What Science Can Learn From Religion

byDavid DeSteno Feb. 2, 2019

Hostility toward spiritual traditions may be hampering empirical inquiry. Science and religion seem to be getting ever more tribal in their mutual recriminations, at least among hard-line advocates. While fundamentalist faiths cast science as a misguided or even malicious source of information, polemicizing scientists argue that religion isn’t just wrong or meaningless but also dangerous.

I am no apologist for religion. As a psychologist, I believe that the scientific method provides the best tools with which to unlock the secrets of human nature. But after decades spent trying to understand how our minds work, I’ve begun to worry that the divide between religious and scientific communities might not only be stoking needless hostility; it might also be slowing the process of scientific discovery itself.

Religious traditions offer a rich store of ideas about what human beings are like and how they can satisfy their deepest…