Science & Health Benefits of Belief in God & Religion | Dr. David DeSteno

My guest is ⁠Dr. David DeSteno, PhD⁠, a professor of psychology at Northeastern University. We discuss science, God and religion, including what science can and can’t reveal about the existence of God and where religious faith and science do and do not align. We also discuss why questions about life’s origins, miracles and the afterlife have persisted across time. Dr. DeSteno explains how religious rituals cause meaningful improvements in mental and physical health and how prayer and gratitude can markedly reduce stress, increase honesty and compassion and buffer against loneliness and despair. Finally, we explore what distinguishes religions and mission-based communities from cults, and we discuss the role that communities such as 12-step and Burning Man play in modern life.

Articles

• Religious-service attendance and subsequent health and well-being throughout adulthood: evidence from three prospective cohorts (International Journal of Epidemiology)
• Meditation increases compassionate responses to suffering (Psychological Science)
• Meditation inhibits aggressive responses to provocations (Mindfulness)
• Self-control training decreases aggression in response to provocation in aggressive individuals (Journal of Research in Personality)
• Associations of Religious Upbringing With Subsequent Health and Well-Being From Adolescence to Young Adulthood: An Outcome-Wide Analysis (American Journal of Epidemiology)
• Synchrony and the social tuning of compassion (Emotion)
• Behavioral Study of obedience (Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology)
• The Grateful Don’t Cheat: Gratitude as a Fount of Virtue (Psychological Science)
• Location, Location, Location: Effects of Cross-Religious Primes on Prosocial Behavior (International Journal for the Psychology of Religion)
• Prosocial correlates of transformative experiences at secular multi-day mass gatherings (Nature Communications)
• Conflict Changes How People View God (Psychological Science)

Books

• Believe: Why Everyone Should Be Religious
• The Secret Pulse of Time: Making Sense of Life's Scarcest Commodity

Other Resources

• “Removed” by Eric Pickersgill
• Tiny Religions – episode on How God Works
• Burning Man
• Religious AF Camp
• Milk + Honey Camp
• My Big Fat Greek Wedding

Huberman Lab Episodes Mentioned

• Dr. Erich Jarvis: The Neuroscience of Speech, Language & Music

People Mentioned

• Francis Collins: Head of Molecular Genetics Section, National Human Genome Research Institution
• Blaise Pascal: French mathematician, philosopher
• Bertrand Russell: British philosopher, Nobel laurate
• Robert Putnam: professor of public policy, Harvard Kennedy School
• Richard Dawkins: British biologist, author
• Paul Condon: professor of psychology, Southern Oregon University
• William James: American philosopher and psychologist
• George Bonanno: professor of clinical psychology, Columbia University
• Michael Pollan: journalist, professor of English, Harvard University
• Robert Waldinger: professor of psychiatry, Harvard Medical School
• Richard Feynman: American theoretical physicist, Nobel laurate
• David Koresh: American cult leader