Intimate contact with religious beliefs that differ from your own can leave a bad taste in your mouth. Literally. That’s the conclusion of newly published research, which — depending on how you interpret the results — has either grim or moderately encouraging implications for interfaith relations. University of Illinois psychologists Ryan S. Ritter and Jesse Lee Preston found self-described Christians were more likely to describe a beverage as disgusting following exposure to an incompatible belief system. This provides more evidence that the emotion of disgust — an ... Read More
Building Mosques: Realpolitik vs. Constitution
May 11, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The United States Agency for International Development published a proposed rule change in the Federal Register back in March that startled many legal scholars and civil libertarians. The agency, which is responsible for doling out the State Department's economic and humanitarian assistance throughout the world, wanted to update two paragraphs in a federal regulation governing who is eligible for U.S. aid money overseas. USAID funds, the updated rule proposes, may in the future be used "for the acquisition, construction, or rehabilitation of structures that are used, in whole or in part, ... Read More
Religious Affiliation and Brain Shrinkage
May 10, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Aging baby boomers are using a variety of methods to remain mentally sharp, from brain fitness classes to simply staying social. Newly published research suggests another, admittedly unorthodox approach to promoting brain-cell survival: Changing your religious affiliation. A study published in the online journal PLoS ONE found a key part of the brain atrophied more rapidly in Catholics and born-again Protestants than it did in mainline Protestants. This accelerated shrinkage was also found in people who reported a life-changing religious experience, as well as those with no ... Read More
Passing the Plate and the Peter-Paul Problem
April 21, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
During Sunday services at Catholic churches, the basket is passed through the pews in the middle of the mass, with parishioners expected to drop in donations to help keep the parish running. But on certain weeks, especially during the Easter and Christmas seasons, the basket gets passed around a second time toward the end of the ceremony. This second donation is for a specific cause: Hurricane relief, say, or in support of missionary work. To use an analogy that seems particularly apt in this context: Are churches robbing Peter to pay Paul? Are people putting less in the first basket so ... Read More
Parenting’s Asian-Jewish Connection
April 8, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
Asian-Jewish couples share remarkably similar values — but they're not rearing their children like Tiger Mother Amy Chua, a new study reports. Noah Leavitt and Helen Kim — a married couple and both sociologists at Whitman College in Walla Walla, Wash. — interviewed 37 Asian-Jewish couples over two years. The families lived in Northern and Southern California, Philadelphia and New York City. They included Asian-American men married to Jewish women and Jewish men married to Asian-American women, as well as straight and gay couples. Their ages ranged from 20s to 70s; some were parents ... Read More
Death Anxiety Shapes Views on Evolution
March 30, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
It may be the foundation of modern biology, but fewer than 40 percent of Americans say they believe in the theory of evolution. While frustrated scientists sometimes blame religion for this knowledge gap, newly published research suggests the key factor isn’t faith per se but rather a benefit it provides that Darwin does not: A sense that our all-too-short lives have meaning. A Canadian study just published in the journal PLoS ONE finds a strong link between existential angst and reluctance to embrace the theory of evolution. A team of researchers led by University of British Columbia ... Read More
Benefits of Religion Limited to Fervent Believers
February 28, 2011 • By • Leave a Comment
The benefits of belonging to a religious community don’t have to be taken on faith. Numerous studies have linked participation in a congregation with good physical and mental health, as well as higher levels of subjective well-being. But a new paper offers a rather large caveat to those findings. “While fervent believers benefit from their involvement, those with weaker beliefs are actually less happy than those who do not ascribe to any religion,” a research team led by Daniel Mochon of the Yale School of Management reports in the journal Social Indicators Research. “As ... Read More
Funding Mosques from the State Treasury
December 15, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
A recent push by the German government to educate a generation of European-born (and Enlightenment-minded) imams — to wean the nation's Muslim population from a class of religious leaders trained and paid by Turkey — belongs to a controversial strain of thinking in Europe. The idea is to commit tax funds to mosque-building and other integration efforts with the goal of drying up foreign, and sometimes radical, streams of money. Some programs are more promising than others. Nicolas Sarkozy argued in a 2004 book (before he became president of France) that Paris should make an exception to ... Read More
Europe’s Muslims Get to be the Continent’s New Jews
December 12, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
In part two of the Miller-McCune interview with Islamic scholar Reza Aslan, we explore the various manifestations of Islamophobia in Europe, from the banning of minarets and religious clothing to the rise of ultra-right wing anti-Islam parties. Aslan — the author of No god but God: The Origins, Evolution, and Future of Islam and Tablet and Pen: Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East, published this month — addresses the mythos surrounding Europe's Muslim population while offering some positive alternatives to the negative rhetoric and fear-mongering perpetrated both in Europe and ... Read More
Mixing Europe and the Middle East
December 8, 2010 • By • Leave a Comment
It's fashionable now to say that anti-Muslim sentiment is the new anti-Semitism. Arabs, after all, are Semitic people, so the rash of ugly rhetoric that spread this year during election campaigns in the United States and Europe might resemble a new mutation of an old disease. "I'm afraid that we are going through a process like the beginning of the '30s of the last century," said Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu, head of a huge international Muslim group called the Organization of the Islamic Conference, in early November, "when an anti-Semitic agenda became politically a big issue (together with) the ... Read More
