Project Lead: Dr. Justin L. Barrett 

Funded by: Templeton World Charity Foundation at $1.6 million dollars

Project dates: July 1, 2011 – June 30, 2014

Research in the cognitive science of religion (CSR) has converged on the thesis that tendencies toward religious and spiritual thought, feelings, and actions may be part of largely invariable human nature.  The fact that the world’s largest nation—China—is officially secular, allegedly has a long history of dominant non-religious philosophies, and reportedly has a large proportion of atheists challenges the naturalness of religion thesis, doesn’t it?  The proposed project and its collection of selected sub-projects will address this big question empirically using state-of-the-art techniques.

The proposed project has been designed with two aims in mind: (1) scientifically address one of humanity’s big questions, and (2) create a blue print for a new and growing body of scholars to continue asking and answering such questions in the world’s largest nation.  The project is comprised of ten coordinated work-packages (WPs) involving 11 relevant experts, including collaborations between scholars from Fuller, University of Oxford, Boston University, Calvin College, Cal State Fullerton, Wuhan University and the Chinese Academy of Science.

 WP1: Teleological and Intentional Reasoning about the Natural World

WP2: What Constitutes a Person?

WP3: Afterlife and Pre-life Beliefs

WP4: Revisiting the Preparedness Hypothesis

WP5: Religious Practices in Contemporary China

WP6: Religion and moral development: Contemporary and Historical Perspectives

WP7: Ancient Chinese Conceptions of Divinity

WP8: Counterintuitiveness in Communication and Oral Tradition

WP10: On-line research hub for Chinese CSR

 Major outputs of the project will include an on-line hub, resources, and virtual laboratory for cross-cultural studies in the cognitive and evolutionary scientific study of religion; numerous academic journal articles in religious studies, psychology, anthropology, philosophy, and Chinese studies; at least three books; and a major multi-site conference.