Hugh Turpin | Brunel University (original) (raw)
Papers by Hugh Turpin
Religion, Brain and Behaviour (forthcoming), 2025
A forthcoming commentary on Jesper Sørensen's book "Why Cultures Persist: Toward a Cultural Immun... more A forthcoming commentary on Jesper Sørensen's book "Why Cultures Persist: Toward a Cultural Immunology".
Religion, Brain & Behaviour (forthcoming), 2025
A forthcoming response to White et al's RBB target article on the development of CSR since its in... more A forthcoming response to White et al's RBB target article on the development of CSR since its inception.
The paper discusses what the digital environment may mean for emerging and future 'religion-like objects' and how these may disrupt theoretical delineations within CSR. It goes on to consider QAnon as a potential prototype of forthcoming virtual 'paracosms' (e.g. Luhrmann, 2019), and asks whether CSR needs to get ready for this change.
Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion (forthcoming), 2025
A forthcoming commentary on 'Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics' (Pu... more A forthcoming commentary on 'Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics' (Purzycki & Sosis, 2022)
In this commentary, I raise the issue of how well we can distinguish
between religious systems and those presided over by messianic “quasidivine” leaders. This problematizes the degree to which all such systems can be described as ecologically functional when they can also be
directed by the idiosyncratic whims of unstable charismatic individuals.
Aside from such issues, I also raise the issue of how we can be sure that
the “religious system” is reliably adaptive, if we may not have an accurate
tally of such systems in the first place, particularly given the fact that religious studies scholars are incapable of providing a distinction between a
“cult” that may contain but a few individuals and quickly “fail” due to its
esoteric demands, and millennia-old traditions commanding millions of
adherents and enforcing prosocial norms. I also raise two issues that have
long bedevilled functionalist approaches but that do not make much of
an appearance in Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological
Dynamics: the boundary problem and the Pangloss problem. Despite
these reservations, I applaud the book both for its rigour and for providing
a sorely needed template for analyzing religious systems within the
cognitive and evolutionary study of religion (CESR). I close by tentatively
suggesting that religion’s ubiquity lies not with its adaptiveness per
se, but with its capacity to accelerate cultural evolution by causing societies
to lock in values that may either be adaptive or maladaptive, making
sacralization ubiquitous even when its outcomes can be destructive.
Religion, Brain & Behaviour, 2024
In much public discourse, “Christianity” and “Science” are conceptualized as incompatible belief ... more In much public discourse, “Christianity” and “Science” are conceptualized as
incompatible belief systems that make competing ontological claims. From
this perspective, scientists and theologians are rival knowledge specialists.
Prestige is one of the ways we evaluate who we should trust, but we do
not know whether the prestige of scientists and theologians is
conceptualized similarly, and whether they really are seen as rival
knowledge specialists by the bulk of the US population. To investigate this
question, we use a free listing methodology to explore public attitudes
toward prestigious academic theologians and physicists in a US sample.
We find that for all participants, prestige in physics is overwhelmingly
associated with forms of intelligence necessary to unravel complex
questions about the nature of reality. By contrast, the prestige even of
academic theologians is more strongly associated with piety, virtue, and
charisma than it is with raw intelligence. They appear to be seen as social
models rather than ontological experts. Furthermore, we find that while
both religious and nonreligious individuals share a unified representation
for prestigious physicists, this is not the case with prestigious theologians:
virtue is more salient in Christian evaluations of theological prestige, while
charisma is more salient for the nonreligious.
Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2023
Response to book symposium commentaries on ‘Unholy Catholic Ireland’.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2022
The global increase in nonreligious individuals begs for a better understanding of what nonreligi... more The global increase in nonreligious individuals begs for a better understanding of what nonreligious beliefs and worldviews actually entail. Rather than assuming an absence of belief or imposing a predetermined set of beliefs, this research uses an open-ended approach to investigate which secular beliefs and worldviews nonreligious nontheistic individuals in 10 countries around the world might endorse. Approximately, one thousand participants were recruited (N = 996; approximately 100 participants per country) and completed the online survey. A data-driven coding scheme of the open-ended question about the participants’ beliefs and worldviews was created and includes 51 categories in 11 supercategories (agency and control, collaboration and peace, equality and kindness, morality, natural laws and the here and now, nonreligiosity, reflection and acceptance, science and critical thinking, spirituality, truth, and other). The 10 most frequently mentioned categories were science, humanism, critical skepticism, natural laws, equality, kindness and caring, care for the earth, left-wing political causes, atheism, and individualism and freedom. Patterns of beliefs were explored, demonstrating three worldview belief sets: scientific worldviews, humanist worldviews, and caring nature-focused worldviews. This project is a timely data-driven exploration of the content and range of global secular worldviews around the world and matches previous theoretical work. Future research may utilize these data and findings to construct more comprehensive surveys to be completed in additional countries.
Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2022
Credibility Enhancing Displays have been shown to be an important component in the transmission o... more Credibility Enhancing Displays have been shown to be an important component in the transmission of empirically unverifiable cultural content such as religious beliefs. Decreased Credibility Enhancing Displays are a major predictor of religious decline. However, because declines in belief are often paired with the decreasing importance of religious institutions, existing research has not yet shown the effect of Credibility Enhancing Displays as separate from this institutional decline. Here, we assess the role of past Credibility Enhancing Display exposure among the baptised Catholic population of Ireland in predicting who retains a Catholic identity and religious beliefs among those who reject the Catholic Church. We find that leaving Catholicism outright (i.e. ‘ex-Catholicism’) is predicted by low Credibility Enhancing Display exposure, but rejecting the Church while retaining a Catholic identity (i.e. ‘liminal Catholicism’) and theistic belief is not. High perceived prevalence of clerical paedophiles (i.e. religious hypocrisy) predicts both groups similarly. Higher exposure to Credibility Enhancing Displays predicts higher orthodox Catholic beliefs and Catholic morality among Catholics, but with inconsistent and even negative effects among the other groups. High perceived prevalence of clerical paedophiles predicts the rejection of orthodox Catholic beliefs, but not the rejection of theism or a Catholic identity.
The Oxford Handbook for Cultural Evolution , 2024
What explains the ubiquity of religions across time and space, and why do these supernatural beli... more What explains the ubiquity of religions across time and space, and why do these supernatural belief systems seem to have so much in common? Many cognitive scientists of religion have proposed that cross-cultural patterns in religious belief are, at least in part, the indirect result of reliably developing and otherwise adaptive features of the human mind. These ‘cognitive bias’ theories propose that religion is a by-product of universal mental architecture. We see similar beliefs recur in unrelated cultural and historical contexts because of biases in how we perceive and interpret the word, and how we remember concepts. This chapter reviews the evidence, merits, and limitations of such theories. In so doing, the chapter addresses the most influential of the cognitive bias theories: the proposed relationships between various religious beliefs and Theory of Mind, anthropomorphism, dualism, teleological reasoning, and minimally counterintuitive concepts. We address both the strengths and shortcomings of these theories in explaining religious belief and suggest where we can go from here.
The Oxford Handbook for Religion in Ireland. Ganiel, G. & Holmes, A. (eds). Oxford University Press, 2024
This chapter will examine religious disaffiliation on the island of Ireland. It will focus first ... more This chapter will examine religious disaffiliation on the island of Ireland. It will focus first on ex-Catholics in the Republic, describing how they fit a global pattern of rising non-religion. After this, the distinctive normative stance of Irish ex-Catholicism will be explored using qualitative data from fieldwork and interviews carried out in Dublin. These suggest that for these ex-Catholics, disaffiliation means the moralised relinquishment of an increasingly casual, capacious and amorphous form of ethnically linked collective identification: ‘cultural Catholicism’ for short. The roots of this stance lie in the country’s trajectory of economic growth, social liberalisation, attenuated domestic religious socialisation, the moral collapse of the Church, and its lingering influence in social institutions and laws. In closing, we will see that in the North, things are quite different. There, it is Protestants rather than Catholics who primarily choose to opt out of their natal designations.
'Cultures of Unbelief' (In preparation). Lanman, J., Lee, L. Bullivant, S. & Farrias, M. (eds.).
Existing cross-cultural work on non-religious attitudes towards religion suggests that some of th... more Existing cross-cultural work on non-religious attitudes towards religion suggests that
some of the non-religious are more likely to adopt an anti-religious worldview which
perceives religious influence to be a moral evil, while others tend more towards
apathy or ambiguity on matters religious. Thus far, this work on anti-religious
attitudes has entailed two serious limitations. One is a tendency to focus on
international atheist movements, leading to a homogenous picture that amplifies
cross-cultural similarity while underplaying how anti-religious stances are formed in
response to local contexts. The other is that existing work sheds little light on how
these anti-religious and more ambiguous unbelieving stances relate not just to
religion, but to one another. The Republic of Ireland provides one of the most
interesting contemporary contexts in which to examine both these issues.
While being a ‘good Catholic’ and a ‘good Irish person’ were once coterminous, this
is no longer so. Today, the ROI hosts one of the world’s fastest growing populations
of ‘convinced atheists’ (WinGallup 2012), and its non-affiliated minority are the most
anti-religious in western Europe (Riberink et al, 2013). Crucial to this are a number of
factors. First, the Church retains a significant degree of institutional influence,
particularly in the educational sphere. Second, after almost 25 years of institutional
scandal, the Church has become severely morally tainted in the public eye. My
research suggests that in combination with declining religious socialisation, these
factors have contributed to the emergence and transmission of a highly self-aware
and moralised form of unbelief, which I will call ‘ex-Catholicism’. This stance is one of
the clearest contemporary expressions of the relationship between negative moral
judgements of religious institutions and the construction of worldviews and identities
valorising religious rejection (e.g. Hout & Fischer, 2014). At the same time, this
stance exemplifies the degree to which such anti-religious worldviews are deeply
culturally constructed rather than simply being the local implementation of global
New Atheism: Irish ex-Catholicism is galvanised by a powerful moral narrative which
maps smoothly onto existing schema of Irish history as a struggle for freedom from
external oppression - this time, freedom from the oppressive hold of the Church. But
perhaps most crucially, the ex-Catholic stance cannot be understood without taking
into account a key third factor: its relationship to cultural Catholicism, which can be
construed as an accommodationist form of privatised unbelief.
