The Psychology of Religion, Chapter 1: Introduction

Religion has been woven through my life from the beginning—Mennonite ancestors, a gentle church-going childhood, and a religious high school. Yet as I learned more about science, nature, and humanity, I moved away from the religious ideas I internalized in childhood. While spiritual traditions can be psychologically rich and culturally beautiful, I came, reluctantly at first, to the conclusion that their literal supernatural claims are not true. And despite their capacity for building community and moral leadership, religions have also caused profound harm to both individuals and society. I begin with my own history, then turn to the psychology of belief, what science teaches us about our origins, the social harms of dogma, and what is worth preserving in religion.

Growing up, I was drawn to many attractive features of religious life: the warmth of a "church family," an altruistic focus on service, and ideals of love, justice, and forgiveness, personified in a gentle, loving deity. Choral music, camp songs, and the ready-made social world of youth groups offered instant belonging.

These longings also appear outside organized religion. Magical or mystical beliefs—fate, spirits, psychic phenomena, "the universe"—can create a feeling of specialness and awe. They suggest that hidden powers might be guiding us through an often confusing and unjust world.

In this book, I aim to balance deep respect for the ways faith offers community, moral reflection, and "nonspecific" therapeutic factors—ritual, belonging, comfort, empathic attention—with a critique of dogma. Religion becomes harmful when sacred narratives are treated as facts or as rigid moral law. I have no wish to mock the faithful—many of whom I love. I want to think these matters through honestly, with the same compassion I would hope to receive in return.

Religious belief thrives on the same psychological mechanisms that make us vulnerable to misinformation or propaganda: above all, the primal pull of group allegiance. Our beliefs grow roots that interweave with our social identities. The belief system becomes a costly emblem of tribal loyalty, pushing us to selectively seek confirmatory evidence and to discount or avoid evidence to the contrary. This loyalty offers many benefits (friendship, structure, material support, safety), but at the price of intellectual narrowness. None of this is uniquely religious; it is an ordinary human tendency that religion can intensify and sanctify.

In fundamentalist communities of every tradition, the same structures that create warmth and solidarity can harden into exclusion. The conviction that one's group possesses divinely mandated truth creates pressure to treat other traditions as inferior—a recipe for arrogance that makes it harder to learn, with humility, from other cultures.

Drawing on evolutionary biology, neuroscience, history, and my clinical experience as a psychiatrist, I explore why people so readily defend spiritual beliefs and how such beliefs can both heal and wound. Understanding the natural world, from evolution to astrophysics to the brain, does not have to leave us nihilistic; I think an appreciation of science deepens our humanity. We can preserve the best ethical and communal aspects of religion without accepting its myths as literal truth.

Faith is deeply shaped by identity, and this process develops over a lifetime; accepting evidence that challenges this identity can feel like betraying one's community. So it can be tempting to stick to the status quo within one's faith system. Yet questioning dogma can lead to a better life, for individuals and groups alike. Ironically, many sacred texts themselves warn against pride, hypocrisy, and false certainty; their best passages invite us to examine our own blind spots, and to transform ourselves for the greater good.

The two most inspiring mentors of my professional training were, as far as I could tell, equally helpful to their patients. Both were warm, kind, dedicated, and thoughtful. But they had very different belief systems, and I am sure each would have insisted that the other was mistaken. What healed, I eventually decided, was everything the two of them shared.

I will try to convince you that religion often works the same way: many of its benefits flow not from the truth of its supernatural claims, but from the gentle scaffolding—belonging, ritual, comfort, attention—that does its work whenever people gather to care for each other.


References

Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432–443. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0021212

The classic study introducing the distinction between intrinsic religiosity (faith held as an end in itself) and extrinsic religiosity (faith used as a means to belonging, comfort, or status). In its sample, extrinsically religious churchgoers showed more racial prejudice than intrinsically religious ones. The paper remains foundational for understanding how the same religious institutions can house both tolerance and bigotry.


Hall, D. L., Matz, D. C., & Wood, W. (2010). Why don't we practice what we preach? A meta-analytic review of religious racism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 126–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352179

A meta-analysis of American studies conducted since the Civil Rights Act, examining the relationship between religiosity and racial prejudice. Strong religious in-group identity was associated with derogation of racial out-groups, and religious racism was tied to underlying values of social conformity and respect for tradition. By contrast, religiosity motivated by humanitarian values was associated with racial tolerance. The findings suggest that in-group, conformity-based varieties of religious involvement—rather than faith as such—drive the association with prejudice.


Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480–498. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480

The foundational review of motivated reasoning: people tend to arrive at the conclusions they want to reach, constrained mainly by their ability to construct seemingly reasonable justifications for them. This mechanism helps explain how belief systems of all kinds—religious, political, or otherwise—are maintained in the face of contrary evidence.


Lim, C., & Putnam, R. D. (2010). Religion, social networks, and life satisfaction. American Sociological Review, 75(6), 914–933. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122410386686

Using panel data, this study found that religious people report higher life satisfaction primarily because they attend services and build friendships within their congregations; the benefit of congregational friendship depended on the presence of a strong religious identity. Private or subjective aspects of religiosity, such as belief itself, showed little independent effect once attendance and congregational friendship were taken into account. Notably, frequent attenders with no friends in their congregation reported lower life satisfaction than others. The well-being benefits of religion appear to come mainly from community and belonging; belief itself contributed little once these were accounted for.


Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175

An encyclopedic review of confirmation bias—the tendency to seek, interpret, and remember information in ways that support pre-existing beliefs—documented across science, medicine, law, and everyday judgment. The review establishes confirmation bias as a universal feature of human cognition, as much at home in secular reasoning as in religious belief.


Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big Gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton University Press.

A book-length argument that belief in "Big Gods"—moralizing, omniscient, punitive deities—helped human societies scale cooperation beyond small face-to-face groups, by making people feel watched and accountable even among strangers. One of the strongest scholarly cases that religion played a constructive role in building large, complex societies, and a reminder that a belief can do constructive work without being literally true.


Sosis, R., & Alcorta, C. (2003). Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12(6), 264–274. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.10120

A review of the evolutionary "costly signaling" theory of religion: demanding rituals, taboos, and sacrifices function as hard-to-fake signals of commitment and loyalty to a group and its moral code. Because costly displays are difficult to counterfeit, they promote trust and cooperation among believers—helping to explain why religions so often require sacrifice from their members, and why those requirements strengthen rather than weaken group bonds.


Sosis, R., & Bressler, E. R. (2003). Cooperation and commune longevity: A test of the costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-Cultural Research, 37(2), 211–239. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397103037002003

An empirical test of costly signaling theory using historical data on eighty-three nineteenth-century American communes. Religious communes that imposed costlier requirements on their members survived longer; secular communes showed no such effect. Sacrifice appears to be functional: it binds groups together and improves their durability.


Van Bavel, J. J., & Pereira, A. (2018). The partisan brain: An identity-based model of political belief. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(3), 213–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.01.004

A review proposing an identity-based model of belief, showing how identification with a group can bias information processing—altering reasoning, memory, implicit evaluation, and even perception—such that people may place group loyalty above accuracy, and even above truth. Although focused on political partisanship, the model describes general mechanisms of identity-protective cognition that apply equally well to religious belief.

Contents | Chapter 2 →

Reflections on Pandemic Management

During the pandemic I wrote a lot, in terms of analysis and encouragement of public health measures.  Some of my contributions were on this Blog, others were on Twitter.  To this day, I think that the measures taken to manage the pandemic were for the most part necessary and successful, for example restricted activity, masking, and vaccine policy.  

The COVID vaccines in particular have been one of the great achievements in the history of medicine.  

But here are some ideas about ways I think it could have been done better: in sharing this I know I run the risk of dabbling into territory that many would consider outside my lane of expertise.  That was a constant frustration for public health experts during the pandemic.  

However, I was conscious all the way through the pandemic that we did not adequately use the most powerful tool available in science and medicine to evaluate the effectiveness and optimize the efficiency of an intervention: the Randomized Controlled Trial.   

And also in dealing with people who were extremely resistant to adopting mandated restrictions or vaccines, there could have been a way to manage this situation that would have helped rapidly gather much better data about COVID itself, protect the population, while also appeasing people who did not want to get vaccinated or follow restrictions.  

Randomized Controlled Studies (or "Randomized Controlled Trials -- RCTs") 

There were many RCTs during the pandemic, but in my opinion there could have been much more done here, in almost every stage, and there could have been massive public investment to get this done, which subsequently could have saved billions of dollars of economic loss, in addition to saving lives.  

