Why is religion still alive? Why are people still engaged in old folk takes and mythological stories — even those without rational and ethical foundations.

ELAINE PAGELS is a Harrington Spear Paine Professor of Religion, Princeton University; Author The Gnostic Gospels; Beyond Belief; and Revelation (forthcoming, January 2012).

Elaine Pagels's Edge Bio Page

In July, Edge held its annual Master Class in Napa, California on the theme: "The Science of Human Nature".  In the six week period that began September 12th, we are publishing the complete video, audio, and texts:  Princeton psychologist Daniel Kahneman on the marvels and the flaws of intuitive thinking; Harvard mathematical biologist Martin Nowak on the evolution of cooperation; Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker on the history of violence; UC-Santa Barbara evolutionary psychologist Leda Cosmides on the architecture of motivation; UC-Santa Barbara neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga on neuroscience and the law; and Princeton religious historian Elaine Pagels on The Book of Revelation.

For publication schedule and details, go to Edge Master Class 2011: The Science of Human Nature.

THE BOOK OF REVELATION

[ELAINE PAGELS:] The Book of Revelation is the strangest book in the Bible. It's the most controversial. It doesn't have any stories, moral teaching. It only has visions, dreams and nightmares. Not many people say they understand it, but for 2000 years, this book has been wildly popular. Why would anyone bother with a book that rationalists love to hate, I was thinking that from Epicurus to Richard Dawkins. Many people assume what I learned from my father, who converted from Presbyterianism to Darwin and became a biologist, that religion was nothing but a compensation for ignorance, and would soon die off. In fact, I thought I heard Steve imply this yesterday when you included in modernity, science, but not religion.

MARTIN NOWAK

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ELAINE PAGELS

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Balancing group and self-interest has never been easy, yet human societies display a high level of cooperation. To attain that level, specialized traits had to evolve, including such emotions as shame.

Deception: REPUTATION MANAGEMENT BY NAME RECONFIGURATION

(Click to enlarge)

Jean Jaurès apparently once said, "Quand les hommes ne peuvent changer les choses, ils changent les mots." By mapping old names to new ones, this piece hopes to capture the spirit of that quote as well as some of my research on shame and reputation.

The experience of social pain, while temporarily distressing and hurtful, is an evolutionary adaptation that promotes social bonding and, ultimately, survival.

NAOMI I. EISENBERGER has a BS in psychobiology and a PhD in social psychology (2005) from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is an assistant professor in UCLA's Social Psychology program, director of the Social and Affective Neuroscience Laboratory, and codirector of the Social Cognitive Neuroscience Laboratory. Her research focuses on using behavioral, physiological, and neuroimaging techniques to understand how the human need for social connection has left its mark on our minds, brains, and bodies.

Naomi I. Eisenberger's Edge Bio Page

_{Excerpted from Future Science: Essays From The Cutting Edge, Edited by Max Brockman (Vintage Books, 2011)}

WHY REJECTION HURTS

[NAOMI I. EISENBERGER:] “That hurt my feelings.” “My heart was broken.” If you listen closely to the ways in which people describe their experiences of social rejection, you will notice an interesting pattern: we use words representing physical pain to describe these psychologically distressing events. In fact, in the English language we have few means of expressing rejection-related feelings other than with words typically reserved for physical pain. Moreover, using such words to describe experiences of social rejection or exclusion is common to many languages and not unique to English.¹

Why do we use words connoting physical pain to describe experiences of social rejection? Is feeling socially estranged truly comparable to feeling physical pain, or are these words to be regarded simply as figures of speech? My laboratory’s research has suggested that the “pain” of social rejection (“social pain”) may be more than just a figure of speech. Through a series of studies, my colleagues and I have shown that socially painful experiences, such as exclusion or rejection, are processed by some of the same neural regions that process physical pain. Here I review the evidence that led us to the notion that physical and social pain processes overlap and the studies that directly test this overlap. I will explore some of the potentially surprising consequences of such an overlap as well as what this shared neural circuitry means for our experience and understanding of social pain.