Video| Why We’re Religious
Two young cognition scholars, Joshua Knobe and Jesse Bering, discuss the origins of religious belief.
They tackle the following questions:
- How religious belief looks to a cognitive scientist
- Are we hardwired to expect an afterlife?
- Unbelievers’ puzzling concern for their dead parents
- Why everything seems to happen for a reason
- Do children look for symbolic meaning in everyday events?
- The evolution of religion
Dr. Joshua Knobe, Assistant Professor at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, works on the relationship between folk psychology and moral judgment. Dr. Jesse M. Bering is Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture and Reader in the School of History and Anthropology. He pursues research in those aspects of human cognition for which there is evidence suggestive of human uniqueness from other animals.