For example, it was very clear from basic science knowledge that masking was valuable to reduce viral contagion.  When some people raised the idea of doing more RCTs on masking, it was met with some resistance, as though we were wasting everyone's time in a dangerous way.  Some used a comparison with doing an RCT of using parachutes when jumping out of an airplane -- obviously this would be recklessly inappropriate, and the entire placebo group would die!  Masks, like parachutes, are obviously effective, and mask proponents made a reasonable case that randomizing people such that a placebo group would not get masks would be needlessly dangerous.  But an RCT does not require that there be a "placebo" wing!  It only requires that the study be randomized to compare one treatment with another.  To follow the parachute analogy, it could be to randomize people jumping out of an airplane to receive one of two different types of parachutes, each of which an accepted standard; or for them to use two different timings for releasing parachutes, if each of these was also within an accepted standard.   

In the case of masks, there could have been RCTs of using different types of masks (e.g. procedure vs. N95), different timings of masking (indoor only vs continuous outside the home), or different replacement times for masks (e.g. re-using N95 masks for days vs replacing them every use), or different N95 use details (e.g. receiving formal instruction on technique vs. not).  And early in the pandemic there was an N95 shortage.  One of the ways to deal with this could have been to randomly distribute the timing of the N95 supply, so that some entire communities would receive an adequate supply first.  Then the entire community would use N95s while adjacent communities would temporarily make do with other types of masks.  Then the disease prevalence rates and hospital admission rates could have been compared between adjacent communities.  This type of design could have been tremendously valuable, since mask use has not only an individual benefit for infection control, but has a collective impact, akin mathematically to the effect of vaccines -- if everyone in the population has a modestly reduced probability of infection, then it could translate to a massive reduction in community prevalence.  If such a study had shown reduced infection and hospitalization rates in the better masked areas, it could have propelled a much more urgent and timely effort to manufacture better masks for everyone, and in the medium term the whole community could have had better access to N95s, saving thousands of lives.   But since such studies were lacking, there was enough doubt about mask effectiveness or effect size to delay the massive investment needed to increase mask production.  

When RCTs are done, it does not settle questions once and for all: in good science, we are always repeating, tweaking, and refining.  New RCTs would have to be done after the first ones, with different details being looked at, or simply for replication.  

One type of mask use behaviour which should have been better guided by evidence, is the use of masks outdoors.  I still see many people outside with their masks, or people wearing them in their cars on the way to work.  It was pretty clear from the ventilation evidence that outdoor mask use was very likely unnecessary, unless one were in very close proximity to crowds, or doing a lot of talking up close.  Perhaps masks would still be needed in playgrounds etc. but certainly not for walks at the beach alone or with just a few people close to you.  

Similarly, RCTs could have been done on ventilation control in buildings.  The basic science on ventilation was one of the most important and underappreciated areas of science during the pandemic.  There was a wonderful group of engineers who had done great work in this area.  Ventilation improvement was also a totally non-controversial intervention:  regardless of one's views about masks or vaccines or restrictions etc., I think everybody would welcome the idea of having better fresh air inside our homes and workplaces.  Ventilation improvements involved air filtration (such as with HEPA or MERV-13 HVAC filters) but also increased fresh air replacement rates.   But the engineers again used the parachute analogy when there were challenges to do RCTs, arguing that their work was established basic science, which didn't need to be tested in an RCT.  But once again, if RCTs had been done, of whole communities which made ventilation improvements, vs communities which did not, we could have much more quickly found a "signal" of improved infection control, and then made much more rapid investments in ventilation improvement technology for everyone.  

In all of these studies, the data to gather should always have been not only rates of infection, but also most importantly rates of severe disease.  Some interventions such as masks arguably could cause a reduction in infection rate, but perhaps in cases of people getting infected despite mask use, they would have inhaled a smaller inoculum, and possibly could subsequently have developed milder disease, since the immune system would have had a little bit more time to respond to the virus before getting overwhelmed.  The question of whether inoculum size impacts disease severity is yet another one which I don't think is well-enough answered by the research.  

The Covid Hotel 

The "COVID hotel" idea was something I proposed early on as a thought experiment at the very least, and there was at least one other scientist in the US who shared this idea as well... but it was received very coldly by experts--when I gently suggested it I got the sense that they thought it was scandalously inappropriate or unethical.  But this idea could have saved thousands of lives, and could have helped gather optimized, crystal-clear data about COVID in terms of the mechanism of transmission, the effectiveness of masks, the impact of ventilation, etc.  This information could have been obtained within a few months, and then could have helped focus optimal interventions with much better clarity and urgency, and to mobilize public investments in such things as masks etc. much sooner.   

Here's the idea: if people refused to be vaccinated, or insisted on having unrestricted freedoms, instead of punishing them using the justice system, they could instead opt to check into a "covid hotel" in which they would choose, with informed consent about risks, to be deliberately infected with COVID under controlled conditions, with optimal medical support available.  Then they would stay in the hotel for a few weeks under quarantine until they were no longer infectious.  Upon checking out, they would have a much lower risk of spreading COVID--the risk would be comparable to a person who had been vaccinated.  In this environment, there could be meticulously controlled experiments to determine if COVID could be transmitted through an airborne route (perhaps all the time, perhaps only in some cases of "superspreaders" etc.), or through a surface contamination route (after all this time, it is not crystal clear that surface contamination was ever a major route of spread).  And there could have been masking studies in this environment to determine if masks (including styles of mask usage and mask type such as N95 vs procedure masks, as well as the proportion of people wearing masks,  etc.) reduced the likelihood of contagion, or reduced the ensuing severity of disease (since the masks even if they didn't prevent infection might at least reduce the inoculum size).  Similarly there could have been meticulous ventilation control studies, to see if improved ventilation reduced contagion.  

In this environment, participants could even be offered to choose modalities of treatment of their choice, delivered by their practitioner of choice. They could try the "alternative treatments" in vogue if they wished, or opt for standard medical care.  This way, there could have been much more rapid evidence to establish the impact of these alternative treatments (all of these alternative remedies have been utterly disproven, but this could have happened much more quickly and persuasively in the "COVID hotel" environment).  

Some of the benefits of this idea would have been much, much better quality data about mask effectiveness, mode of contagion, effectiveness of ventilation improvement, etc.  And there would have been much less spreading of COVID to vulnerable people by people who refused to adhere to public health guidelines.  And there would have been much less upset from people who wanted more freedoms.  In fact these people, instead of being vilified, could have felt like true heroes, even from a scientific point of view.  The cost of this, of course, would have been that people who chose the "COVID hotel" route would have been much more likely to die, or to have severe long-term consequences of COVID.  But this would have been their choice, and if they didn't check into the COVID hotel, they would have subjected themselves to the same risk in the community, with less medical support and therefore an even higher likelihood of medical harm, and all the while they would have spread COVID to many more people, without contributing anything useful to the world's knowledge about the disease.   There are many other examples in life of people who are willing do risky activities, following informed consent: for example, joining the military, the fire department, or doing risky sports such as hang gliding.  

Animal Studies

There were animal studies during COVID.  It's a sensitive topic, since it is important to respect the rights of animals.  But COVID affected the animal world as well, and the research about contagion would have led to benefit for not only human populations but animals as well.  One very particular type of animal study that was never done well enough was to use an animal model to demonstrate spreading modality.  For example, the ventilation outflow from hospital rooms with human COVID patients could have been pumped into an animal enclosure of susceptible animals.  If these animals developed COVID it would have been tremendously strong evidence for airborne transmission in humans.  If, in a follow-up experiment, the same ventilation pipe passed through a HEPA filter first, and then into the animal enclosure, and if these animals did not contract COVID, it would have been incredibly powerful evidence that a simple filtration technique could prevent contagion.   If animals were simply allowed to visit hospital rooms where COVID patients had spent a few days, but who had left, and where the air in these rooms had been replaced using ventilation, then it could have helped determine if surface contamination unequivocally could cause COVID spreading.  It is quite possible that surface spreading was never a major problem, while airborne spreading was a huge problem, hence efforts would have been directed towards ventilation rather than as much surface cleaning.  But we would have needed the research to prove this.  

