The Coexistence of Scientific and Religious Explanations Across Cultures and Development
Science and religion are often seen as competing frameworks for explaining the human experience. We argue that this psychologically inaccurate view has resulted in undue antagonism. We propose that the same individuals use both scientific and religious explanations to interpret the same events and that there are multiple ways in which both kinds of explanations coexist in individual minds. Our research program addresses gaps in our current knowledge regarding how scientific and religious explanations develop and how they are used to reason about diverse phenomena across cultures and domains of fundamental importance to humans (i.e., death, illness, and human origins).
It is our hope that this research improves how the science-religion dialogue is conducted by demonstrating that religious explanations for phenomena are not primitive or incoherent modes of reasoning, but instead are integrated with scientific understandings of the world in an often coherent and sophisticated manner.
Collaborators
- Project PI: Cristine Legare, Professor of Psychology and Director of Center for Applied Cognitive Science, The University of Texas at Austin
- Rachel Watson-Jones, UX & Service Design Engineer, Dell Technologies
- Justin Busch, UX Researcher, TomTom
Funding
The project is funded by the John Templeton Foundation.
Field Sites
- Tanna, Vanuatu