6 - A New Path for Science and Religion

Summary

In “Atheism, the computer model,” a recent article in Nautilus, Michael Fitzgerald reports on the latest data-driven studies of how societies become supernaturalist, fall away from supernaturalism, and return to it when the going isn’t good. The article concludes with the thoughts of Boston University’s Wesley Wildman, who ventures the view that supernaturalism isn’t likely to disappear, since people have “a basic propensity – a biological imperative – toward a desire to ascribe actions to an agent, a being, even one we cannot see.” As Wildman puts it: “Every generation is born supernaturalists.”