaptation, Psychology, Religion, Social Networks, Social Norms | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

What’s ironic is that the creationists do not realize that we evolutionists might be trying to understand their success

Posted on September 20, 2012 by Chris Jensen

CreationRevolution “If Morality Evolved, Is It Righteous?” It is striking how this reaction lacks any self-consciousness. Research like that referred to in this post is a potential means of understanding how religions and their particular constructed righteousness (in other words … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Altruism, Cooperation, Creationism, Cultural Evolution, Game Theory, Punishment, Web | Leave a comment

“School of Life” acknowledges the values in religion worth preserving

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Chris Jensen

On Being “Alain de Botton on a School of Life for Atheists” Religion for Atheists What I find very interesting about this philosopher’s approach are his implicit memetic assumptions: that religions have nested within their complex cultural structure extractable “ways of … Continue reading →

Posted in A Minor Post, Altruism, Behavior, Belief, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Evolutionary Psychology, Memetic Fitness, Philosophy, Radio & Podcasts, Religion | Leave a comment

Understanding the role of the Templeton Foundation in funding evolutionary biology research

Posted on June 22, 2012 by Chris Jensen

Back in March, David Barash used his regular column in the Chronicle of Higher Education to unveil “The Truth about the Temple of Templeton“. Reacting to an increasingly-large funding stream coming out of the Templeton Foundation, Barash questions whether receiving money … Continue reading →

Posted in A Major Post, Articles, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Economics, Evolution, Grants & Funding, Group Selection, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Religion | Leave a comment

Martin Nowak and Roger Highfield’s “SuperCooperators”

Posted on November 3, 2011 by Chris Jensen

Martin Nowak has accomplished a lot for a mid-career scientist. His theoretical work exploring how cooperation evolves has illuminated the importance of a great number of evolutionary mechanisms. He has also been unafraid to tackle real-life problems of cooperation, including … Continue reading →

Posted in Altruism, Books, Cooperation, Cultural Evolution, Ethics, Evolutionary Modeling, Game Theory, Group Selection, History, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Kin Selection, Language Evolution, Multilevel Selection, Mutualism, Punishment, Reciprocity, Religion, Superorganisms, Sustainability | Tagged , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Naturalistic Fallacy: 1, Sam Harris: 0

Posted on September 15, 2011 by Chris Jensen

For those who don’t know Sam Harris, he is a rather famous critic of theism who often invokes science and broad rationalism in his arguments for the abandonment of organized religion. Along with Christopher Hitchens, Daniel Dennett, and Richard Dawkins … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Evolution, Evolutionary Psychology, Human Evolution, Human Nature, Memetic Fitness, Multilevel Selection, Philosophy, Radio & Podcasts, Religion, Talks & Seminars, Web | Tagged , , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Make Every Day Darwin Day, Minus the Darwin

Posted on February 12, 2011 by Chris Jensen

Today is the day widely celebrated as Darwin Day. Two hundred and two years ago, Charles Darwin was born, and many evolution enthusiasts hold rallies and teach-ins to celebrate this anniversary every year. And while my role as a college … Continue reading →

Posted in Belief, Evolution, Evolution Education, Public Outreach, Religion, Teaching | Leave a comment

Greg Graffin on The Takeaway

Posted on November 15, 2010 by Chris Jensen

Back in the early 1990’s, I could be found skateboarding around the campus of Pomona College. As I rolled my way from the dining hall to those eight o’clock classes in Chemistry that served to weed out potential Biology majors … Continue reading →

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NPR is all up in evolution

Posted on August 30, 2010 by Chris Jensen

It is kind of amazing how much evolution has found its way into the news of late. National Public Radio usually has pretty good science coverage via Talk of the Nation Science Friday, but lately they have been providing some … Continue reading →

Posted in Cultural Evolution, Evolution, Human Evolution, Psychological Adaptation, Radio & Podcasts, Religion, Reviews | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Darwin’s Cathedral versus The God Delusion

Posted on June 10, 2010 by Chris Jensen

  Awhile back I read Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion and more recently I finished David Sloan Wilson’s Darwin’s Cathedral. Both books provide a view on religion from the perspective of a prominent evolutionary biologist, and the contrast between these … Continue reading →

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Common Ground Symposium at Columbia University

Posted on May 13, 2009 by Chris Jensen

On May 3rd and 4th I attended and participated in a public symposium at Columbia University entitled “Science and Religion in Dialogue for a Sustainable Future”. The symposium, co-sponsored by Columbia’s Center for the Study of Science and Religion and … Continue reading →

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