Category: religion evolution cognition

Rainy and cool in Woods Hole


It’s rainy and cool outside here in Woods Hole this morning. In homage to Andrew Sullivan’s blog feature “the view out your window“, I’m posting the view out my window this morning. This was taken with my macbook’s built in i-sight camera which I’m finally learning how to use to take photos.

Yesterday Lynn Margulis gave a spectacular talk about the evolution of eukariotic cells. You can read a bit about her theory here. She also was in town for a book signing and reading from her fiction book, “Luminous Fish”, at the local book store.

I had dinner yesterday evening with Dr. Sonia Gasparini, who is here this summer as a Grass Faculty Fellow. She is working on Layer V entorhinal cortex cells–their dendrites are very different from the pyramids of CA3 and CA1 hippocampus. Of course the whole story of “grid cells” has made entorhinal cortex a very interesting area of the brain.

Jim

Religion and Evolution in the NY Times

Robin Henig’s piece from yesterday’s Sunday NYT magazine.

Money quote:

Which is the better biological explanation for a belief in God — evolutionary adaptation or neurological accident? Is there something about the cognitive functioning of humans that makes us receptive to belief in a supernatural deity? And if scientists are able to explain God, what then? Is explaining religion the same thing as explaining it away? Are the nonbelievers right, and is religion at its core an empty undertaking, a misdirection, a vestigial artifact of a primitive mind? Or are the believers right, and does the fact that we have the mental capacities for discerning God suggest that it was God who put them there?

In short, are we hard-wired to believe in God? And if we are, how and why did that happen?

Jim