AS LONG as religion was untouchably sacred, it was by definition beyond the prying fingers of objective inquiry. Now society has matured enough to empirically scrutinise religion, and late last year a group of nine European universities led by the University of Oxford began to examine religious belief and behaviour, helped by a ¬2 million European Commission grant.
The project, called , brings together psychology, biology, anthropology and history to investigate both the common and the variable features of “religiosity” (this is the term EXREL uses) and to test theories about it – including the current leader…