Despite the collapse in the Church’s moral stature and authority, the majority of the
Irish population constitute what might be called ‘cultural Catholics’: while they may
have abandoned most of the beliefs, practices, and signature moral stances
associated with Catholicism, and while many disapprove of the Church, for a variety
of reasons they cleave to a Catholic identity. The newly emergent and rapidly
growing stance of ex-Catholicism this chapter describes is defined by an ‘ethic of
authenticity’ which positions itself in opposition to this cultural Catholic default,
reconstructed as a form of ‘unwoken’ or ‘lazy’ complicity on the part of a majority who
are, in truth, agnostics, but who nevertheless allow an immoral and power-hungry
institution to claim them as believers. From this perspective, disaffiliation is
imperative, metaphysical beliefs are a private side issue, and the maintenance of
local traditions and affiliations should not be allowed to interfere with the central
moral project of national institutional secularisation. Through the lens of the ROI
then, this chapter will shed light on negative moral judgements of religious
institutions and their key role as a component of strong religious rejection, the
cultural construction of anti-religious worldviews built upon such judgements, and the
complex relationship between anti-religious and ambiguous unbelieving stances that
can result from such processes.
The Oxford Handbook for the Cognitive Science of Religion. (2022). Barrett, J, (ed). Oxford University Press., 2022
This chapter describes how recent work across the social and cognitive sciences can address the q... more This chapter describes how recent work across the social and cognitive sciences
can address the question of how religious systems come to fail. First, the chapter discusses whether or not it makes scientific sense to talk about “religious systems” before outlining how the success or failure of such systems can be evaluated. A distinction is then drawn between the ‘mental-representational’ and ‘social’ failure of religious systems. After this, we examine the contributions of CSR to explaining the differential success of religious systems over time, such that some come to fail while others succeed. We then outline the relevance of CSR for explaining how and where religious systems lose influence altogether and various forms of non-religion emerge, a process that has traditionally been called “secularization.” The chapter closes with a case study outlining the applicability of the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion to the decline of Catholic belief, practice, and identification, as well as the rise in anti-Catholic Church social action, in early 21st Century Ireland.
'The Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion', (2022), Lior, Y. & Lane, J. (eds). Routledge.
Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 2021
Here, we present two case studies which combine ethnographic fieldwork with quantitative methods ... more Here, we present two case studies which combine ethnographic fieldwork with quantitative methods to describe religious behaviour in two ecologically valid settings. Case Study 1 describes the use of mixed methods to explore whether different types of supernatural agent are associated with different categories of moral transgression in Burma, a syncretic and multi-religious environment which naturally lends itself to this question. In this case study, ethnography plays a key role in designing appropriate questionnaire measures, generating hypotheses, and interpreting the behaviour of experimental participants. Case Study 2 describes the use of mixed methods to investigate the interrelationships between religious scandals and the emergence of ex-Catholicism in Ireland, a country noted for its recent and rapid secularisation. Here, ethnography plays a key role in elucidating the limitations of early experimental designs and generating further hypotheses, while surveying in turn addresses issues of representativeness in the fieldwork. Together, these case studies serve to illustrate a number of advantages and challenges that come with adopting a mixed methods approach. We close by outlining four reasons for mixing qualitative and quantitative methods when studying religious cognition in the field, using the case studies above as examples. These are: 1) Methodological triangulation; 2) Assessment of instruments and procedures; 3) Qualitative/quantitative iteration; and 4) Capturing the current context in scenarios where existing ethnographic research is sparse or deficient.
Evolution and Human Behaviour, 2020
Moralizing religions encourage people to anticipate supernatural punishments for violating moral ... more Moralizing religions encourage people to anticipate supernatural punishments for violating moral norms, even in anonymous interactions. This is thought to be one way large-scale societies have solved cooperative dilemmas. Previous research has overwhelmingly focused on the effects of moralizing gods, and has yet to thoroughly examine other religious moralising systems, such as karma, to which more than a billion people subscribe worldwide. In two pre-registered studies conducted with Chinese Singaporeans, we compared the moralizing effects of karma and afterlife beliefs of Buddhists, Taoists, Christians, and the non-religious. In Study 1 (N=582), we found that Buddhists and Taoists (karmic religions) judge individual actions as having greater consequences in this life and the next, compared to Christians. Pointing to the specific role of karma beliefs in these judgements, these effects were replicated in comparisons of participants from the non-karmic religions/groups (Christian and non-religious) who did or did not endorse karma belief. Study 2 (N=830) exploited religious syncretism in this population by reminding participants about either moral afterlife beliefs (reincarnation or heaven/hell), ancestor veneration beliefs, or neither, before assessing norms of generosity in a series of hypothetical dictator games. When reminded of their ancestor veneration beliefs, Buddhists and Taoists (but not Christians) endorsed parochial prosocial norms, expressing willingness to give more to their family and religious
group than did those in the control condition. Moral afterlife beliefs increased generosity to strangers for all groups. Taken together, these results provide evidence that different religious beliefs can foster and maintain different prosocial and cooperative norms.
Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 2020
The Handbook of Leaving Religion, Enstedt, Larsson & Matsinen (eds.). Brill Leiden., 2019
This chapter examines the decline of Roman Catholic practice, belief and affiliation in Ireland, ... more This chapter examines the decline of Roman Catholic practice, belief and affiliation in Ireland, a country long considered Western Europe’s secularisation outlier. Existing literature demonstrates that changes in social expectations led to a collapse in devout, embodied religiosity in favour of laissez faire “cultural Catholicism.” At the same time, the Church retains significant institutional influence. A series of scandals has acted as a lightning rod for the tensions implicit in this situation, morally contaminating the Church and enabling discourse around the rectitude of Catholic affiliation. Together, these contribute to morally charged secularism focussed on severing the default link between Irish ethnic and religious identity to erode lingering Church influence. Against this background, Irish ex-Catholics do not simply leave the Church; many also depict themselves as repudiating “inauthentic” cultural Catholicism which irresponsibly supports the status quo.
Current Anthropology, Vol. 60 (2), 2019
Religion, Brain and Behavior, 2018
Previous research on credibility-enhancing displays (CREDs) suggests that long-term exposure to r... more Previous research on credibility-enhancing displays (CREDs) suggests that long-term exposure to religious role models "practicing what they preach" aids the acceptance of religious representations by cultural learners. Likewise, a considerable amount of anecdotal evidence implicates its opposite, perceived "religious hypocrisy" (forthwith credibility-undermining displays or CRUDs), as a factor in the rejection of religion. However, there is currently little causal evidence on whether behaviors of either kind displayed by religious authorities directly affect pre-existing religious belief. The current study investigated this question by priming Irish self-identified "Catholic Christian" participants with either a clerical CRED or CRUD and subsequently measuring levels of explicit and implicit belief. Our results revealed no effects of immediate CRED or CRUD exposure on either implicit religious belief or three different measures of explicit religiosity. Instead, explicit (but not implicit) religiosity was predicted by past CRED exposure. Prospects and limitations of experimental approaches to CREDs and CRUDs are discussed. ARTICLE HISTORY
Religion, Brain and Behaviour (forthcoming), 2025
A forthcoming commentary on Jesper Sørensen's book "Why Cultures Persist: Toward a Cultural Immun... more A forthcoming commentary on Jesper Sørensen's book "Why Cultures Persist: Toward a Cultural Immunology".
Religion, Brain & Behaviour (forthcoming), 2025
A forthcoming response to White et al's RBB target article on the development of CSR since its in... more A forthcoming response to White et al's RBB target article on the development of CSR since its inception.
The paper discusses what the digital environment may mean for emerging and future 'religion-like objects' and how these may disrupt theoretical delineations within CSR. It goes on to consider QAnon as a potential prototype of forthcoming virtual 'paracosms' (e.g. Luhrmann, 2019), and asks whether CSR needs to get ready for this change.
Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion (forthcoming), 2025
A forthcoming commentary on 'Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics' (Pu... more A forthcoming commentary on 'Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics' (Purzycki & Sosis, 2022)
In this commentary, I raise the issue of how well we can distinguish
between religious systems and those presided over by messianic “quasidivine” leaders. This problematizes the degree to which all such systems can be described as ecologically functional when they can also be
directed by the idiosyncratic whims of unstable charismatic individuals.
Aside from such issues, I also raise the issue of how we can be sure that
the “religious system” is reliably adaptive, if we may not have an accurate
tally of such systems in the first place, particularly given the fact that religious studies scholars are incapable of providing a distinction between a
“cult” that may contain but a few individuals and quickly “fail” due to its
esoteric demands, and millennia-old traditions commanding millions of
adherents and enforcing prosocial norms. I also raise two issues that have
long bedevilled functionalist approaches but that do not make much of
an appearance in Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological
Dynamics: the boundary problem and the Pangloss problem. Despite
these reservations, I applaud the book both for its rigour and for providing
a sorely needed template for analyzing religious systems within the
cognitive and evolutionary study of religion (CESR). I close by tentatively
suggesting that religion’s ubiquity lies not with its adaptiveness per
se, but with its capacity to accelerate cultural evolution by causing societies
to lock in values that may either be adaptive or maladaptive, making
sacralization ubiquitous even when its outcomes can be destructive.
Religion, Brain & Behaviour, 2024
In much public discourse, “Christianity” and “Science” are conceptualized as incompatible belief ... more In much public discourse, “Christianity” and “Science” are conceptualized as
incompatible belief systems that make competing ontological claims. From
this perspective, scientists and theologians are rival knowledge specialists.
Prestige is one of the ways we evaluate who we should trust, but we do
not know whether the prestige of scientists and theologians is
conceptualized similarly, and whether they really are seen as rival
knowledge specialists by the bulk of the US population. To investigate this
question, we use a free listing methodology to explore public attitudes
toward prestigious academic theologians and physicists in a US sample.
