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Triangle Roundtable: Does Religion Make Us Moral? Psychology, Philosophy, and the Science of Character

  • The Washington Duke Inn 3001 Cameron Boulevard Durham, NC, 27705 United States (map)

From the Ten Commandments to the Presidential Bioethics Commission, beliefs about God guide moral decision-making for billions of people. In day-to-day practice, traditional religious communities claim to make their members more honest, generous, loving, and just. But does bringing God into the picture really help us understand and do what is right? Does God provide a ground for moral realism, securing a moral law that transcends our self-serving biases and interests, or is what we think about "God" determined by very human mental models and surrounding circumstances? And empirically speaking, does believing in God and participating in a religious community make people behave better—or worse?

Join us as Kurt Gray (UNC-Chapel Hill, Deepest Beliefs Lab, Center for the Science of Moral Understanding) and Christian Miller (Wake Forest University, The Character Project, The Honesty Project) bring the science of psychology to bear on the problems of how to develop moral character, how to justify moral judgements, and whether to look to God for help in living rightly.

Christian B. Miller is the A. C. Reid Professor of Philosophy at Wake Forest University. He is currently the Director of the Honesty Project, funded by a $4.4 million grant from the John Templeton Foundation, and in recent years he has also directed the Beacon Project and the Character Project. He is the author of Moral Character: An Empirical Theory, Character and Moral Psychology, The Character Gap: How Good Are We?, Moral Psychology, Honesty: The Philosophy and Psychology of a Neglected Virtue, and over 100 academic papers.

Kurt Gray is an Associate Professor in Psychology and Neuroscience at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he directs the Deepest Beliefs Lab and the Center for the Science of Moral Understanding. He is also an Adjunct Associate Professor in Organizational Behavior at the Kenan-Flagler Business School at UNC, where he teaches about organizational ethics and team processes. Dr. Gray received his PhD from Harvard University.

This event is co-sponsored by the North Carolina Study Center and InterVarsity Graduate and Faculty Ministries, with the Center for Christianity & Scholarship at Duke serving as the lead sponsor. It is made possible by the generosity of the John Templeton Foundation.

Registration is being facilitated by email invitation.  Please contact matt@ncstudycenter.org if you are an interested faculty member and have not received an invitation.

Later Event: September 27
Grad Student Speakeasy