“To be honest, I’m thinking much more about science than about religion when I’m writing. To me, art itself is a religion and the challenge to it is not religion, it’s the hardcore materialism of science,” novelist Jonathan Franzen said during a press conference at the Hay Festival Cartagena.

“So I spend quite a bit of time trying to make sense of how I seem to have a soul, I have this ghostly consciousness, yet I know as a believer in science that this is just coming from carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen molecules. I think if you take science seriously there are a lot of interesting questions to ask. I would be happy if more novelists, not just science fiction writers, paid attention to that.”

According to a recent survey of about 2,000 American adults conducted by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press and the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life, 62 percent favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder, while 31 percent oppose it. (Click on image for larger view.)

The report also notes that:

Majorities of major religious groups, except for black Protestants, favor the death penalty for people convicted of murder. Roughly three-quarters of white evangelical Protestants (77%) and white mainline Protestants (73%) support the death penalty. Somewhat fewer white Catholics (61%), Hispanic Catholics (57%) and the religiously unaffiliated (57%) favor capital punishment for convicted murderers.

From Rabbi Geoffrey Mitelman of Sinai and Synapses:

Quite often, what makes us happy and what is actually good for us are directly at odds with each other. What worked for us evolutionarily over the millenia frequently becomes counterproductive in our current world. For example, fat was a scarce and valuable resource when Homo sapiens evolved on the African savannah, but with vending machines, Starbucks Trentas, and the KFC Double-Down, what made our bodies happy millions of years ago are now things we should be trying to avoid today.

But if those same issues arise with our bodies, what about our brains? What do we do with our evolutionary cognitive history?

David DiSalvo, who writes about science, technology, and culture for Scientific American, Forbes, and Psychology Today, has a new book coming out entitled What Makes Your Brain Happy and Why You Should Do the Opposite. I had the opportunity to interview DiSalvo, exploring questions about the cognitive aspects of religion and atheism, hope and faith, certainty and doubt, and the creation of meaning.

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