We find that for all participants, prestige in physics is overwhelmingly
associated with forms of intelligence necessary to unravel complex
questions about the nature of reality. By contrast, the prestige even of
academic theologians is more strongly associated with piety, virtue, and
charisma than it is with raw intelligence. They appear to be seen as social
models rather than ontological experts. Furthermore, we find that while
both religious and nonreligious individuals share a unified representation
for prestigious physicists, this is not the case with prestigious theologians:
virtue is more salient in Christian evaluations of theological prestige, while
charisma is more salient for the nonreligious.
Religion, Brain & Behavior, 2023
Response to book symposium commentaries on ‘Unholy Catholic Ireland’.
Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, 2022
The global increase in nonreligious individuals begs for a better understanding of what nonreligi... more The global increase in nonreligious individuals begs for a better understanding of what nonreligious beliefs and worldviews actually entail. Rather than assuming an absence of belief or imposing a predetermined set of beliefs, this research uses an open-ended approach to investigate which secular beliefs and worldviews nonreligious nontheistic individuals in 10 countries around the world might endorse. Approximately, one thousand participants were recruited (N = 996; approximately 100 participants per country) and completed the online survey. A data-driven coding scheme of the open-ended question about the participants’ beliefs and worldviews was created and includes 51 categories in 11 supercategories (agency and control, collaboration and peace, equality and kindness, morality, natural laws and the here and now, nonreligiosity, reflection and acceptance, science and critical thinking, spirituality, truth, and other). The 10 most frequently mentioned categories were science, humanism, critical skepticism, natural laws, equality, kindness and caring, care for the earth, left-wing political causes, atheism, and individualism and freedom. Patterns of beliefs were explored, demonstrating three worldview belief sets: scientific worldviews, humanist worldviews, and caring nature-focused worldviews. This project is a timely data-driven exploration of the content and range of global secular worldviews around the world and matches previous theoretical work. Future research may utilize these data and findings to construct more comprehensive surveys to be completed in additional countries.
Evolutionary Human Sciences, 2022
Credibility Enhancing Displays have been shown to be an important component in the transmission o... more Credibility Enhancing Displays have been shown to be an important component in the transmission of empirically unverifiable cultural content such as religious beliefs. Decreased Credibility Enhancing Displays are a major predictor of religious decline. However, because declines in belief are often paired with the decreasing importance of religious institutions, existing research has not yet shown the effect of Credibility Enhancing Displays as separate from this institutional decline. Here, we assess the role of past Credibility Enhancing Display exposure among the baptised Catholic population of Ireland in predicting who retains a Catholic identity and religious beliefs among those who reject the Catholic Church. We find that leaving Catholicism outright (i.e. ‘ex-Catholicism’) is predicted by low Credibility Enhancing Display exposure, but rejecting the Church while retaining a Catholic identity (i.e. ‘liminal Catholicism’) and theistic belief is not. High perceived prevalence of clerical paedophiles (i.e. religious hypocrisy) predicts both groups similarly. Higher exposure to Credibility Enhancing Displays predicts higher orthodox Catholic beliefs and Catholic morality among Catholics, but with inconsistent and even negative effects among the other groups. High perceived prevalence of clerical paedophiles predicts the rejection of orthodox Catholic beliefs, but not the rejection of theism or a Catholic identity.
The Oxford Handbook for Cultural Evolution , 2024
What explains the ubiquity of religions across time and space, and why do these supernatural beli... more What explains the ubiquity of religions across time and space, and why do these supernatural belief systems seem to have so much in common? Many cognitive scientists of religion have proposed that cross-cultural patterns in religious belief are, at least in part, the indirect result of reliably developing and otherwise adaptive features of the human mind. These ‘cognitive bias’ theories propose that religion is a by-product of universal mental architecture. We see similar beliefs recur in unrelated cultural and historical contexts because of biases in how we perceive and interpret the word, and how we remember concepts. This chapter reviews the evidence, merits, and limitations of such theories. In so doing, the chapter addresses the most influential of the cognitive bias theories: the proposed relationships between various religious beliefs and Theory of Mind, anthropomorphism, dualism, teleological reasoning, and minimally counterintuitive concepts. We address both the strengths and shortcomings of these theories in explaining religious belief and suggest where we can go from here.
The Oxford Handbook for Religion in Ireland. Ganiel, G. & Holmes, A. (eds). Oxford University Press, 2024
This chapter will examine religious disaffiliation on the island of Ireland. It will focus first ... more This chapter will examine religious disaffiliation on the island of Ireland. It will focus first on ex-Catholics in the Republic, describing how they fit a global pattern of rising non-religion. After this, the distinctive normative stance of Irish ex-Catholicism will be explored using qualitative data from fieldwork and interviews carried out in Dublin. These suggest that for these ex-Catholics, disaffiliation means the moralised relinquishment of an increasingly casual, capacious and amorphous form of ethnically linked collective identification: ‘cultural Catholicism’ for short. The roots of this stance lie in the country’s trajectory of economic growth, social liberalisation, attenuated domestic religious socialisation, the moral collapse of the Church, and its lingering influence in social institutions and laws. In closing, we will see that in the North, things are quite different. There, it is Protestants rather than Catholics who primarily choose to opt out of their natal designations.
