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we find art that progresses: Stamkou, Eftychia, Gerben A. van Kleef, and Astrid C. Homan. “The Art of Influence: When and Why Deviant Artists Gain Impact.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 115, no. 2 (2018): 276–303. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000131.
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More surprising and awe-inspiring: Berger, Jonah, and Katy Milkman. “What Makes Online Content Viral?” Journal of Marketing Research 49, no. 2 (2012): 192–205.
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Chapter 9: The Fundamental IT
“As I lay there thinking”: Neihardt, John G. Black Elk Speaks (Complete). Lincoln and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2014, 30.
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“Twant me, ’twas the Lord”: Larson, Kate Clifford. Harriet Tubman: Portrait of an American Hero. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2004, 190.
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numbers of the religiously unaffiliated: Fahmy, Dahlia. “Key Findings about Americans’ Belief in God.” Pew Research Center, April 15, 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2018/04/25/key-findings-about-americans-belief-in-god/. “In U.S., Decline of Christianity Continues at Rapid Pace.” Pew Research Center, October 17, 2019. https://www.pewforum.org/2019/10/17/in-u-s-decline-of-christianity-continues-at-rapid-pace/.
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people today are deeply spiritual: Following precedent in the scientific study of religion, I will use the word “religion” to refer to the organized, formal institutions and dogma of religion, and “spiritual” to refer to the experience of what a person deems to be Divine.
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a deep human universal: Wright, Robert. The Evolution of God. New York: Little, Brown and Company, 2009. Robert Wright charts the universality of God in human societies, from hunter-gatherer groups to the present day, and the evolutionary arguments for this universal tendency.
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the trauma of racism: This phenomenon is known as epigenetics. It reveals how trauma is passed on from one generation to the next by altering the myelination of our cells and proteins that allow for the expression of our genes. Carey, Nessa. The Epigenetics Revolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 2012.
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For thousands of years: Eliade, Mircea. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion. Orlando, FL: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987.
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Here is Lao Tzu: Tzu, Lao, and Charles Johnston. The Tao Te Ching: Lao Tzu’s Book of the Way and of Righteousness. Vancouver: Kshetra Books, 2016, 11–12.
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thousands of years old: Pollan, Michael. Second Nature: A Gardener’s Education. New York: Grove Press, 1991.
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“The perception of this law”: Emerson, Ralph Waldo. The Divinity School Address: Delivered Before the Senior Class in the Harvard Divinity School Chapel at Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 15, 1838. New York: All Souls Unitarian Church, 1938.
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dean of Grace Cathedral: Malcolm Clemens Young has also written an account of how Henry David Thoreau’s nature writings resemble the spiritual journaling of his times, and reveal, as with Young’s experience, a sense of encountering the Divine in nature. Young, Malcolm C. The Spiritual Journal of Henry David Thoreau. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 2009.
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James was raised: Richardson, Robert D. William James: In the Maelstrom of American Modernism. New York: Houghton Mifflin, 2006.
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“But it feels like”: Bronson, Bertrand H. Johnson Agonistes and Other Essays. Vol. 3. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965, 52.
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listened to talks: Tymoczko, Dmitri. “The Nitrous Oxide Philosopher.” Atlantic Monthly, May 1996.
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Gifford Lectures in 1901: James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature: Being the Gifford Lectures on Natural Religion Delivered at Edinburgh in 1901–1902. New York; London: Longmans, Green, 1902.
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Religion is about our experience: James defines mystical awe in terms of these qualities: The state is ineffable; it cannot be captured with language. It is noetic, involving profound realizations about human existence and the nature of reality. It is transient and rooted in fleeting feelings. And it is passive; our sense of self and agency diminish during mystical awe.
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We can find these feelings: Van Cappellen, Patty. “Rethinking Self-Transcendent Positive Emotions and Religion: Perspectives from Psychological and Biblical Research.” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 9 (2017): 254–63.
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Or for Mark Twain: Kripal, Jeffrey J. The Flip: Epiphanies of Mind and the Future of Knowledge. New York: Bellevue Literary Press, 2019. In this book Kripal surveys a wide range of extraordinary experiences that shaped the spiritual beliefs of well-known scholars over the ages.
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guided by Divine forces: For a fascinating account of how evangelical Christians hear the voice of God, see: Luhrmann, Tanya. When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God. New York: Alfred Knopf, 2012.
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known collectively as yōkai: Foster, Michael D. The Book of Yokai. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2015.
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ancient cognitive systems: Boyer, Pascal. “Religious Thought and Behaviour as By-Products of Brain Function.” Trends in Cognitive Science 7, no. 3 (2003): 119–24. Boyer, Pascal. Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. New York: Basic Books, 2001. Taves, Ann, Egil Asprem, and Elliott Ihm. “Psychology, Meaning Making, and the Study of Worldviews: Beyond Religion and Non-religion.” Psychology of Religion and Spirituality 10, no. 3 (2018): 207–17.
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We attribute unusual experiences: Barrett, Justin. “Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion.” Trends in Cognitive Science 4, no. 1 (2000): 29–34.
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When alone in an eerie: Our attachment to adult figures is grounded in touch, soothing, comfort in the face of threat, and the formation of beliefs about how vast, powerful figures—caregivers—attend to our needs. It is sound to conjecture that our attachment experiences are a platform for the emergence of beliefs about the Divine. Given certain cultural and family contexts, this thinking goes, God becomes a noncorporeal attachment figure, a “secure base” in our adult lives. Cherniak, Aaron D., Mario Mikulincer, Phillip R. Shaver, and Pehr Granqvist. “Attachment Theory and Religion.” Current Opinion in Psychology 40 (2021): 126–30. Granqvist, Pehr, and Lee A. Kirkpatrick. “Religion, Spirituality, and Attachment.” In APA Handbook of Psychology, Religion, and Spirituality. Vol. 1, Context, Theory, and Research, edited by Kenneth I. Pargament, Julie J. Exline, and James W. Jones, 139–155. American Psychological Association, 2013. https://doi.org/10.1037/14045-007. This article shows that feelings of being securely attached to God account for some of religion’s benefits, such as reduced distress. Bradshaw, Matt, Christopher G. Ellison, and Jack P. Marcum. “Attachment to God, Images of God, and Psychological Distress in a Nationwide Sample of Presbyterians.” International Journal for the Psychology of Religion 20, no. 2 (2010): 130–47. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508611003608049.