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About Us
The Investigating Atheism project is designed to stimulate interest, thought and debate on this important topic (one that has rapidly gained a whole new audience in recent years). The website has been put together by a group of academics and researchers at the faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, and at the University of Oxford. The team have no set view on the subject, and aim to give a fully independent, but informed statement about this important subject.
Many of the team are also members, or former members, of the Psychology and Religion Research Group (PRRG) , based at the Margaret Beaufort Institute in Cambridge. In 2001, the PRRG began empirical research, on the experimental study of religious cognition. We now do scientific research on various aspects of the psychology of religion, but religious cognition has remained the central focus. Two important strands are the use of experimental paradigms, such as memory tasks, to study religious cognition, and the measurement of 'integrative complexity' in religious thinking, especially in atheism and fundamentalism.
More recently we have developed theological projects, mostly theology in dialogue with psychology, but also in dialogue with science more broadly. Theological anthropology and natural theology have been the two main strands in our theological work. There has also been a strand of work on public information and education - and the Investigating Atheism project is about opening up the subject to a new interested audience in a non judgmental and interesting way.
Fraser N. Watts, Ph.D.
Director, Psychology and Religion Research Group Starbridge Reader in Theology and Natural Science, University of Cambridge Fellow and Director of Studies in Theology, Queens' College.
Profile
Fraser Watts studied Psychology and Philosophy at the University of Oxford before training as a Clinical Psychologist at the Institute of Psychiatry in the University of London. After a period as Head of the Department of Clinical Psychology at King's College Hospital, Fraser moved to Cambridge to work as a Senior Scientist at the Medical Research Council's Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit (then called the Applied Psychology Unit). While with the Unit he founded a research group on information processing approaches to emotional disorders, was the founding editor of the journal Cognition and Emotion, and served as the President of the British Psychological Society. Fraser was ordained in the Church of England in 1990 and is now Vicar-Chaplain of St. Edward King and Martyr, Cambridge. In 1994 he took up the Starbridge Lectureship in the Faculty of Divinity. His research has focused particularly on psychology, and he has been Director of the Psychology and Religion Research Group in the Centre for Advanced Religious and Theological Studies since its foundation in 1996.
Research Interests
Fraser's research covers two broad fields - that of the interface between
psychology and theology, and that of the psychology of religion. Work
carried out in the first of these fields is summarised and integrated in
his book Theology and Psychology (Ashgate, 2002). It deals with
(a) the relationship between theological and reductionist approaches to the human person,
(b) issues and current controversies about religious experience, both sociological and neuropsychological, and
(c) the mapping of a psychological perspective on to topics in Christian doctrine.
The next major project will be on theological and psychological perspectives on the human emotions. Collaborative work is in progress on the theology and psychology of forgiveness. His book Psychology for Christian Ministry (Routledge, 2002), written with colleagues in the group, presents an approach to the psychology of religion applied to a broad range of the work of the Church. Work is in progress (with a grant from the Templeton Foundation) on the experimental investigation of concepts of God, and the relation between concepts of self and God. Collaborative research with other group members is also in progress on the organisational psychology of the church and church consultancy.
Miguel Farias
Research Associate, Psychology and Religion Research Group
Profile
Miguel Farias joined the Psychology and Religion Research Group in 2007. His doctoral work was conducted in the Department of Experimental Psychology at the University of Oxford, under the supervision of Dr Mansur Lalljee and Prof Gordon Claridge. His thesis was the first comprehensive psychological study of New Age spirituality conducted in the UK. In 2005, he started a postdoctoral research position at the Oxford Centre for Science of the Mind directed by Baroness Susan Greenfield. In collaboration with philosophers and neuroscientists, and under the guidance of Prof. John Hedley Brooke and Prof. Irene Tracey, we investigated the neural correlates of religious belief and the way in which belief modulates the experience of pain. In the same year Dr Farias concluded an MA in Study of Religion - Religious Experience, at the University of Wales, Lampeter. He is currently the coordinator of a European network that studies experiences of pilgrimage to Christian and Pagan sites, including Fátima, Glastonbury, Lourdes and Stonehenge. Dr Farias is a founding member and a regular collaborator of Númena, an independent Portuguese research centre specializing on migration, discrimination and religion. His current work is funded by grants from the John Templeton Foundation (USA) and the BIAL Foundation (Portugal).