'Cultures of Unbelief' (In preparation). Lanman, J., Lee, L. Bullivant, S. & Farrias, M. (eds.).
Existing cross-cultural work on non-religious attitudes towards religion suggests that some of th... more Existing cross-cultural work on non-religious attitudes towards religion suggests that
some of the non-religious are more likely to adopt an anti-religious worldview which
perceives religious influence to be a moral evil, while others tend more towards
apathy or ambiguity on matters religious. Thus far, this work on anti-religious
attitudes has entailed two serious limitations. One is a tendency to focus on
international atheist movements, leading to a homogenous picture that amplifies
cross-cultural similarity while underplaying how anti-religious stances are formed in
response to local contexts. The other is that existing work sheds little light on how
these anti-religious and more ambiguous unbelieving stances relate not just to
religion, but to one another. The Republic of Ireland provides one of the most
interesting contemporary contexts in which to examine both these issues.
While being a ‘good Catholic’ and a ‘good Irish person’ were once coterminous, this
is no longer so. Today, the ROI hosts one of the world’s fastest growing populations
of ‘convinced atheists’ (WinGallup 2012), and its non-affiliated minority are the most
anti-religious in western Europe (Riberink et al, 2013). Crucial to this are a number of
factors. First, the Church retains a significant degree of institutional influence,
particularly in the educational sphere. Second, after almost 25 years of institutional
scandal, the Church has become severely morally tainted in the public eye. My
research suggests that in combination with declining religious socialisation, these
factors have contributed to the emergence and transmission of a highly self-aware
and moralised form of unbelief, which I will call ‘ex-Catholicism’. This stance is one of
the clearest contemporary expressions of the relationship between negative moral
judgements of religious institutions and the construction of worldviews and identities
valorising religious rejection (e.g. Hout & Fischer, 2014). At the same time, this
stance exemplifies the degree to which such anti-religious worldviews are deeply
culturally constructed rather than simply being the local implementation of global
New Atheism: Irish ex-Catholicism is galvanised by a powerful moral narrative which
maps smoothly onto existing schema of Irish history as a struggle for freedom from
external oppression - this time, freedom from the oppressive hold of the Church. But
perhaps most crucially, the ex-Catholic stance cannot be understood without taking
into account a key third factor: its relationship to cultural Catholicism, which can be
construed as an accommodationist form of privatised unbelief.
Despite the collapse in the Church’s moral stature and authority, the majority of the
Irish population constitute what might be called ‘cultural Catholics’: while they may
have abandoned most of the beliefs, practices, and signature moral stances
associated with Catholicism, and while many disapprove of the Church, for a variety
of reasons they cleave to a Catholic identity. The newly emergent and rapidly
growing stance of ex-Catholicism this chapter describes is defined by an ‘ethic of
authenticity’ which positions itself in opposition to this cultural Catholic default,
reconstructed as a form of ‘unwoken’ or ‘lazy’ complicity on the part of a majority who
are, in truth, agnostics, but who nevertheless allow an immoral and power-hungry
institution to claim them as believers. From this perspective, disaffiliation is
imperative, metaphysical beliefs are a private side issue, and the maintenance of
local traditions and affiliations should not be allowed to interfere with the central
moral project of national institutional secularisation. Through the lens of the ROI
then, this chapter will shed light on negative moral judgements of religious
institutions and their key role as a component of strong religious rejection, the
cultural construction of anti-religious worldviews built upon such judgements, and the
complex relationship between anti-religious and ambiguous unbelieving stances that
can result from such processes.
The Oxford Handbook for the Cognitive Science of Religion. (2022). Barrett, J, (ed). Oxford University Press., 2022
This chapter describes how recent work across the social and cognitive sciences can address the q... more This chapter describes how recent work across the social and cognitive sciences
can address the question of how religious systems come to fail. First, the chapter discusses whether or not it makes scientific sense to talk about “religious systems” before outlining how the success or failure of such systems can be evaluated. A distinction is then drawn between the ‘mental-representational’ and ‘social’ failure of religious systems. After this, we examine the contributions of CSR to explaining the differential success of religious systems over time, such that some come to fail while others succeed. We then outline the relevance of CSR for explaining how and where religious systems lose influence altogether and various forms of non-religion emerge, a process that has traditionally been called “secularization.” The chapter closes with a case study outlining the applicability of the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion to the decline of Catholic belief, practice, and identification, as well as the rise in anti-Catholic Church social action, in early 21st Century Ireland.
'The Routledge Handbook of Evolutionary Approaches to Religion', (2022), Lior, Y. & Lane, J. (eds). Routledge.
Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion, 2021
Here, we present two case studies which combine ethnographic fieldwork with quantitative methods ... more Here, we present two case studies which combine ethnographic fieldwork with quantitative methods to describe religious behaviour in two ecologically valid settings. Case Study 1 describes the use of mixed methods to explore whether different types of supernatural agent are associated with different categories of moral transgression in Burma, a syncretic and multi-religious environment which naturally lends itself to this question. In this case study, ethnography plays a key role in designing appropriate questionnaire measures, generating hypotheses, and interpreting the behaviour of experimental participants. Case Study 2 describes the use of mixed methods to investigate the interrelationships between religious scandals and the emergence of ex-Catholicism in Ireland, a country noted for its recent and rapid secularisation. Here, ethnography plays a key role in elucidating the limitations of early experimental designs and generating further hypotheses, while surveying in turn addresses issues of representativeness in the fieldwork. Together, these case studies serve to illustrate a number of advantages and challenges that come with adopting a mixed methods approach. We close by outlining four reasons for mixing qualitative and quantitative methods when studying religious cognition in the field, using the case studies above as examples. These are: 1) Methodological triangulation; 2) Assessment of instruments and procedures; 3) Qualitative/quantitative iteration; and 4) Capturing the current context in scenarios where existing ethnographic research is sparse or deficient.
Evolution and Human Behaviour, 2020
Moralizing religions encourage people to anticipate supernatural punishments for violating moral ... more Moralizing religions encourage people to anticipate supernatural punishments for violating moral norms, even in anonymous interactions. This is thought to be one way large-scale societies have solved cooperative dilemmas. Previous research has overwhelmingly focused on the effects of moralizing gods, and has yet to thoroughly examine other religious moralising systems, such as karma, to which more than a billion people subscribe worldwide. In two pre-registered studies conducted with Chinese Singaporeans, we compared the moralizing effects of karma and afterlife beliefs of Buddhists, Taoists, Christians, and the non-religious. In Study 1 (N=582), we found that Buddhists and Taoists (karmic religions) judge individual actions as having greater consequences in this life and the next, compared to Christians. Pointing to the specific role of karma beliefs in these judgements, these effects were replicated in comparisons of participants from the non-karmic religions/groups (Christian and non-religious) who did or did not endorse karma belief. Study 2 (N=830) exploited religious syncretism in this population by reminding participants about either moral afterlife beliefs (reincarnation or heaven/hell), ancestor veneration beliefs, or neither, before assessing norms of generosity in a series of hypothetical dictator games. When reminded of their ancestor veneration beliefs, Buddhists and Taoists (but not Christians) endorsed parochial prosocial norms, expressing willingness to give more to their family and religious
group than did those in the control condition. Moral afterlife beliefs increased generosity to strangers for all groups. Taken together, these results provide evidence that different religious beliefs can foster and maintain different prosocial and cooperative norms.
Social Anthropology/Anthropologie Sociale, 2020
The Handbook of Leaving Religion, Enstedt, Larsson & Matsinen (eds.). Brill Leiden., 2019
This chapter examines the decline of Roman Catholic practice, belief and affiliation in Ireland, ... more This chapter examines the decline of Roman Catholic practice, belief and affiliation in Ireland, a country long considered Western Europe’s secularisation outlier. Existing literature demonstrates that changes in social expectations led to a collapse in devout, embodied religiosity in favour of laissez faire “cultural Catholicism.” At the same time, the Church retains significant institutional influence. A series of scandals has acted as a lightning rod for the tensions implicit in this situation, morally contaminating the Church and enabling discourse around the rectitude of Catholic affiliation. Together, these contribute to morally charged secularism focussed on severing the default link between Irish ethnic and religious identity to erode lingering Church influence. Against this background, Irish ex-Catholics do not simply leave the Church; many also depict themselves as repudiating “inauthentic” cultural Catholicism which irresponsibly supports the status quo.
Current Anthropology, Vol. 60 (2), 2019
Religion, Brain and Behavior, 2018
Previous research on credibility-enhancing displays (CREDs) suggests that long-term exposure to r... more Previous research on credibility-enhancing displays (CREDs) suggests that long-term exposure to religious role models "practicing what they preach" aids the acceptance of religious representations by cultural learners. Likewise, a considerable amount of anecdotal evidence implicates its opposite, perceived "religious hypocrisy" (forthwith credibility-undermining displays or CRUDs), as a factor in the rejection of religion. However, there is currently little causal evidence on whether behaviors of either kind displayed by religious authorities directly affect pre-existing religious belief. The current study investigated this question by priming Irish self-identified "Catholic Christian" participants with either a clerical CRED or CRUD and subsequently measuring levels of explicit and implicit belief. Our results revealed no effects of immediate CRED or CRUD exposure on either implicit religious belief or three different measures of explicit religiosity. Instead, explicit (but not implicit) religiosity was predicted by past CRED exposure. Prospects and limitations of experimental approaches to CREDs and CRUDs are discussed. ARTICLE HISTORY
Explaining Atheism final conference, Oxford, 2024
Contribution to symposium on 'Beyond Doubt: the Secularisation of Society' (Kasselstrand, Zuckerm... more Contribution to symposium on 'Beyond Doubt: the Secularisation of Society' (Kasselstrand, Zuckerman & Cragun, 2023)
Explaining Atheism, Oxford, 2024
A preliminary examination of qualitative data from a mixed-methods project comparing disaffiliati... more A preliminary examination of qualitative data from a mixed-methods project comparing disaffiliation in three European societies where religion is traditionally seen to constitute a form of 'cultural defence'.
