F Leron Shults
Biographic Data
| ID | 48141 |
|---|---|
| NAME | F Leron Shults |
| GIVEN NAMES | F Leron |
| FAMILY NAME | Shults |
| SIGNATURE | SHULTS F L |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Agder |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0588-6977 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 58 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 8 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 56 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 2 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1997 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 1 |
Why Should I Defend my Country? Psychological, Moral and Cultural Factors in the ‘Willingness to Fight’
The psychological willingness to fight for one’s country has become an increasingly important issue in light of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine on 24 February 2022 and the ongoing war near the eastern flank of Europe. This article presents three new analyses of the seventh wave of the recently completed World Values Survey that are designed to shed light on the features and factors that play a role in citizens’ attitudes toward defending their own c…
To eat or not to Eat
Food loss and waste are increasingly recognized as the outcomes of complex, interconnected social and environmental dynamics rather than isolated individual choices. In this study, we adopt a complex systems approach to explore how micro-level behaviors and interactions within commercial dining settings give rise to emergent patterns of food waste. We present an agent-based model that integrates a psychologically realistic representation of indiv…
Religion Devolving
This article highlights several of the valuable contributions in Religion Evolving by Benjamin Purzycki and Richard Sosis (2022) and offers some material and methodological reflections that are intended to complement their efforts. Their book offers a clear and useful operationalization of religion, emphasizes the importance of interdisciplinary approaches to the phenomena in question, and makes great strides in overcoming the polarizing debate b…
Dataset of Integrated Measures of Religion (DIM-R). Harmonization of religiosity data from selected international multiwave surveys
This article presents the Dataset of Integrated Measures of Religion (DIM-R), explains how it was constructed, and outlines its potential for helping to address long-standing research questions in the social scientific study of religion. DIM-R integrates four variables often used to measure religious commitment: self-declared religiosity, religious attendance, prayer, and affiliation/denominational affiliation. These variables are harmonized in f…
The trajectory of psychedelic, spiritual, and psychotic experiences
Fruitful comparison of psychedelic, spiritual, and psychotic experiences requires a degree of phenomenological nuance. Some shared features of these phenomena, such as encounters and communications with supernatural entities, are obfuscated by scientific and clinical terminology. Other supposed distinctions are based on an atemporal view of dynamic experiences. In Section 2 of this theory-building paper, we examine how the trajectory of the psilo…
Simulating theory and society
This article argues that a relatively novel methodology called multi-agent artificial intelligence modeling can play an important role in helping scholars fulfill eight desiderata for a 'good' social scientific theory (conceptual clarity, logical consistency, empirical groundedness, parsimony, generativity, testability, insightfulness, and usefulness). The unique contributions of this methodology include its use of psychologically realistic agent…
Modeling Religion
What role has religion played in the major civilizational transformations associated with the Neolithic Revolution, the Axial Age, and Modernity? This book introduces new methodological tools and material insights for guiding conversations about these debates. The authors introduce a new branch of computational humanities, using computational modeling to simulate civilizational transformations. They integrate multiple theories across many discipl…
The role of emotion and social connection during the Covid-19 pandemic phase transitions
Leveraging substantial data from China’s Weibo and datasets from Reddit and X (previously Twitter) in the United States, this research explores the disparities and complex dynamics of emotions and social connections among social media users in China and the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. The findings indicate that the expression of three negative emotions (anxiety, sadness, and anger) and positive emotions exhibited distinctive dynam…
Quantifying the Psychological Online Communities Considering the Relationship between Covid-19-Related Threat, Information Uncertainty, and Risk Perception
This study employed deep learning to analyze a substantial data set of 109.13 million COVID-19-related microblogs, leading to the construction of a specialized risk perception indicator dictionary. Employing this dictionary, we were able to capture the dynamic fluctuations in risk perception within online communities across various cities in real time. This approach highlighted the varying intensities of public response to the evolving crisis dur…
Multidisciplinary Inquiry in the Study of Religion
Bob Neville and I began our introduction to Religion in Multidisciplinary Perspective: Philosophical, Theological, and Scientific Approaches to Wesley J. Wildman, by describing the latter as “the most original, audacious, creative, encyclopedic, and integrative thinker working within and across the fields of philosophy, ethics, theology, and the scientific study of religion in our time.”1 Notice we did not say “one of the most,” but “the most.” W…