Vaccine / Restriction Timing

Restrictions were deployed in the pandemic quite wisely, particularly with a view to prevent the nightmare of ICU and hospitalization overflow.  For some individuals, going beyond mandates, they voluntarily maintained restrictions for months or years following vaccination.  One interesting study issue could have been to randomize people to maintain strict restrictions after vaccination for a long period of time, vs. ending restrictions for those people starting about 4 weeks after each vaccination.  This would have caused the unrestricted individuals to have greater exposure to ambient circulating COVID strains, but this would have occurred in the context of good immunity.  As the vaccine strains kept changing, the vaccinated people would continue having new exposures with new strains, and especially as 3-6 months passed after their vaccines, they most likely would have had some mostly mild cases of COVID along the way.  But I wonder if this process would have in the long term led to improved, robust immunity to multiple strains, with the same or lower long-term health risk, while also improving community freedoms, compared to the situation of maintaining continuous long-term restricted behaviour.  In a sense, this idea would suggest that the vaccine and annual boosters would be the primary preventative defense, but then exposures to the ambient COVID strains in the community would subsequently act as "boosters" for previously vaccinated people, and in the long term (measured over 3-5 years or more) lead to equivalent or better health outcomes, with fewer restrictions needed.  Conversely, the studies might instead show that maintaining more restrictions over the longer term would have led to better long-term outcomes.  We can't know for sure, since the studies were never done.

Unfortunately, in the aftermath of the pandemic, there has been increased polarization in the world about public health measures of all types.  We are seeing decreased rates of vaccination against other diseases, and we are seeing a return of various diseases which had previously been nearly eradicated, such as measles.  Just as with Covid, most people who get these diseases will recover ok, but there will be needless cases of severe disease and death, including among young children.  I hope that the field of public health can work hard on the sociopolitical aspects of their profession as well as the epidemiological parts.  But I also wish that some of the best scientific tools, such as RCTs, could be done much more quickly and on a much larger scale than what we saw during the worst years of COVID.  

The Harms of Social Media

 Social media is a miraculous invention:  a way to stay in touch with friends and family, to share thoughts and pictures and videos and common interests, at any moment with perfect convenience, literally with the push of a button (actually, even the force of pushing a button is not actually required, it's just touching a piece of glass!).  

It is an electronic extension of ancient modes of human communication: instead of sharing stories and starting conversations around a campfire with a group of fellow hunter-gatherers or villagers, we have an electronic campfire, which allows 24/7 contact with almost everyone in the whole world.  

Human interaction and communication is a need, and our brains are designed to be very sensitive to social stimuli.  

There are many benefits of using social media, but it is in my opinion very harmful, both on an individual level and as a national or worldwide community.  

Social media companies of course want you to spend more time on their apps.  The algorithms are designed to feed you information that would interest you more, and keep you looking for longer.  But this isn't necessarily good or healthy!  It's the same mechanism that feeds addiction or any unhealthy habit.  It's like candy for the brain.  The algorithms are not designed to give balanced information, or to help people avoid getting sucked into rabbit holes of misinformation, or to stay healthy, or to foster harmony in communities, they are simply designed to optimize time spent on the apps.  

So people are spending huge amounts of time surfing on social media or other scrolling information sites.  "Doomscrolling" is a very common activity.  For children, there are clear psychological harms--Jonathan Haidt's latest book "The Anxious Generation" is a good place to start reviewing the data on this.  Especially for children, the social comparison that is fed by social media is almost guaranteed to at once absorb attention, but also make people feel bad about themselves.  This could result in an increased rate in mental illnesses such as depression and anxiety disorders.  

And there are secondary costs, as Haidt has also shown:  every hour spent on an app means one less hour doing some other healthy or meaningful human activity, such as playing outside, going for a walk, doing a hobby, studying, conversing with friends in person, or reading a book.  App use fosters both psychological harm and damage to physical health as well, by reducing the amount of exercise we're getting, sometimes interfering with sleep (people are often up late at night looking at their phones; aside from the psychological component driving this, the bright light from the screens further interferes with normal sleep).   

I spent a few years using Twitter.  I am thankful that I stopped using it by the time it had changed names a few years ago.  There were many positives of Twitter for me, professionally:  it was a way to stay informed about the ideas and research of numerous experts in various fields of interest, and to hear their ideas instantaneously, rather than waiting for journal articles to come out (sometimes years later).  At times one could interact directly with the experts.  And one could add on other peripheral or hobby interests, and just feel better informed every day.  During the pandemic I felt Twitter was a good way both to follow news of critical matters daily, but also to contribute a public message as a professional.  

But I ended up spending more and more time on Twitter.  Even during a hike outside, I would find myself pulling out my phone and checking.  Hours were spent on the app that could have been spent reading a book or a journal or a newspaper, or doing some fun activity.  And as I discovered over time, many of the interactions on Twitter were frustrating -- often you couldn't really have a conversation with people.  It was rare for an expert to actually interact with you.   The app created an illusion of connectivity, while very little was actually there.  The one advantage it did have was convenience, and efficiency in terms of cultivating a community of like-minded peers.  Such a community can sometimes be useful, but at worst this feeds the worst tendencies in society, of polarization and division.  

From a psychiatric point of view, I believe it is important to assess internet and social media use.  It should be an essential component of any psychiatric history.  

Consideration should always be given to weaning from social media, to try a few months entirely without it.  You may experience "withdrawal" from it, but after this passes you may feel more free.  If you fear that you'll become less informed, remind yourself that you can just read magazines or newspapers once a week, or once a month, and most likely remain as informed, or even more, compared to doomscrolling.  

On a societal level, I understand that one of the principles at play here is freedom of speech.  If governments were to regulate social media companies this would be seen as interfering with freedoms.  But if we consider that social media and many other internet sites are analogous to addictive products, such as cigarettes or alcohol, maybe we could increase the amount of regulation about how these products are marketed or accessed, especially to children.  

One of Haidt's ideas is to insist that children in school should not be allowed to have their phones during school hours.  I think this is very good idea.  Of course, modern education often makes use of electronic media, but this could be provided in schools using other devices that would not allow kids to be surfing social media during their classroom hours.  

This idea could be extended into adult life, to invite people to set their phones aside much more often.  

Grocery Shopping & Mental Health

 Good nutrition is essential for physical and mental health.  

But changing one's diet is probably not going to cure depression or make your anxiety go away.  In fact, I'm concerned about various trends in health care which exaggerate the effect of dietary change.  For example, there are programs run by professionals with titles such as "food as medicine" in which patients are taught about healthy dietary practices.  But the therapeutic value here is very modest, especially if compared to a well-controlled placebo condition.  It may be beneficial to have nutritional education, dietary change, and regular supportive meetings supervised by a professional, but there would be a lot of nonspecific factors involved here, including a benevolent structure, group support, empathy, and focus on general healthy lifestyle habits other than nutrition, which contribute to clinical improvements.  And sometimes these programs end up recommending various supplements or "alternative" nutritional habits which have a very questionable evidence base.  

The basics of healthy nutrition, however, are simple.  There is a lot of room for individual differences in preferences or restrictions, but the foundation of a healthy diet is vegetables (especially fresh green vegetables); fruit; nuts; whole grains and other complex carbs with high fiber; beans, lentils, and other legumes; lean protein; healthy fats such as olive oil; fish; and much less red meat than the average North American consumes.   High-sugar and simple-carb foods such as pastries, cookies, cakes, candy, etc. should be greatly reduced--often if you've reduced these a lot, you can enjoy the occasional sweet treat even more, without needing to have as much.  One should cut back on the amount of salt.  Ultraprocessed foods, such as chips, processed breakfast cereals,  instant noodles, soft drinks, and fast foods, should be avoided.  

These basics do not lead to some kind of unpleasant, spartan lifestyle, these are the foundations for a wonderful, sensually pleasing diet in which every meal can be a joy of life, with no end of variety possible, from simple snacks to daily meals to gourmet adventures.  The enjoyment of this type of diet involves not only the nutritional benefits, but also the process of shopping (for example at farmers' markets, produce shops, or berry picking) and meal preparation (in the kitchen).  These activities touch upon basic joys and skills of life that have been part of human ancestral history for thousands of years.    

