If you ask people what they think about religion, you often get one of two answers: Religion is the source of war, violence, abuse, and hypocrisy OR a route to love, kindness, tolerance, and mercy. Put another way, it’s either what divides us or it’s the thing that can actually bring us together. In a country deeply divided over social, political, and moral issues that seems to be moving further apart by the day, the answer’s not likely to be a simple one.

How God Works held its first live event in December to explore just that. Why does something that has the potential to connect us so deeply also have the ability to divide us so profoundly? And, regardless of what we believe, is there something we can learn from what religion gets right to find a way to come together?

In a wide-ranging and often moving discussion, Dave spoke to a panel of leading spiritual thinkers and social scientists who have experienced both sides of the issue, including Central Synagogue Rabbi Angela Buchdahl, award-winning author and Christian Historian Diana Butler Bass, The University of North Carolina’s Deepest Beliefs Lab director Kurt Gray, and The Aspen Institute’s Religion and Society Program’s executive director Simran Jeet Singh.

This podcast episode is an audio recording of the event in its entirety. If you’d rather watch than listen, a video of the event is available here.

Time with family, friends and loved ones is supposed to be at the center of the holiday season… but in our screen-dominated world, how many of us can say that’s still true? Our devices are purposefully designed to monopolize our attention and make themselves hard to put down. So even though we know that spending too much time staring at screens is bad for us, the addiction can be hard to break.

With the New Year almost upon us, why not try to make a new start? Join Dave as he tries to put down his phone and find a little spiritual renewal with advice from marketing professor Adam Alter and Tech Shabbat advocate Rabbi Sydney Mintz.

Adam Alter is the author of Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked. To find out more about Adam’s work, including his forthcoming book, Anatomy of a Breakthrough, visit his website.

In addition to serving as the Rabbi of Temple Emanu-El in San Francisco for 25 years, Sydney Mintz is also an activist, writer, and performer. Find out more about the many projects she’s involved in on her website.

Find out more about the ideas behind Tech Shabbat in Tiffany Shlain’s book 24/6: Giving Up Screens One Day a Week to Get More Time, Creativity, and Connection. To learn more about the spiritual aspects of Shabbat, Rabbi Mintz recommends reading The Sabbath, by Abraham Joshua Heschel.

‘Tis the season for giving and…forgiving. But while forgiveness is something to which we often aspire, it can be harder than it seems at times. It's human to feel the tension between the urge for revenge and the intent to forgive, especially when the hurt or betrayal is great. That tension shows up in many religions too, though forgiveness usually wins. But it’s not just a religious ideal, it’s also a biological necessity.

We’ll talk to evolutionary psychologist Michael McCullough about the evolutionary case for forgiveness and why it’s a show of strength, not weakness. And theologian Miroslav Volf about the Christian foundation for forgiveness, and the tools religion can offer when forgiveness feels impossible.

Michael McCullough is a Professor of Psychology at UC San Diego. He is author of the book Beyond Revenge: The Evolution of the Forgiveness Instinct. Find out more about his work on his website.

Professor Miroslav Volf is founder and director of the Yale Center for Faith & Culture. Read his book, Free of Charge: Giving and Forgiving in a Culture Stripped of Grace, and listen to the Center’s podcast For the Life of the World.

Join us for the very first How God Works live event this Wednesday, December 7th at 7:30pm, at The Greene Space in New York.

For tickets and more information, click here.

If you can’t make it in person, not to worry, we’ll be livestreaming the event here.

Work is becoming a “religion” for many people these days. It’s worship of the efficient, productive, and almighty dollar. But that doesn’t make people very happy. And organizations filled with miserable employees aren’t ideal for making the world a better place either. Can anything be done to fix it?

We’ll talk to Sacred Design Lab co-founder Angie Thurston about how to make workplaces more spiritually nourishing, and to theologian and consultant Curtis Chang about what it means to align the values of a business with a spiritual tradition. We’ll also talk to business professor Subi Rangan about how CEOs and managers can balance profit with doing good. 

Visit the Sacred Design Lab website to find out more about Angie Thurston’s work, including publications on how secular spaces are fulfilling spiritual functions, and how to design more soulful workplaces. Visit this link for more information on the Harvard Business course The Spiritual Lives of Leaders.

Learn more about Curtis Chang’s faith-based consulting work here, and check out the podcast he co-hosts: Good Faith.

To find out more about Subi Rangan’s work, visit his website and check out the group he initiated, The Society for Progress.

Can you pray with a robot? Will people worship AI like a god? It's not science fiction. It's starting to happen now. But what does it mean if robots become priests, or AIs start offering ethical advice? And how do we know when to trust them?

We’ll talk to MIT social roboticist Cynthia Breazeal about how technology can manipulate our minds and emotions for good or ill, and with religion professor Robert Geraci about how technology is being used in religion, and why AI may need some spiritual training itself.

Meet the robots: Nexi, Mindar, and SanTO.

Have you ever heard a voice, seen an image, or felt a presence around you that you couldn’t explain? If you have, you’re not alone. More people than you might think report having these kinds of experiences. For some, it can be easy to write these off as tricks of the mind. But for others, especially the religious and spiritually-inclined, these events are often transformative and can profoundly alter the way they feel about their faith.

So how is it that gods come to feel real to people? What do these experiences do for those who have them? And why, sometimes, does it feel like the supernatural world is connecting with us out of the blue?

Episode guests:

Tanya Luhrmann is an anthropologist at Stanford University. Find out more about her book, How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others, on her website, where you'll also find links to her other writing and media appearances.

Michael Ferguson is a neuroscientist at Harvard University. Find out more about his research and teaching through his website.

Reverend Liz Milner is ordained in the Episcopal Church. She works with prison inmates in northern California.

Join us for the very first How God Works live event on Wednesday, December 7 at The Greene Space in New York.

For tickets and more information, click here.

If you can’t make it in person, not to worry: we’ll be livestreaming the event too.

Every year, thousands of people head to Nevada's Black Rock Desert for a week at Burning Man. And while from the outside, it might seem like a place for partying, drugs, and debauchery, to many, it offers something deeper, even life changing.

We’ll ask neuroscientist Molly Crockett and Episcopal minister Alex Leach, both burners themselves: Is Burning Man a new type of spiritual gathering? How and why does it deeply move people? And should more traditional faiths aim to have a bit more Burning Man in them? After all, Jesus went to the desert to find himself. Maybe we should too.

For more on Molly’s research, visit her website or read her article in The Guardian. Alex Leach’s camp at Burning Man is Religious AF. Special thanks to Alex for recording interviews and ambient audio for this episode at this year’s Burning Man.

How God Works will be back with Season 3 starting October 16th! This season we’ll continue to explore some of life’s deepest questions through science and spirituality.  But we’ll also have another big question in mind - What comes next?