The Role of Values in Pandemic Management
The SARS-CoV-2 pandemic has made abundantly evident that human behavior is a critical factor in determining whether interventions intended to manage infection spread are effective. Human behavior is driven by decision processes about whether to comply with advice from public-health experts and instructions from officials charged with managing pandemic response within organizations and governmental regions. And guiding those decisions are personal…
From Suffering to Salvation
The diverse nature of religious and spiritual experiences (RSEs) eludes easy comparison or conceptualization. Here we explore the phenomenological, situational and conceptual principles that connect eighty-two diverse RSE reports from the Hardy Database (https://alisterhardytrust.uwtsd.ac.uk/). We tentatively suggest that in addition to being unexpectedly significant and imbued with social percepts, messages and emotions, a variety of diverse RSE…
Modern religion as vestigial structure
This article offers a new solution to a theoretical problem facing scholars attempting to interpret religion and secularisation in light of biological evolution.Some scholars argue that the diversity of religious beliefs and rituals in contemporary societies is compatible with secularisation or even facilitates it by weakening the plausibility structures of any one religion.Other scholars argue that religious diversity is not evidence of a decrea…
Gilles Deleuze and the Atheist Machine
Addresses societal challenges associated with the Anthropocene Explains and illustrates the function of the atheist machine" in Deleuze’s philosophy Brings Deleuzian philosophy into dialogue with developments in computational modeling and social simulation that complement and support his arguments for a metaphysics of immanence Shows the relevance of empirical findings in the bio-cultural sciences of religion for Deleuze’s understanding and use o…
Methodological Naturalism and Methodological Secularism Scale
Scholars within and across fields such as the psychology of religion, sociology of religion, cognitive science of religion, religious studies, and theology often argue about the values and norms that ought to guide “academic” research in religion. Is it appropriate in the academy to explain religious phenomena by referring to supernatural forces (such as spirits or gods) as causal agents or to defend one’s scholarly arguments by appealing to the …
The Moral Foundations of Left-Wing Authoritarianism
Left-wing authoritarianism remains far less understood than right-wing authoritarianism. We contribute to literature on the former, which typically relies on surveys, using a new social media analytic approach. We use a list of 60 terms to provide an exploratory sketch of the outlines of a political ideology – tribal equalitarianism – with origins in 19th and 20th century social philosophy. We then use analyses of the English Corpus of Google Boo…
The Norwegian Memory Tasks
Declining traditional religious practice and beliefs have been observed in Norwegian survey data since the mid-twentieth century. Individual-level data before that time, when higher religiosity may have been more normative, is lacking. We introduce a unique autobiographic database consisting of 1270 digitized entries written by Norwegian pensioners in 1964 and 1981, called "Memory Tasks," and assess its potential to study religion in the daily li…
What causes Covid-19 vaccine hesitancy? Ignorance and the lack of bliss in the United Kingdom
Understanding vaccine hesitancy has become increasingly important during the COVID-19 pandemic as governments around the globe have been struggling to convince portions of their populations to participate in vaccination protocols. Here we report on a nationally representative survey of the United Kingdom in which data revealed that individuals showed more willingness to take fictitious vaccines (putatively produced by the US government Medicare p…
Theory and Data in a Computational Model of Secularization
This article illustrates the value of computer modeling and simulation (CMS) for linking theory and data in the academic study of religion, focusing on ways in which scholars in religious studies and the humanities can benefit by collaboratively engaging in this relatively new and radically transdisciplinary methodology. I begin by briefly introducing CMS and describing some of its recent uses in analyses of religious phenomena. The second part p…
Studying Close Entity Encounters of the Psychedelic Kind
This article calls for a more robust mutual engagement between the science of psychedelic experiences (SPE) and the cognitive evolutionary science of religion (CESR). Greater collaboration between researchers in these disciplines could open up opportunities for producing new knowledge not only about the human brain and the therapeutic effects of psychedelics, but also about the evolution of our species and our prospects for creatively enjoying ou…
Scholarly Values, Methods, and Evidence in the Academic Study of Religion
The Values in Scholarship on Religion ( VISOR ) project collected data on the preferred methods and values of scholars in the academic study of religion. This dataset supports comparisons between members of the American Academy of Religion ( AAR ) and partner organizations, such as the North American Association for the Study of Religion ( NAASR ), as well as members of the Society for the Scientific Study of Religion ( SSSR ). The AAR -partner s…
Paying the Piper