When wandering through a major grocery store the other day, I was struck by how hard it can be to make healthy choices.  These stores have incredible variety.  It's easy to find all the perfect, healthy foods listed above.  But the problem is that junk food, ultraprocessed foods, candy, etc. are all marketed aggressively.  Whole rows of the grocery store are dedicated to junk food.  Shelf after shelf of chips, cookies, soft drinks, or even "fake health foods" such as sugary cereals or "vitamin water."  At the cashier, there is yet another opportunity to buy chocolate bars and other candy.  Even in the areas with healthier foods, such as the produce section or the aisles with baking products, there is often a display of some kind of ultraprocessed food or junk food on special.  Even health-oriented grocery stores such as Whole Foods feature similar marketing.   It's the same even at pharmacies which sell food products.  And even in a hospital, whether it be at the cafeteria or at vending machines, there is an endless supply of junk food.  Lunches served at schools, or food provided after sports events, often consist of pizza, burgers, and cake.  When my own children were going to elementary school, I noted the common practice of parents sending their kids to school every day with a lunch box containing a chocolate bar, a bag of chips, and either a juice box (filled with sugary fruit juice), chocolate milk, or even a Coke.  

Junk food is designed to be enjoyable to eat, so that people will buy more of it.  In this way it is comparable to addictive products such as cigarettes.  Unlike cigarettes, there are no restrictions about how they are marketed.  And the companies manufacturing these products, and the grocery stores selling them, are earning billions.   So we have a whole generation of people, including young children, who are basically addicted to junk food.  The health consequences of this include much higher rates of obesity, as well as a likely lifelong, chronic decline in physical and mental health.  Another consequence is a decline in culinary culture--many people just aren't interested in the artistry of food, if they are addicted to processed products.  

One of my interests this past year has been learning Chinese, and as part of this I like to watch Mandarin language movies and TV series -- the Chinese culinary culture has probably been the healthiest one in the world, and likely is a factor contributing to better health and longevity in this population.  But even in China it appears that ultraprocessed foods are disturbingly common.  In modern Chinese movies, we often see the characters eating pizza (it seems a common North American chain restaurant is popular there) or visiting a grocery store, the shelves stocked floor to ceiling with bags of chips and instant noodles etc.  So even in the healthiest culinary culture in the world, the bad nutritional habits of the West have crept in.  

What can be done about this?  Aside from individual education on this matter, and striving to make healthier choices, I think that public measures can help.  Other countries in the world are experimenting with having taxes on sugary foods, ultraprocessed foods, etc., and restricting marketing, especially to children.  It's a similar approach as we used to help reduce cigarette smoking in the population--it didn't require banning anything (and taking away anyone's freedom), it just required restrictions on advertising, display, marketing, and introducing a tax on the product.  Another public measure that I would love to see is a subsidy on healthy foods such as vegetables, so that everyone could afford them more easily.  This would have benefits not only for individual health and nutrition, it would also be beneficial for the environment, for farmers, and would be economically more efficient.  

Reflections on Religion: Reference List

Consolidated from the reference lists of the thirty chapters and the Conclusion of The Psychology of Religion. The bracketed numbers after each work locate the chapter or chapters where it is discussed in an annotated entry.

Al-Shamahi, E. (Host). (2025). Human [TV series]. BBC Studios; PBS. https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/series/human [Chapter 9]

Alford, J. R., Funk, C. L., & Hibbing, J. R. (2005). Are political orientations genetically transmitted? American Political Science Review, 99(2), 153–167. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0003055405051579 [Chapter 11]

Allport, G. W., & Ross, J. M. (1967). Personal religious orientation and prejudice. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 5(4), 432–443. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0021212 [Chapter 1]

Altemeyer, B. (1996). The authoritarian specter. Harvard University Press. [Chapter 20]

Anderson, B. (2006). Imagined communities: Reflections on the origin and spread of nationalism (Rev. ed.). Verso. (Original work published 1983) [Chapter 30]

Armstrong, K. (2000). The battle for God: A history of fundamentalism. Alfred A. Knopf. [Chapter 10]

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Attenborough, D. (Narrator). (2016). Planet Earth II [TV series]. BBC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_II [Chapter 9]

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Attenborough, D. (Narrator). (2023). Planet Earth III [TV series]. BBC Studios Natural History Unit. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Planet_Earth_III [Chapter 9]

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Bartkowski, J. P., Xu, X., & Levin, M. L. (2008). Religion and child development: Evidence from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study. Social Science Research, 37(1), 18–36. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssresearch.2007.02.001 [Chapter 20]

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Broockman, D. E., & Kalla, J. L. (2016). Durably reducing transphobia: A field experiment on door-to-door canvassing. Science, 352(6282), 220–224. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aad9713 [Chapter 20]

Burkert, W. (1983). Homo necans: The anthropology of ancient Greek sacrificial ritual and myth (P. Bing, Trans.). University of California Press. (Original work published 1972) [Chapter 16]

Butlin, P., Long, R., Elmoznino, E., Bengio, Y., Birch, J., Constant, A., Deane, G., Fleming, S. M., Frith, C., Ji, X., Kanai, R., Klein, C., Lindsay, G., Michel, M., Mudrik, L., Peters, M. A. K., Schwitzgebel, E., Simon, J., & VanRullen, R. (2023). Consciousness in artificial intelligence: Insights from the science of consciousness. arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2308.08708 [Chapter 27]

Calin-Jageman, R. J., & Caldwell, T. L. (2014). Replication of the superstition and performance study by Damisch, Stoberock, and Mussweiler (2010). Social Psychology, 45(3), 239–245. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000190 [Chapter 15]

Campbell, J. (1972). Myths to live by. Viking Press. [Chapter 10]

Campbell, J., & Moyers, B. (1988). The power of myth (B. S. Flowers, Ed.). Doubleday. [Chapter 10]

Chaisson, E., & McMillan, S. (2017). Astronomy today (9th ed.). Pearson. [Chapter 10]

Chalmers, D. J. (1995). Facing up to the problem of consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 2(3), 200—219. http://consc.net/papers/facing.html [Chapter 27]

Chalmers, D. J. (1996). The conscious mind: In search of a fundamental theory. Oxford University Press. [Chapter 27]

Chalmers, D. J. (2023). Could a large language model be conscious? arXiv. https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2303.07103 [Chapter 27]

Chambers, W. V., Langone, M. D., Dole, A. A., & Grice, J. W. (1994). The Group Psychological Abuse Scale: A measure of the varieties of cultic abuse. Cultic Studies Journal, 11(1), 88–112. [Chapter 29]

Choi, J.-K., & Bowles, S. (2007). The coevolution of parochial altruism and war. Science, 318(5850), 636–640. https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1144237 [Chapters 16, 30]

Christakis, N. A., & Fowler, J. H. (2009). Connected: The surprising power of our social networks and how they shape our lives. Little, Brown. [Chapter 28]

Chwe, M. S.-Y. (2001). Rational ritual: Culture, coordination, and common knowledge. Princeton University Press. [Chapter 28]

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Coates, D. D. (2010). Post-involvement difficulties experienced by former members of charismatic groups. Journal of Religion and Health, 49(3), 296–310. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10943-009-9251-0 [Chapter 29]

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Constantino, M. J., Vîslă, A., Coyne, A. E., & Boswell, J. F. (2018). A meta-analysis of the association between patients' early treatment outcome expectation and their posttreatment outcomes. Psychotherapy, 55(4), 473–485. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000169 [Chapter 12]

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Curry, O. S., Mullins, D. A., & Whitehouse, H. (2019). Is it good to cooperate? Testing the theory of morality-as-cooperation in 60 societies. Current Anthropology, 60(1), 47–69. https://doi.org/10.1086/701478 [Chapter 7]

Dagnall, N., Denovan, A., Drinkwater, K., Parker, A., & Clough, P. (2016). Toward a better understanding of the relationship between belief in the paranormal and statistical bias: The potential role of schizotypy. Frontiers in Psychology, 7, 1045. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2016.01045 [Chapter 11]

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Dawkins, R. (2004). The ancestor's tale: A pilgrimage to the dawn of life. Houghton Mifflin. [Chapter 10]

Dawkins, R. (2006). The God delusion. Bantam Press. [Chapter 10]

Dawson, L. L. (1999). When prophecy fails and faith persists: A theoretical overview. Nova Religio, 3(1), 60–82. https://gwern.net/doc/sociology/1999-dawson.pdf [Chapter 29]

de Waal, F. B. M. (2006). Primates and philosophers: How morality evolved (S. Macedo & J. Ober, Eds.). Princeton University Press. [Chapter 7]

Durkheim, É. (1995). The elementary forms of religious life (K. E. Fields, Trans.). Free Press. (Original work published 1912) [Chapter 30]

