T. Ryan Byerly (University of Sheffield) has won a grant of nearly $700,000 in support of “The Beliefless Spirituality Project: Philosophical Foundations and Scientific Explorations”.
–
The grant is from the John Templeton Foundation, and additional support for the project will be provided by the University of Sheffield.
Dr. Byerly provided the following description of the project:
Launching in January 2025, we will be investigating forms of sincere religious or spiritual engagement that are underpinned not by explicit beliefs but by alternative cognitive attitudes such as assumptions, conditional attitudes, credences, or pretences. We aim to investigate which distinct types of beliefless spirituality there are, the (dis)value of these types of spirituality, and how they can be fruitfully studied in empirical research. The results of the project will be especially illuminating for understanding the options for religious/spiritual practice available to those who find it difficult to hold explicit beliefs in religious/spiritual realities, which may include spiritual-but-not-religious individuals, agnostics, atheists, and people of faith experiencing significant doubt.
Dr. Byerly is leading a team of scholars on the project including Laura Ekstrom (William & Mary), Philip Goff (Durham University), Daniel Howard-Snyder (Western Washington University), Elizabeth Jackson (Saint Louis University), Jonathan Jong (University of Oxford), Shieva Kleinschmidt (University of Southern California), Daniel McKaughan (Boston College), and Neil Van Leeuwen (Florida State University). There are also four advisors for the project: Julie Exline (Case Western Reserve University), Philip Ivanhoe (Duke University), Tanya Luhrmann (Stanford University), and Elizabeth Mancuso (Pepperdine University).
The Templeton grant will support the project for 32 months, and among the project’s activities will be a conference in 2027.
For further details, contact Dr. Byerly.