Here we respond to a recent article in this journal by Leonardo Ambasciano, in which he offers a high-level critique of “big data,” artificial intelligence, and computational approaches in the study of religion. The main thrust of his argument is that these approaches are fundamentally problematic both because of their negative effect on the humanities and because they inappropriately rely on “neoliberal philanthrocapitalist” funding. In our resp…
Adapting Cohort-Component Methods to a Microsimulation
Social scientists generally take United Nations (UN) population projections as the baseline when considering the potential impact of any changes that could affect fertility, mortality or migration, and the UN typically does projections using the cohort-component method (CCM). The CCM technique is computationally simple and familiar to demographers. However, in order to avoid the exponential expansion of complexity as new dimensions of individual …
Christology and Science
The dialogue between theology and science has blossomed in recent decades, but particular beliefs about Jesus Christ have not often been brought to the forefront of this interdisciplinary discussion even in explicitly Christian contexts. This book breaks new ground by explicitly bringing the specific themes of Christology into dialogue with contemporary science. It engages recent developments in late modern philosophy of science in order to artic…
Computational Science of Religion
This article provides a basic overview of the most common methods of computer modelling and simulation that are currently being used to study religion. It focuses on the use (and illustrates the value) of system dynamics models, agent-based models, including game theory and multi-agent artificial intelligence models, and artificial neural networks. General use case examples are provided, and considerations for future research are discussed. We co…
Distributive effervescence
Modern religion as vestigial structure
This article offers a new solution to a theoretical problem facing scholars attempting to interpret religion and secularisation in light of biological evolution.Some scholars argue that the diversity of religious beliefs and rituals in contemporary societies is compatible with secularisation or even facilitates it by weakening the plausibility structures of any one religion.Other scholars argue that religious diversity is not evidence of a decrea…
Gilles Deleuze and the Atheist Machine
Addresses societal challenges associated with the Anthropocene Explains and illustrates the function of the atheist machine" in Deleuze’s philosophy Brings Deleuzian philosophy into dialogue with developments in computational modeling and social simulation that complement and support his arguments for a metaphysics of immanence Shows the relevance of empirical findings in the bio-cultural sciences of religion for Deleuze’s understanding and use o…
Progress in simulating human geography
Over the last few years, there has been an explosion of interest in assemblage theory among human geographers. During this same period, a growing number of scholars in the field have utilized computational methodologies to simulate the complex adaptive systems they study. However, very little attention has been paid to the connections between these two developments. This article outlines those connections and argues that more explicitly integrati…
What Do Religion Scholars Really Want? Scholarly Values in the Scientific Study of Religion
This article presents selected findings of the Values in Scholarship on Religion (VISOR) project. Conversations about the values and norms that ought to shape the academic study of religion are quite common but typically based on anecdotal evidence and personal experience. The goal of VISOR was to gather data that could ground debates about the values that scholars of religion prize. Here, we present statistical analyses of VISOR data that shed l…
Multiple Axialities
Debates over the causes and consequences of the “Axial Age” – and its relevance for understanding and explaining “modernity” – continue to rage within and across a wide variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, archaeology, history, social theory, and cognitive science. We present a computational model that synthesizes three leading theories about the emergence of axial civilizations. Although these theories are often tr…
Cognition, Culture, and Social Simulation
The use of modeling and simulation (M&S) methodologies is growing rapidly across the psychological and social sciences. After a brief introduction to the relevance of computational methods for research on human cognition and culture, we describe the sense in which computer models and simulations can be understood, respectively, as “theories” and “predictions.” Most readers of JoCC are interested in integrating micro- and macro-level theories and …
“Holding On” to the Theology-Psychology Relationship
This article explores the personal dimension of interdisciplinary method. How do we as individuals hold on to the content of our disciplines and the relation between them? Many recent attempts at relating psychology and theology have missed the “hidden curriculum” of the interdisciplinary “assignment.” The ability to hold on to the psychology-theology relationship (in a way that does not capitulate to a deconstructivist relativism or regress to a…
Spirit and Spirituality
This dialogue piece reviews some of the key developments in the doctrine of the Holy Spirit in late modern theology that have contributed to the scholarly and practical integration of pneumatology and Christian spirituality. Shifts in the meaning and use of three concepts — matter, person, and force — have played a particularly influential role in these developments. These trends are illustrated in several recent pneumatological proposals. The fi…
Philosophy, Science and Divine Action
Book review of "Philosophy, Science and Divine Action".
