Just up at The Mindful Hack

The Mindful Hack is my blog on neuroscience and spirituality, plus related issues

Interview with me: What makes O'Leary tic? - but those Word Guild people have ways of making me toc

Neuroscience and society: Emotional harm?

Neuroscience and society: Hate Area of Brain Identified?

How much attention should we pay to pundit predictions?

(Note: If you follow me at Twitter, you will get regular notice of new Mindful Hack, Post-Darwinist or Colliding Universes posts, usually when I have posted five or so stories.)

Can evolution explain religion?

Here's my MercatorNet column (10 December 2009),

Evolutionary psychologists offer two contradictory explanations for the existence of religion. They can't both be right, but they can both be wrong.

In a recent issue of the leading journal Science , Elizabeth Culotta offers a variety of speculations in an article titled "On the Origin of Religion." Explaining religion without God is quite the growth industry these days among evolutionary psychologists. Some argue that religion exists because it increases evolutionary fitness (survival of the fittest). Others argue that it makes no difference to fitness. It is merely a glitch in our thinking that doesn't kill us off.

They can't both be right, but they could both be wrong. Let's see.

For the rest, go here.