Monday, November 3, 2025, 11:30 AM – 1 PM EST

Mel Konner, Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor Emeritus

“Believers:  Faith in Human Nature”

In the widening spectrum of psychological and behavioral phenomena that have been deemed to have biological underpinnings, religion and faith seem among the least likely. But anthropology suggests that they are universal not to all individual people but to all cultures, and that in turn suggests that a search for such underpinnings might be rewarding. We'll consider the evidence that religion and faith are products of evolution and instantiated in the human brain. They also develop predictably in a large minority if not a majority of people, although for many of us these inclinations don't last. Religion-bashing is a pastime for many scientists and philosophers and a career for some, yet it seems to have substantial staying power.