Philosophy, science, and divine action
Reforming Ecclesiology in Emerging Churches
The rapid growth of “emerging” churches worldwide provides a new opportunity for reflection on the nature and task of the church. This article briefly outlines some of the tensions this movement raises in relation to the traditional “marks” of the church (one, holy, catholic, and apostolic). It identifies some ways toward a reconstructive and reformative ecclesiology that also recognizes that followers of the way of Christ are multiple, embedded,…
Bearing gods in mind and culture
Where do supernatural agents come from and why do they stay around? Within the biocultural study of religion one finds a growing tendency to answer these questions by weaving together two conceptual threads, which I will refer to as anthropomorphic promiscuity and sociographic prudery. Although descriptions of these theogonic (god-bearing) mechanisms can differ significantly, the theoretical pattern can be recognized in authors from a variety of …
Dis-integrating Psychology and Theology
This essay explores the dis-integrative dynamics within the ongoing process of relating the disciplines of psychology and theology suggesting that such dissolutive forces can play an important and valuable role in the dialogue. Healthy development requires that we sometimes let things fall apart. The main sections of the article point to the potentially generative power of dis-integrating psychology theology selves and gods. The conclusion addres…
Excavating Theogonies
Introduction Where do babies come from? Archaeologists do not need to dig around for an answer to this question as they attempt to understand and explain the empirical data uncovered at Çatalhöyük, other sites in the Neolithic, or elsewhere. They certainly need to search for plausible hypotheses to illuminate the vital kinship structures, pregnancy rituals, birthing practices, and neonatal health care policies of any specific community. However, …
Iconoclastic Theology
A new reading of Deleuze's whole corpus in light of his treatment of religion and theological themesGBS_insertPreviewButtonPopup(['ISBN:9780748684137','ISBN:9780748684144','ISBN:9780748684151']);Read and download Chapter 1 - 'Hammering Theology' from Iconoclastic Theology: Gilles Deleuze and the Secretion of Atheism by F. LeRon Shults for free now (pdf)F. LeRon Shults explores Deleuze's fascination with theological themes and shows how his entire…
How to Survive the Anthropocene
Why is it so easy to ignore the ecological and economic crises of the Anthropocene? This article unveils some of the religious biases whose covert operation facilitates the repression or rejection of warnings about the consequences of extreme climate change and excessive capitalist consumption. The evolved defaults that are most relevant for our purposes here have to do with mental credulity toward religious content (beliefs about supernatural ag…
Can theism be defeated? CSR and the debunking of supernatural agent abductions
De Cruz and De Smedt (2015) have clearly demonstrated the extent to which – and the way in which – evolved cognitive defaults play a role in the emergence of theistic ideas about God and in the for
Why do the godless prosper? Modeling the cognitive and coalitional mechanisms that promote atheism
Practicing Safe Sects
Where do gods come from – and what is the cost of bearing them? In Practicing Safe Sects F. LeRon Shults argues for the importance of having "the talk" about the causes and consequences of participating in religious sects. To survive and thrive as a social species, we humans are likely to continue needing some kind of sects (as well as sex) for quite some time. But can we learn how to practice safe sects? Can we live together in healthy and produ…
Modelling terror management theory
This article outlines the development – and reports on the experimental findings – of two computational models designed to simulate the dynamic systems and behavioural patterns identified and clarified by research on terror management theory. The causal architectures of these models are informed by empirical research on the effects of mortality salience on “religiosity” (and vice versa). They are also informed by research on the way in which perc…
Forecasting Changes in Religiosity and Existential Security with an Agent-Based Model
We employ existing data sets and agent-based modeling to forecast changes in religiosity and existential security among a collective of individuals over time. Existential security reflects the extent of economic, socioeconomic and human development provided by society. Our model includes agents in social networks interacting with one another based on the education level of the agents, the religious practices of the agents, and each agent's existe…