Ehrenreich, B. (2009). Bright-sided: How the relentless promotion of positive thinking has undermined America. Metropolitan Books. [Chapter 8]

Ehrman, B. D. (2005). Misquoting Jesus: The story behind who changed the Bible and why. HarperSanFrancisco. [Chapter 10]

Einstein, A. (1947, October). Open letter to the General Assembly of the United Nations. [Chapter 30]

Eisenhower, D. D. (1953, April 16). The chance for peace [Address before the American Society of Newspaper Editors]. Washington, DC. https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/documents/address-the-chance-for-peace-delivered-before-the-american-society-newspaper-editors [Chapter 30]

El-Hai, J. (2005). The lobotomist: A maverick medical genius and his tragic quest to rid the world of mental illness. John Wiley & Sons. [Chapter 4]

Elman, B. A. (2000). A cultural history of civil examinations in late imperial China. University of California Press. [Chapter 13]

Faisal, A. A., Selen, L. P. J., & Wolpert, D. M. (2008). Noise in the nervous system. Nature Reviews Neuroscience, 9(4), 292—303. https://doi.org/10.1038/nrn2258 [Chapter 27]

Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford University Press. [Chapter 14]

Festinger, L., Riecken, H. W., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. University of Minnesota Press. https://doi.org/10.1037/10030-000 [Chapters 4, 23, 29]

Finkelstein, I., & Silberman, N. A. (2001). The Bible unearthed: Archaeology's new vision of ancient Israel and the origin of its sacred texts. Free Press. [Chapter 10]

Forer, B. R. (1949). The fallacy of personal validation: A classroom demonstration of gullibility. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 44(1), 118–123. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0059240 [Chapter 5]

Foucault, M. (2007). Security, territory, population: Lectures at the Collège de France, 1977–1978 (M. Senellart, Ed.; G. Burchell, Trans.). Palgrave Macmillan. (Original lectures delivered 1978) [Chapter 17]

Frank, J. D., & Frank, J. B. (1991). Persuasion and healing: A comparative study of psychotherapy (3rd ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. [Chapters 5, Conclusion]

Franze, K., Grosche, J., Skatchkov, S. N., Schinkinger, S., Foja, C., Schild, D., Uckermann, O., Travis, K., Reichenbach, A., & Guck, J. (2007). Müller cells are living optical fibers in the vertebrate retina. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 104(20), 8287–8292. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0611180104 [Chapter 11]

Friedman, R. E. (1987). Who wrote the Bible? Summit Books. [Chapter 10]

Galanter, M. (1990). Cults and zealous self-help movements: A psychiatric perspective. American Journal of Psychiatry, 147(5), 543–551. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.147.5.543 [Chapter 29]

Galanter, M., Rabkin, R., Rabkin, J. G., & Deutsch, A. (1979). The "Moonies": A psychological study of conversion and membership in a contemporary religious sect. American Journal of Psychiatry, 136(2), 165–170. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.136.2.165 [Chapter 29]

Gebauer, J. E., Sedikides, C., Verplanken, B., & Maio, G. R. (2012). Communal narcissism. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 103(5), 854–878. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0029629 [Chapter 26]

Girard, R. (1977). Violence and the sacred (P. Gregory, Trans.). Johns Hopkins University Press. (Original work published 1972) [Chapter 16]

Goff, P. (2019). Galileo's error: Foundations for a new science of consciousness. Pantheon Books. [Chapter 27]

Goodman, F. D. (1972). Speaking in tongues: A cross-cultural study of glossolalia. University of Chicago Press. [Chapter 25]

Graham, J., Haidt, J., & Nosek, B. A. (2009). Liberals and conservatives rely on different sets of moral foundations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96(5), 1029–1046. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015141 [Chapter 11]

Grant, E. (1996). The foundations of modern science in the Middle Ages: Their religious, institutional, and intellectual contexts. Cambridge University Press. [Chapter 13]

Grant, P. R., & Grant, B. R. (2014). 40 years of evolution: Darwin's finches on Daphne Major Island.Princeton University Press. [Chapter 11]

Gross, D., & Schäfer, G. (2011). Egas Moniz (1874–1955) and the "invention" of modern psychosurgery: A historical and ethical reanalysis under special consideration of Portuguese original sources. Neurosurgical Focus, 30(2), E8. https://doi.org/10.3171/2010.10.FOCUS10214 [Chapter 4]

Grubbs, J. B., Warmke, B., Tosi, J., James, A. S., & Campbell, W. K. (2019). Moral grandstanding in public discourse: Status-seeking motives as a potential explanatory mechanism in predicting conflict. PLOS ONE, 14(10), e0223749. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0223749 [Chapter 26]

Guthrie, S. E. (1993). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford University Press. [Chapter 15]

Gómez, Á., Martínez, M., Martel, F. A., López-Rodríguez, L., Vázquez, A., Chinchilla, J., Paredes, B., Hettiarachchi, M., Hamid, N., & Swann, W. B. (2021). Why people enter and embrace violent groups. Frontiers in Psychology, 11, Article 614657. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.614657 [Chapter 29]

Hadding, C., Semb, O., Lehti, A., Fahlström, M., Sandlund, M., & DeMarinis, V. (2023). Being in-between; exploring former cult members' experiences of an acculturation process using the cultural formulation interview (DSM-5). Frontiers in Psychiatry, 14, Article 1142189. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1142189 [Chapter 29]

Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review, 108(4), 814–834. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-295X.108.4.814 [Chapter 7]

Hall, D. L., Matz, D. C., & Wood, W. (2010). Why don't we practice what we preach? A meta-analytic review of religious racism. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 14(1), 126–139. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868309352179 [Chapter 1]

Hamid, N., Pretus, C., Atran, S., Crockett, M. J., Ginges, J., Sheikh, H., Tobeña, A., Carmona, S., Gómez, A., Davis, R., & Vilarroya, O. (2019). Neuroimaging 'will to fight' for sacred values: An empirical case study with supporters of an Al Qaeda associate. Royal Society Open Science, 6(6), 181585. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.181585 [Chapter 3]

Hamilton, W. D. (1964). The genetical evolution of social behaviour. I. Journal of Theoretical Biology, 7(1), 1–16. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-5193(64)90038-4 [Chapter 16]

Hamlin, J. K., Wynn, K., & Bloom, P. (2007). Social evaluation by preverbal infants. Nature, 450(7169), 557–559. https://doi.org/10.1038/nature06288 [Chapter 15]

Hart, D. B. (2019). That all shall be saved: Heaven, hell, and universal salvation. Yale University Press. [Chapter 22]

Hawking, S. (Writer & Host). (2010). Into the universe with Stephen Hawking [TV series]. Darlow Smithson Productions. https://www.discovery.com/shows/into-the-universe-with-stephen-hawking [Chapter 9]

Hay, L. L. (1984). You can heal your life. Hay House. [Chapter 8]

Heidel, A. (1949). The Gilgamesh epic and Old Testament parallels (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. [Chapter 4]

Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent behavior. The American Journal of Psychology, 57(2), 243–259. https://doi.org/10.2307/1416950 [Chapter 15]

Hobson, J. A., & McCarley, R. W. (1977). The brain as a dream state generator: An activation-synthesis hypothesis of the dream process. American Journal of Psychiatry, 134(12), 1335–1348. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.134.12.1335 [Chapter 5]

Hyman, R. (1977). “Cold reading”: How to convince strangers that you know all about them. The Zetetic (now the Skeptical Inquirer), 1(2), 18–37. [Chapter 8]

Hájek, A. (2022). Pascal's wager. In E. N. Zalta (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2022 ed.). Stanford University. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/pascal-wager/ [Chapter 22]

Iannaccone, L. R. (1992). Sacrifice and stigma: Reducing free-riding in cults, communes, and other collectives. Journal of Political Economy, 100(2), 271–291. https://doi.org/10.1086/261818 [Chapter 29]

Institute for Economics and Peace. (2025). Global Peace Index 2025: Measuring peace in a complex world. https://www.economicsandpeace.org [Chapter 30]

Inzlicht, M., McGregor, I., Hirsh, J. B., & Nash, K. (2009). Neural markers of religious conviction. Psychological Science, 20(3), 385–392. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2009.02305.x [Chapter 3]

Irons, W. (2001). Religion as a hard-to-fake sign of commitment. In R. M. Nesse (Ed.), Evolution and the capacity for commitment. Russell Sage Foundation. [Chapter 24]