Talk delivered to Religion and Global Society unit at the London School of Economics in 2023. Sy... more Talk delivered to Religion and Global Society unit at the London School of Economics in 2023.
Synthesises previous work on Irish secularisation and ponders where things might lead as the 'secularising euphoria' of 2015-2019 diminishes.
Paper delivered at the 'Religion and the Mind' conference at the Jagiellonian University in Krako... more Paper delivered at the 'Religion and the Mind' conference at the Jagiellonian University in Krakow in 2023.
The paper considers the limitations of CRED theory in contexts where theocratic or ethnoreligious pressure makes religious demonstrations more mandatory, and encourages subcultural discourses of religious cynicism that undercut public expressions of piety. Following Ceslaw Milosz (1957), the paper examines how these conditions can produce a number of 'ketman' like social strategies, and how this might alter the pattern of secularisation within such societies.
Presentation delivered at 'Evolution of Science and Religion as Meaning Making Systems', Dublin, ... more Presentation delivered at 'Evolution of Science and Religion as Meaning Making Systems', Dublin, 2023
Reports on a test of Sperber's 'guru effect' across scientific and religious laity committed to strong religious or scientific worldviews, using AI-modified opaque statements as stimuli.
Brunel London Seminar Topic, 2022
Conference Paper, 'Cultures of Unbelief', 2019, Gregorian Pontifical University, Rome
Seminar on Religious Experience (hosted by Tanya Luhrmann), Institute of Social and Cultural Anth... more Seminar on Religious Experience (hosted by Tanya Luhrmann), Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, University of Oxford, 2019
British Association for the Study of Religion, 2018, Belfast
•International Association for the Psychology of Religion 2017, Hamar
Presentation on the results of a priming experiment. Catholic participants were primed with eithe... more Presentation on the results of a priming experiment. Catholic participants were primed with either a clerical 'credibility enhancing display' or 'credibility undermining display' and subsequent religious belief was measured implicitly via ST-IAT and explicitly via self-report scales. The experiment produced null findings, with the exception of a small but statistically significant increase in implicit belief in the CRED condition.
Journal of Religion in Europe, 2019
Journal of Religion in Europe, 2021
The Catholic Church is ancient and complex. It is eager to guard its reputation, its influence, i... more The Catholic Church is ancient and complex. It is eager to guard its reputation, its influence, its wealth, its adherents, and its sacrality. Hans Kung believes the clerical abuse crisis is the greatest threat to the Church's credibility since the Reformation. When something goes so wrong in such a guarded institution, diagnosis is no easy matter. "Dismantling the culture of cover ups" is an ambitious undertaking (front matter). Each chapter here approaches the abuse crisis from a different angle, and the results are uneven. Some are clearly written and offer new perspectives. Others end up in murky and abstract equivocation. Others still seem to be led astray by red herrings. Inevitably, Anthony J. Blasi and Lluis Oviedo's edited volume cannot provide the definitive and integrated unmasking suggested by its title. No book could. Nevertheless, more light could have been shed. In the first chapter, Jay R. Feierman offers an evolutionarily influenced perspective on sexual attraction. Based on evidence from a 1982 physiological arousal study of hundreds of religious brothers (the data for which was lost in 1995), he distinguishes ephebophilia from conventional homosexuality, noting that men who are attracted to phenotypically masculine features are less likely to be attracted to minors. While it is true that priests are far more likely to abuse boys than girls, Feierman notes that were it the other way around, nobody would be saying 'this scandal is about a form of heterosexuality.' Next is Javier Elzo's chapter on the cultural context of clerical abuse, which operates with a limited conception of the term 'culture.' Much space is given over to tentatively rejecting the diversionary canard that clerical abuse relates to the social liberalisation of the swinging sixties and the subversive intellectuals (Michel Foucault among them) who defended man-boy relations before it became the ultimate taboo in the 1980s. Why entertain this idea at all? Ireland,
Stanford University Press, 2022
There are few instances of a contemporary Western European society more firmly welded to religion... more There are few instances of a contemporary Western European society more firmly welded to religion than Ireland is to Catholicism. For much of the twentieth century, to be considered a good Irish citizen was to be seen as a good and observant Catholic. Today, the opposite may increasingly be the case. The Irish Catholic Church, once a spiritual institution beyond question, is not only losing influence and relevance; in the eyes of many, it has become something utterly desacralized. In this book, Hugh Turpin offers an innovative and in-depth account of the nature and emergence of "ex-Catholicism"—a new model of the good, and secular, Irish person that is being rapidly adopted in Irish society.
Using rich quantitative and qualitative research methods, Turpin explains the emergence and character of religious rejection in the Republic. He examines how numerous factors—including economic growth, social liberalization, attenuated domestic religious socialization, the institutional scandals and moral collapse of the Church, and the Church's lingering influence in social institutions and laws—have interacted to produce a rapid growth in ex-Catholicism. By tracing the frictions within and between practicing Catholics, cultural Catholics, and ex-Catholics in a period of profound cultural change and moral reckoning, Turpin shows how deeply the meanings of being religious or non-religious have changed in the country once described as "Holy Catholic Ireland."