Research interests
Dr Farias's main research work deals with the implications of spiritual and religious belief systems for how we perceive and act in the world. This has been pursued using a variety of methodologies commonly employed in experimental social psychology and individual differences, including standardized questionnaires, narrative analysis, and cognitive-perceptual tasks. For the past 3 years, he has added significantly to this repertoire by including autonomic (e.g. heart rate) and functional neuroimaging techniques in my work. He is currently envisaging the use of biological markers that may be collected outside of the lab (e.g. cortisol) in order to study religious rituals. Beliefs are multilayered: they include cognitive, emotive, motivational and cultural features which combine to make them unique. Dr Farias's research has focused on supernatural beliefs, including traditional Western religious beliefs, and magical or spiritual beliefs (e.g. New Age). While recent evolutionary examinations of religion have tried to understand the origins and cognitive function of supernatural beliefs, his work searches for social-psychological, personality and early environmental factors that may dispose a person towards a particular belief system (see Farias, Claridge, Lalljee, 2005; Farias & Granqvist, 2007). Recently, he has started collaborating with philosopher of religion David Leech on a project which looks at the underlying motivations of atheism and its psychological correlates.
Jose Liht
Research Associate, Psychology and Religion Research Group
Profile
Jose Liht studied psychology in the Universidad de las Americas in Mexico City and then trained as an object relations oriented therapist at the California State University, Sacramento. During his clinical studies he became interested in the relationship between marital satisfaction and Jewish religious observance. He conducted a study comparing the effect of the subjective sense of how religious people think they are and religiosity measured as observance of religious practices in order to obtain his Master of Arts. After returning to Mexico City, where he practiced as a therapist, he decided to undertake doctoral studies on quantitative research methodology and analysis at the Universidad Iberoamericana, Santa Fe. After graduating, he was offered a post within the psychology faculty in 2003 where he taught research methods and quantitative analysis at both undergraduate and graduate levels and became editor of the peer reviewed publication Psicologia Iberoamericana. Since then Jose's focus has been on the measurement of thought complexity and its relationship to threat and conflict. Jose became part of the Psychology and Religion Research Group in January 2006.
Research Interests
Jose's research interests relate to religious group identities and intergroup relationships. He is particularly interested in how intrinsic human existential challenges cause people to simplify their thinking and adopt identities that result in a biased perception of outgroup members. He is currently working on the radicalisation of Muslim immigrants to Europe and militant atheism. Jose study of atheists and Muslim immigrants draws comparisons in regards to the sense of threat to their belief system that members of both of these groups perceive and its effect on simplifying self and other perceptions through the use of integrative complexity coding. Drawing from a broad base of historical and sociological data, his work attempts to provide insights into the experience of Late Modernity by integrating phenomenological and functionalist approaches to religiosity. Jose's publications include articles on thought complexity, intergroup conflict, fundamentalism, multivariate analysis and the psychological dimension of Jewish religiosity.
David Leech
Postdoctoral Researcher, Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion
Faculty of Theology, University of Oxford
Profile
David Leech completed his PhD in 2005 on the Cambridge Platonist Henry More's anti-atheistic arguments and his contribution to early mind-body discussions at the Faculty of Divinity, University of Cambridge, where he worked in the Psychology and Religion Research Group. He has published and presented on various topics spanning philosophy of religion, science and religion, and history of ideas. Currently he is conducting an assessment of the cognitive science of religion field in terms of its philosophical and theological implications. He is generally interested in the phenomenon of atheism and how New Atheists have appealed to cognitive science of religion in support of their position.
David Smy
Postgraduate Researcher, Psychology and Religion Research Group
Profile
David Smy is currently undertaking postgraduate research at the University of Cambridge on the relation of science and atheism. His interests and research areas include the study of atheism and materialism, the history and philosophy of science, and the philosophy of mind.
Contact Details
Investigating Atheism
Psychology and Religion Research Group
Faculty of Divinity
University of Cambridge
Email: investigatingatheism@divinity.cam.ac.uk