James, W. (1890). The principles of psychology (Vol. 1). Henry Holt and Company. https://psychclassics.yorku.ca/James/Principles/prin6.htm [Chapter 27]

James, W. (1902). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature. Longmans, Green. [Chapter 10]

James, W. (1956). The will to believe. In The will to believe and other essays in popular philosophy. Dover. (Original work published 1896) [Chapter 22]

Johnson, S. B., Park, H. S., Gross, C. P., & Yu, J. B. (2018). Complementary medicine, refusal of conventional cancer therapy, and survival among patients with curable cancers. JAMA Oncology, 4(10), 1375–1381. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamaoncol.2018.2487 [Chapter 12]

Kahneman, D. (2011). Thinking, fast and slow. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. [Chapter 10]

Kaptchuk, T. J., & Miller, F. G. (2015). Placebo effects in medicine. New England Journal of Medicine, 373(1), 8–9. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMp1504023 [Chapter 6]

Kapur, S. (2003). Psychosis as a state of aberrant salience: A framework linking biology, phenomenology, and pharmacology in schizophrenia. American Journal of Psychiatry, 160(1), 13–23. https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.ajp.160.1.13 [Chapter 15]

Kent, S. A. (2002). Deprogramming, exit counseling, and the decline of deprogramming. Cultic Studies Review, 1(3). [Chapter 29]

Kirkpatrick, L. A. (2005). Attachment, evolution, and the psychology of religion. Guilford Press. [Chapter 19]

Koch, C. (2019). The feeling of life itself: Why consciousness is widespread but can't be computed. MIT Press. [Chapter 27]

Koenig, L. B., McGue, M., Krueger, R. F., & Bouchard, T. J., Jr. (2005). Genetic and environmental influences on religiousness: Findings for retrospective and current religiousness ratings. Journal of Personality, 73(2), 471–488. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-6494.2005.00316.x [Chapter 11]

Kohlberg, L. (1981). Essays on moral development, Vol. 1: The philosophy of moral development. Harper & Row. [Chapter 7]

Krummenacher, P., Mohr, C., Haker, H., & Brugger, P. (2010). Dopamine, paranormal belief, and the detection of meaningful stimuli. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22(8), 1670–1681. https://doi.org/10.1162/jocn.2009.21313 [Chapter 15]

Kuhn, T. S. (1962). The structure of scientific revolutions. University of Chicago Press. [Chapter 4]

Kumar, S., Stecher, G., Suleski, M., & Hedges, S. B. (2017). TimeTree: A resource for timelines, timetrees, and divergence times. Molecular Biology and Evolution, 34(7), 1812–1819. https://doi.org/10.1093/molbev/msx116 [Chapter 11]

Kunda, Z. (1990). The case for motivated reasoning. Psychological Bulletin, 108(3), 480–498. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.108.3.480 [Chapter 1]

Kurzban, R., Tooby, J., & Cosmides, L. (2001). Can race be erased? Coalitional computation and social categorization. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98(26), 15387–15392. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.251541498 [Chapter 16]

Kvanvig, J. L. (1993). The problem of hell. Oxford University Press. [Chapter 22]

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1980). Metaphors we live by. University of Chicago Press. [Chapter 18]

Lalich, J. (2004). Bounded choice: True believers and charismatic cults. University of California Press. [Chapter 29]

Lambert, N., Chen, Y.-N., Cheng, Y.-C., Li, C.-M., Chen, G.-Y., & Nori, F. (2013). Quantum biology. Nature Physics, 9(1), 10—18. https://doi.org/10.1038/nphys2474 [Chapter 27]

Langone, M. D. (1986). Cultism and American culture. Cultic Studies Journal, 3(2). https://articles1.icsahome.com/articles/cultism-and-american-culture-langone-csj-3-2-1986 [Chapter 29]

Levack, B. P. (2016). The witch-hunt in early modern Europe(4th ed.). Routledge. [Chapter 15]

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Lewis, C. S. (1946). The great divorce. Geoffrey Bles. [Chapter 22]

Lifton, R. J. (1961). Thought reform and the psychology of totalism: A study of "brainwashing" in China. W. W. Norton. [Chapter 29]

Lim, C., & Putnam, R. D. (2010). Religion, social networks, and life satisfaction. American Sociological Review, 75(6), 914–933. https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122410386686 [Chapters 1, 3, Conclusion]

Linney, Y. M., Murray, R. M., Peters, E. R., MacDonald, A. M., Rijsdijk, F., & Sham, P. C. (2003). A quantitative genetic analysis of schizotypal personality traits. Psychological Medicine, 33(5), 803–816. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0033291703007906 [Chapter 11]

Lofland, J., & Stark, R. (1965). Becoming a world-saver: A theory of conversion to a deviant perspective. American Sociological Review, 30(6), 862–875. https://doi.org/10.2307/2090965 [Chapter 29]

Lucca, K., Yuen, F., & the ManyBabies4 Consortium. (2025). Infants' social evaluation of helpers and hinderers: A large-scale, multi-lab, coordinated replication study. Developmental Science, 28(1), e13581. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.13581 [Chapter 15]

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Mahler, M. S., Pine, F., & Bergman, A. (1975). The psychological birth of the human infant: Symbiosis and individuation.Basic Books. [Chapter 19]

Makdisi, G. (1981). The rise of colleges: Institutions of learning in Islam and the West. Edinburgh University Press. [Chapter 13]

Mangel, M., & Samaniego, F. J. (1984). Abraham Wald's work on aircraft survivability. Journal of the American Statistical Association, 79(386), 259–267. https://doi.org/10.1080/01621459.1984.10478038 [Chapter 13]

Merton, R. K. (1973). The sociology of science: Theoretical and empirical investigations (N. W. Storer, Ed.). University of Chicago Press. [Chapter 4]

Metzger, B. M., & Ehrman, B. D. (2005). The text of the New Testament: Its transmission, corruption, and restoration (4th ed.). Oxford University Press. [Chapter 7]

Miller, C. H., & Hedges, D. W. (2008). Scrupulosity disorder: An overview and introductory analysis. Journal of Anxiety Disorders, 22(6), 1042–1058. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.janxdis.2007.11.004 [Chapter 26]

Miller, G. (2009). Spent: Sex, evolution, and consumer behavior. Viking. [Chapter 10]

Miller, G. F. (2000). The mating mind: How sexual choice shaped the evolution of human nature. Doubleday. [Chapter 11]

Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? The Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435—450. https://doi.org/10.2307/2183914 [Chapter 27]

Neeson, L. (Narrator). (2001). Evolution [TV series]. WGBH/NOVA; Clear Blue Sky Productions. [Chapter 9]

Newberg, A. B., Wintering, N. A., Morgan, D., & Waldman, M. R. (2006). The measurement of regional cerebral blood flow during glossolalia: A preliminary SPECT study. Psychiatry Research: Neuroimaging, 148(1), 67–71. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pscychresns.2006.07.001 [Chapter 25]

Newberg, A., & d'Aquili, E. (2001). Why God won't go away: Brain science and the biology of belief. Ballantine Books. [Chapter 2]

Nickerson, R. S. (1998). Confirmation bias: A ubiquitous phenomenon in many guises. Review of General Psychology, 2(2), 175–220. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.2.175 [Chapter 1]

Nietzsche, F. (1967). On the genealogy of morals (W. Kaufmann & R. J. Hollingdale, Trans.). Vintage Books. (Original work published 1887) [Chapter 17]

Noll, M. A. (2006). The civil war as a theological crisis. University of North Carolina Press. [Chapter 7]

Norenzayan, A. (2013). Big Gods: How religion transformed cooperation and conflict. Princeton University Press. [Chapters 1, 4, 10]

Norris, P., & Inglehart, R. (2004). Sacred and secular: Religion and politics worldwide. Cambridge University Press. [Chapters 18, Conclusion]

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. (2021). Independent Expert on the enjoyment of human rights by persons with albinism. United Nations. https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/ie-albinism [Chapter 15]

Orton, N. C., Innes, A. M., Chudley, A. E., & Bech-Hansen, N. T. (2008). Unique disease heritage of the Dutch-German Mennonite population. American Journal of Medical Genetics Part A, 146A, 1072–1087. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/18348259 [Chapter 2]

Orwell, G. (1945). Notes on nationalism. Polemic, 1. [Chapter 30]

Pagels, E. (1995). The origin of Satan. Random House. [Chapter 19]

Pargament, K. I. (1997). The psychology of religion and coping: Theory, research, practice. Guilford Press. [Chapter 3]