A Generative Model of the Mutual Escalation of Anxiety Between Religious Groups
We propose a generative agent-based model of the emergence and escalation of xenophobic anxiety in which individuals from two di erent religious groups encounter various hazards within an artificial society. The architecture of the model is informed by several empirically validated theories about the role of religion in intergroup conflict. Our results identify some of the conditions and mechanisms that engender the intensification of anxiety wit…
Multiple Axialities
Debates over the causes and consequences of the “Axial Age” – and its relevance for understanding and explaining “modernity” – continue to rage within and across a wide variety of academic disciplines, including anthropology, sociology, archaeology, history, social theory, and cognitive science. We present a computational model that synthesizes three leading theories about the emergence of axial civilizations. Although these theories are often tr…
Human Simulation as the Lingua Franca for Computational Social Sciences and Humanities
The social sciences and humanities are fragmented into specialized areas, each with their own parlance and procedures. This hinders information sharing and the growth of a coherent body of knowledge. Modeling and simulation can be the scientific lingua franca, or shared technical language, that can unite, integrate, and relate relevant parts of these diverse disciplines. Models are well established in the scientific community as mediators, contri…
Cognition, Culture, and Social Simulation
The use of modeling and simulation (M&S) methodologies is growing rapidly across the psychological and social sciences. After a brief introduction to the relevance of computational methods for research on human cognition and culture, we describe the sense in which computer models and simulations can be understood, respectively, as “theories” and “predictions.” Most readers of JoCC are interested in integrating micro- and macro-level theories and …
Human Simulation
Simulating supernatural seeking
The Interactive Religious Experience Model (IREM) proposed by Van Leeuwen and van Elk is an excellent example of the increasingly popular tendency among scholars in the scientific study of religion
Simulating Machines
This article explores some of the ways in which the conceptual apparatus of A Thousand Plateaus, and especially its machinic metaphysics, can be connected to recent developments in computer modelling and social simulation, which provide new tools for thinking that are becoming increasingly popular among philosophers and social scientists. Conversely, the successful deployment of these tools provides warrant for the flat ontology articulated in A …
Toxic Theisms? New Strategies for Prebunking Religious Belief-Behaviour Complexes
This article offers a brief epidemiological analysis and description of some of the main cognitive (and coalitional) biases that can facilitate the emergence and enable the maintenance of a broad category of toxic traditions, which will be referred to here as “religious” belief-behaviour complexes (BBCs) or “theisms”. I argue that such BBCs played an “adaptive” role in the Upper Paleolithic and have continued to “work” throughout most of human hi…
Post-Supernatural Cultures
The abandonment of supernatural religious beliefs and rituals seems to occur quite easily in some contexts, but post-supernaturalist cultures require a specific set of conditions that are difficult to produce and sustain on a large scale and thus are historically rare. Despite the worldwide resurgence of supernaturalist religion, some subcultures reliably produce people who deny the existence of supernatural entities. This social phenomenon has e…
Agent-Based Modelling of Values
We have used value sensitive design as a method to develop an agent-based model of values in humanitarian logistics for refugees. Schwartz’s theory of universal values is implemented in the model in such a\nway that agents can make value trade-o s, which are operationalized into a measure of refugee wellbeing and\na measure of public opinion about how the refugee logistics is being handled. By trying out di erent ‘valuescenarios’, stakeholders wh…
Sociology (37 works) · Philosophy (35 works) · Epistemology (34 works) · Psychology (32 works) · Computer Science (23 works) · Religion, Spirituality, and Psychology (23 works) · Political science (22 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (20 works) · Evolutionary Game Theory and Cooperation (19 works) · Social Psychology (19 works)