If humans are really natural rather than supernatural beings, what accounts for our beliefs about souls, immortality, a moral ‘eye in the sky’ that judges us, and so forth?”
A leading scholar of religious cognition, Bering — who heads Oxford’s Explaining Religion Project — proposes a powerful new hypothesis for the nature, origin and cognitive function of spirituality. Far from merely regurgitating existing thinking on the subject, he connects dots across different disciplines, ideologies and materials, from neuroscience to Buddhist scriptures to The Wizard of Oz. Blending empirical evidence from seminal research with literary allusions and cultural critique, Bering examines the central tenets of spirituality, from life’s purpose to the notion of afterlife, in a sociotheological context underlines by the rigor of a serious scientists.
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The nature of “luck” has fascinated scientists and philosphers alike for centuries. Schlimazeltov! explores the concept of “luck,” or “mazel,” through a tapestry of voices from London’s Jewish community. From global economics to lucky charms to quantum physics, the film blends humor, philosophy and visual poetry for a layered investigation of the ancient sensemaking mechanism that is our belief in the invisible hand of luck.
We live our lives like a piece of embroidery — we see the rough side of it, but there might be a very beautiful side on the other side we can’t see. We only see all the stitching on the wrong side of the fabric.”
People are looking for deterministic things because the world is very confusing. Religion, a lot of times, is about trying to relieve anxieties and fear.”
It all depends on your psychological standpoint, whether you call a thing ‘luck,’ ‘chance’ or ‘fate.’ Luck makes us feel a little bit better, you know — you feel there’s a dice rolling and it could’ve easily rolled a different way and maybe it will in the future; chance creates the impression of a universe in chaos; and fate creates the impression of some big bastard who’s controlling it.”
The documentary, written and directed by Christopher Thoma Allen, was commissioned by the UK Jewish Film Festival and is currently a finalist in the first annual Vimeo Festival Awards.
For more on the tension between superstition, science and religion, see The End of God, the BBC documentary we recently spotlighted.
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Breathtaking beauty, voodoo violence, and what the Guggenheim has to do with ritual sacrifices.
Filmmaker Maya Deren is one of the most influential women in art history. Though most famous for her seminal avant-garde film Meshes of the Afternoon, Deren went on to produce a prolific and diverse body of work. In 1946, much thanks to her critical acclaim for Meshes, she was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship grant, which she used to travel to Haiti and film Meditation on Violence — a controversial piece on the rituals of vodoun, which she not only filmed but also participated in, ultimately disregarding the terms of her Guggenheim Fellowship.
After Deren’s death in 1961, footage from the 18,000 rituals she filmed was incorporated in Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti — a fascinating posthumous documentary completed in 1985 by Deren’s third husband, Teiji Ito, and his then-wife, Cherel Winett Ito. The film, which explores the tension between beauty and violence in the dancing at the center of vodoun rituals, is now available for free on YouTube, though in poor quality, and we’ve gathered here all six parts. (Though to do Deren’s work justice, we highly recommend the DVD.)
The mesmerizing film is based on Divine Horsemen: The Living Gods of Haiti, the book Deren published in 1953 — an absolute cultural treasure we highly recommend. It offers a glimpse of a complex and largely misunderstood culture, even more so after being dragged across the global newsscape in light of the recent tragedy.
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Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it's cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week's best articles. Here's an example. Like? Sign up.
We’re deeply fascinated by how the human mind makes sense of the world, and religion is one of the primary sensemaking mechanisms humanity has created to explain reality. On the heels of our recent explorations of the relationship between science and religion, the neuroscience of being human and the nature of reality comes The Belief Instinct: The Psychology of Souls, Destiny, and the Meaning of Life — an ambitious new investigation by evolutionary psychologist Jesse Bering, exploring one of the most important questions of human existence:
Brain Pickings has a free weekly newsletter and people say it’s cool. It comes out on Sundays and offers the week’s best articles. Here’s an example. Like? Sign up.
The nature of “luck” has fascinated scientists and philosphers alike for centuries. 