Pascal, B. (1966). Pensées (A. J. Krailsheimer, Trans.). Penguin. (Original work published 1670) [Chapter 22]

Paul, G. S. (2005). Cross-national correlations of quantifiable societal health with popular religiosity and secularism in the prosperous democracies: A first look. Journal of Religion & Society, 7. (Open access) [Chapters 18, Conclusion]

Penfield, W., & Perot, P. (1963). The brain's record of auditory and visual experience: A final summary and discussion. Brain, 86(4), 595–696. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/86.4.595 [Chapter 3]

Pennycook, G., Cheyne, J. A., Seli, P., Koehler, D. J., & Fugelsang, J. A. (2012). Analytic cognitive style predicts religious and paranormal belief. Cognition, 123(3), 335–346. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2012.03.003 [Chapter 15]

Penrose, R. (1994). Shadows of the mind: A search for the missing science of consciousness. Oxford University Press. [Chapter 27]

Pew Research Center. (2022). How religion intersects with Americans' views on the environment.https://www.pewresearch.org/religion/2022/11/17/how-religion-intersects-with-americans-views-on-the-environment/ [Chapter 23]

Pew Research Center. (2025). How the global religious landscape changed from 2010 to 2020. Pew Research Center. https://doi.org/10.58094/fj71-ny11 [Chapter Conclusion]

Phelps-Roper, M. (2019). Unfollow: A memoir of loving and leaving the Westboro Baptist Church. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. [Chapters 20, 29]

Pinker, S. (2011). The better angels of our nature: Why violence has declined. Viking. [Chapters 10, 27]

Pinker, S. (2025). When everyone knows that everyone knows…: Common knowledge and the mysteries of money, power, and everyday life. Scribner. [Chapter 28]

Pinker, S., Nowak, M. A., & Lee, J. J. (2008). The logic of indirect speech. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(3), 833–838. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.0707192105 [Chapter 28]

Popper, K. R. (1963). Conjectures and refutations: The growth of scientific knowledge. Routledge & Kegan Paul. [Chapter 4]

Prentice, D. A., & Miller, D. T. (1993). Pluralistic ignorance and alcohol use on campus: Some consequences of misperceiving the social norm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64(2), 243–256. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.64.2.243 [Chapter 28]

Pretus, C., Hamid, N., Sheikh, H., Ginges, J., Tobeña, A., Davis, R., Vilarroya, O., & Atran, S. (2018). Neural and behavioral correlates of sacred values and vulnerability to violent extremism. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, Article 2462. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2018.02462 [Chapter 29]

Prum, R. O. (2017). The evolution of beauty: How Darwin's forgotten theory of mate choice shapes the animal world—and us. Doubleday. [Chapter 11]

Randi, J. (1987). The faith healers. Prometheus Books. [Chapters 8, 10]

Richardson, J. T. (1993). Definitions of cult: From sociological-technical to popular-negative. Review of Religious Research, 34(4), 348–356. https://doi.org/10.2307/3511972 [Chapter 29]

Ritchie, S. J., Wiseman, R., & French, C. C. (2012). Failing the future: Three unsuccessful attempts to replicate Bem's "retroactive facilitation of recall" effect. PLoS ONE, 7(3), e33423. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0033423 [Chapter 5]

Rizzuto, A.-M. (1979). The birth of the living God: A psychoanalytic study. University of Chicago Press. [Chapter 19]

Roberts, A. (Host). (2009). The incredible human journey [TV series]. BBC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Incredible_Human_Journey [Chapter 9]

Rosenzweig, S. (1936). Some implicit common factors in diverse methods of psychotherapy. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 6(3), 412–415. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1939-0025.1936.tb05248.x [Chapter 5]

Rosindell, J., & Harmon, L. J. (2012). OneZoom: A fractal explorer for the tree of life. PLoS Biology, 10(10), e1001406. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pbio.1001406 [Chapter 11]

Rowland, I. D. (2008). Giordano Bruno: Philosopher/heretic. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. [Chapter 13]

Russell, B. (1957). Why I am not a Christian and other essays on religion and related subjects (P. Edwards, Ed.). Simon & Schuster. [Chapter 10]

Russell, B. (1997). Is there a God? In J. G. Slater & P. Köllner (Eds.), The collected papers of Bertrand Russell: Vol. 11. Last philosophical testament, 1943–68. Routledge. (Original work written 1952) [Chapter 22]

Sagan, C. (Host). (1980). Cosmos: A personal voyage [TV series]. PBS. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Personal_Voyage [Chapter 9]

Saldaña, O., Rodríguez-Carballeira, Á., Almendros, C., & Escartín, J. (2017). Development and validation of the Psychological Abuse Experienced in Groups Scale. The European Journal of Psychology Applied to Legal Context, 9(2), 57–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ejpal.2017.01.002 [Chapter 29]

Samarin, W. J. (1972). Tongues of men and angels: The religious language of Pentecostalism. Macmillan. [Chapter 25]

Sapolsky, R. M. (2023). Determined: A science of life without free will. Penguin Press. [Chapter 10]

Searle, J. R. (1980). Minds, brains, and programs. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 3(3), 417—424. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X00005756 [Chapter 27]

Shermer, M. (2002). Why people believe weird things: Pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time (Rev. and expanded ed.). Henry Holt. [Chapter 8]

Shubin, N. (Host). (2014). Your inner fish [TV series]. Tangled Bank Studios; PBS. https://www.pbs.org/show/your-inner-fish-program [Chapter 9]

Smith, K. B., Alford, J. R., Hibbing, J. R., Martin, N. G., & Hatemi, P. K. (2017). Intuitive ethics and political orientations: Testing moral foundations as a theory of political ideology. American Journal of Political Science, 61(2), 424–437. https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12255 [Chapter 11]

Smith, M. S. (2002). The early history of God: Yahweh and the other deities in ancient Israel (2nd ed.). Eerdmans. (Original work published 1990) [Chapter 10]

Sontag, S. (1978). Illness as metaphor. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. [Chapter 8]

Sosis, R., & Alcorta, C. (2003). Signaling, solidarity, and the sacred: The evolution of religious behavior. Evolutionary Anthropology, 12(6), 264–274. https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.10120 [Chapters 1, 2, 16, 24]

Sosis, R., & Bressler, E. R. (2003). Cooperation and commune longevity: A test of the costly signaling theory of religion. Cross-Cultural Research, 37(2), 211–239. https://doi.org/10.1177/1069397103037002003 [Chapters 1, 24, 29]

Spanos, N. P., & Hewitt, E. C. (1979). Glossolalia: A test of the "trance" and psychopathology hypotheses. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 88(4), 427–434. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843x.88.4.427 [Chapter 25]

Spanos, N. P., Cross, W. P., Lepage, M., & Coristine, M. (1986). Glossolalia as learned behavior: An experimental demonstration. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 95(1), 21–23. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-843X.95.1.21 [Chapter 25]

Stark, R., & Bainbridge, W. S. (1980). Networks of faith: Interpersonal bonds and recruitment to cults and sects. American Journal of Sociology, 85(6), 1376–1395. https://doi.org/10.1086/227169 [Chapter 29]

Stewart, I. (Host). (2007). Earth: The power of the planet [TV series]. BBC. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Earth:_The_Power_of_the_Planet [Chapter 9]

Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. (2025). Trends in world military expenditure, 2024 (SIPRI Fact Sheet). https://www.sipri.org [Chapter 30]

Swayze, V. W., II. (1995). Frontal leukotomy and related psychosurgical procedures in the era before antipsychotics (1935–1954): A historical overview. American Journal of Psychiatry, 152(4), 505–515. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.152.4.505 [Chapter 4]

't Hooft, G. (2016). The cellular automaton interpretation of quantum mechanics. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-41285-6 [Chapter 27]

Tegmark, M. (2000). Importance of quantum decoherence in brain processes. Physical Review E, 61(4), 4194—4206. https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevE.61.4194 [Chapter 27]

Tellegen, A., & Atkinson, G. (1974). Openness to absorbing and self-altering experiences ("absorption"), a trait related to hypnotic susceptibility. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 83(3), 268–277. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0036681 [Chapter 15]

Three preregistered, independent attempts to reproduce the central precognition result reported by Bem (2011); all failed to find the effect (combined n = 150; combined p = .83, one-tailed). Frequently cited as an illustration of scientific self-correction and of the importance of replication before striking anomalous findings are accepted. [Chapter 5]

