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For decades, the Russian population is declining due to low birth rates and (comparatively) low life expectancies. The communist regime of the Soviet Union suppressed and destroyed most religious traditions and communities - and family structures along the way. Although the Russian State recently tried to raise the fertility levels with money, there's a long way to go to stop the demographic implosion. But there's an interesting and telling exception from the perspective of evolutionary […]
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In the wake of the fruitful explosion of Evolutionary Studies of Religion, Evolutionary Studies of Atheism are making inroads, too. I was glad to be able to blog about Dominic Johnson's respective hypotheses last summer and recently about a ground-breaking paper by Ara Norenzayan and Will M. Gervais. Although we are beginning to understand the emergence and expansion of non-religious worldviews better than ever, a major question remains: Are human populations lacking any beliefs in […]
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Parental investment is an important topic in the evolution of sexes and genders throughout nature. It focusses not on purportedly "fixed" traits, but explores the contributions of parents to the wellbeing of their offspring. As the peacock is the beloved symbol of sexual selection, pointing to males competing for female choices, proponents of parental investment are emphasizing many animals with higher male contributions such as many birds right to the seahorse with "reversed" sexual roles. […]
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She was a contemporary of Charles Darwin and fought (finally successfully) for her right to study theology as he had done. She became a renowned speaker for women's rights and the abolition of slavery. She was ordained to be the first woman pastor in the USA and she married happily and became a mother of six. And as if all this wouldn't have been enough, she wrote several remarkable books on science, religion & philosophy, endorsing evolutionary theory as an... Read more
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Its name is "Religion, Brain & Behavior", it is published by Taylor & Francis - and it quickly became THE cutting-edge journal for evolutionary studies of religion! Being a member of the IBCSR (Institute for the Bio-Cultural Study of Religion), I am enjoying every issue and found lots of thoughts and data relevant to my work. But now, I got a notification that all published articles which ever appeared on RBB are free for download throughout February 2013! I mean,... Read more