Tolin, D. F. (2010). Is cognitive-behavioral therapy more effective than other therapies? A meta-analytic review. Clinical Psychology Review, 30(6), 710–720. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2010.05.003 [Chapter 5]

Tosi, J., & Warmke, B. (2016). Moral grandstanding. Philosophy & Public Affairs, 44(3), 197–217. https://doi.org/10.1111/papa.12075 [Chapter 26]

Trivers, R. (2011). The folly of fools: The logic of deceit and self-deception in human life. Basic Books. [Chapters 10, 12]

Tyson, N. deG. (Host). (2014). Cosmos: A spacetime odyssey [TV series]. Fox; National Geographic. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmos:_A_Spacetime_Odyssey [Chapter 9]

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. (2023, February 21). SEC charges The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and its investment management company for disclosure failures and misstated filings(Press Release 2023-35). https://www.sec.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2023-35 [Chapter 14]

Ungerleider, J. T., & Wellisch, D. K. (1979). Coercive persuasion (brainwashing), religious cults, and deprogramming. American Journal of Psychiatry, 136(3), 279–282. https://doi.org/10.1176/ajp.136.3.279 [Chapter 29]

United Nations. (1948). Universal Declaration of Human Rights. https://www.un.org/en/about-us/universal-declaration-of-human-rights [Chapter 30]

United Nations. (2025). The Sustainable Development Goals report 2025. United Nations. [Chapter 30]

Van Bavel, J. J., & Packer, D. J. (2021). The power of us: Harnessing our shared identities to improve performance, increase cooperation, and promote social harmony. Little, Brown Spark. [Chapter 10]

Van Bavel, J. J., & Pereira, A. (2018). The partisan brain: An identity-based model of political belief. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 22(3), 213–224. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2018.01.004 [Chapter 1]

Volk, A. A., & Atkinson, J. A. (2013). Infant and child death in the human environment of evolutionary adaptation. Evolution and Human Behavior, 34(3), 182–192. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2012.11.007 [Chapter 6]

Wake, D. B. (1997). Incipient species formation in salamanders of the Ensatina complex. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 94(15), 7761–7767. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.94.15.7761 [Chapter 11]

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Wampold, B. E., & Imel, Z. E. (2015). The great psychotherapy debate: The evidence for what makes psychotherapy work (2nd ed.). Routledge. [Chapters 5, Conclusion]

Ward, C., & Voas, D. (2011). The emergence of conspirituality. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 26(1), 103–121. https://doi.org/10.1080/13537903.2011.539846 [Chapter 12]

Webster, D. M., & Kruglanski, A. W. (1994). Individual differences in need for cognitive closure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 67(6), 1049–1062. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.67.6.1049 [Chapter 26]

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Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of religiosity: A cognitive theory of religious transmission. AltaMira Press. [Chapters 10, 29]

Whitehouse, H. (2018). Dying for the group: Towards a general theory of extreme self-sacrifice. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 41, e192. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0140525X18000249 [Chapter 3]

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Wiseman, R. (2011). Paranormality: Why we see what isn't there. Macmillan. [Chapter 10]

Wootton, D. (2006). Bad medicine: Doctors doing harm since Hippocrates. Oxford University Press. [Chapter 4]

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Zakharin, M., & Bates, T. C. (2023). Testing heritability of moral foundations: Common pathway models support strong heritability for the five moral foundations. European Journal of Personality, 37(4), 485–497. https://doi.org/10.1177/08902070221103957 [Chapter 11]

Zeller, B. E. (2014). Heaven's Gate: America's UFO religion. New York University Press. [Chapter 23]

Zimbardo, P. G., & Hartley, C. F. (1985). Cults go to high school: A theoretical and empirical analysis of the initial stage in the recruitment process. Cultic Studies Journal, 2(1), 91–148. [Chapter 29]

Zimmer, C. (2018). She has her mother's laugh: The powers, perversions, and potential of heredity. Dutton. [Chapter 10]

Zuckerman, M., Silberman, J., & Hall, J. A. (2013). The relation between intelligence and religiosity: A meta-analysis and some proposed explanations. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 17(4), 325–354. https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868313497266 [Chapter 11]

A note on primary, scriptural, and historical sources

Chapter 20 — A note on scriptural references: Matthew 7:21–23 and Matthew 23:13–20 record Jesus's denunciations of hypocritical and self-aggrandizing piety; Deuteronomy 21:18–21 sets out the law of the "stubborn and rebellious son." On the rabbinic neutralisation of the latter, see the Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 71a, which declares that the case "never happened and never will happen," and was given only "that you may expound it and receive reward."

Chapter 22 — A note on scriptural and primary references, handled as sources rather than formal citations: the impulse to stand with the condemned appears in Exodus 32:32, where Moses asks to be blotted out of God's book rather than see his people destroyed, and in Romans 9:3, where Paul wishes himself "accursed and cut off from Christ" for the sake of his kindred; the parallel Buddhist ideal is the bodhisattva vow of Mahāyāna tradition—exemplified by Kṣitigarbha—to forgo final liberation until the hells themselves are emptied.

Chapter 24 — A note on scriptural references, handled as sources rather than formal citations: the parable of the good Samaritan is Luke 10:25–37; "neither Jew nor Greek" is Galatians 3:28; and "I desire mercy, and not sacrifice" is Hosea 6:6, quoted by Jesus in Matthew 9:13 and 12:7—each an instance of a tradition's own texts pressing against the tribal use of its rules.

Chapter 25 — A note on scriptural sources, handled as primary references rather than formal citations: the New Testament contains two distinct phenomena often conflated under "tongues"—the Pentecost narrative of Acts 2:1–13, in which the apostles are understood by speakers of many foreign languages (closer to xenoglossy), and Paul's discussion in 1 Corinthians 12–14, in which the utterance is ecstatic and requires interpretation. It is the latter strand that corresponds to modern glossolalia. Paul's restrictions on public tongues-speaking are at 1 Corinthians 14:5, 14:18–19, 14:23, and 14:27–28.

Chapter 26 — A note on scriptural and rabbinic references, handled as primary sources rather than formal citations: the parable of the Pharisee and the tax collector is Luke 18:9–14; the wider Gospel critique of performing piety "to be seen by others" runs through Matthew 6:1–6 and Matthew 23. The rabbinic satire of the seven types of Pharisee, and the dispute over whether the Pharisee "from love" and the Pharisee "from fear" belong on the list at all, is at Babylonian Talmud, Sotah 22b.

Chapter 27 — A note on primary and historical sources, handled as references rather than formal citations: the claim that one's own consciousness is the single thing immune to doubt is from René Descartes'sMeditations on First Philosophy (1641); his doctrine that animals are automata is set out in the Discourse on the Method, Part V (1637). The identification of God with nature—Deus sive Natura—runs through Baruch Spinoza's Ethics (1677). Einstein's profession of belief in the God of Spinoza, who reveals himself in the lawful harmony of what exists rather than in the fates of human beings, was made in a 1929 reply to a New York rabbi. The Persons Case is Edwards v. Attorney-General for Canada, [1930] A.C. 124, decided by the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council on 18 October 1929; Lord Sankey's phrase quoted here—"a relic of days more barbarous than ours"—is from the judgment itself. By a pleasing coincidence, 1929 is also the year of Einstein's telegram. The grant of "dominion" over every living thing is Genesis 1:26—28; the counterpoised image of tending and keeping the garden is Genesis 2:15. William James's continuity argument, quoted in the text, is from The Principles of Psychology, Vol. 1, Chapter VI (1890). The two scenes recalled from the filmMan of Steel (2013, directed by Zack Snyder, written by David S. Goyer) are the bonding of the Kryptonian Codex—the genetic registry of the race—into the infant Kal-El in the prologue, with the quoted line spoken by the scientist Jax-Ur, and the schoolroom sequence in which the nine-year-old Clark is overwhelmed by his senses.

Chapter 28 — A note on sources, handled as references rather than formal citations: the concept of common knowledge was given its modern philosophical form by David Lewis in Convention (1969) and analyzed in game theory by Thomas Schelling and Robert Aumann; The Emperor's New Clothes is Hans Christian Andersen's tale of 1837.

Conclusion — A note on sources, handled as references rather than formal citations: the Barmen Declaration (1934) was the founding confession of the Confessing Church's resistance to the Nazi-aligned "German Christians," drafted principally by Karl Barth; Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller were among its movement's best-known voices.

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