Will Gervais
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willgervais.com
Will Gervais
@willgervais.com

psych prof & author | culture & evolution | atheists | methodological pluralism FTW | comic & horror nerd | he/him

Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species https://www.amazon.com/Disbelief-Origins-Atheism-Religious-Species/dp/1633889246/ .. more

Psychology 31%
Political science 23%
Pinned
Hi all 👋

I’m a cultural & evolutionary scientist obsessed with 2 ideas:

1) humans are the only species with religion
2) within our religious species, atheism comes naturally

I wrote a book on that, here’s a short 🧵 with some fun book tidbits. Enjoy & share!

💙📚
🧪

www.amazon.com/Disbelief-Or...
Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species: Gervais Ph.D, Will M.: 9781633889248: Amazon.com: Books
Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species [Gervais Ph.D, Will M.] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. Disbelief: The Origins of Atheism in a Religious Species
www.amazon.com

❤️ Lucy's the best!

Just wrapped up the most rewarding & fun teaching semester of my career. Will be dusting off the blog to talk about it in 2026.

Until then? Brain off

Thanks so much! Students loved it!

Reposted by Rebecca Sear

Had a really fun chat with James Hodgson at Humanism Now about my book Disbelief....check it out!

www.buzzsprout.com/2246305/epis...

Book here, bound to make a confusing Christmas gift for many children on your list! www.globepequot.com/978163388925...
57. Will Gervais on the Origins of Religion, Disbelief, and Morality - Humanism Now | Secular Ethics, Curiosity and Compassionate Change
“Humans didn’t evolve to believe in gods — we evolved to learn from culture, and sometimes culture points away from gods.”Dr Will M. Gervais, psychologist and author of Disbelief, joins Humanism Now t...
www.buzzsprout.com

Sounds good, we'll take a look! Thanks so much!

Given early conversations with the student, I'm guessing that the Nicaragua set could make someone's research dream come true! They were interested in doing good evo-inspired work looking at fashion, media exposure, etc. This is perfect! Thanks so much!!

OMG this could be perfect!

does anyone know of cool open access datasets that would have variables relevant to fashion? people's impressions of or engagements with fashion, media, etc.

any and all tips in this general area appreciated! it's for a student project

Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Critical Thinking is deep engagement with the relationships
between statements about the world.

See section 3 here: doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

4/

Reposted by Will M. Gervais

New preprint! @marentierra.bsky.social @irisvanrooij.bsky.social & I have been working on what CAIL means to showcase & propagate the idea of thinking very differently to tech industry norms on "artificial intelligence"

Towards Critical Artificial Intelligence Literacies doi.org/10.5281/zeno...

1/

Aww yeah that was the one! Cheers Sam

sponsored ad before my search results. nice.

a while back i remember seeing a website where you could look up which copyrighted works had been fed into the LLM woodchipper. might've been related to a class action.

can any of y'all fine folks point me there?

That was so much fun! Thanks for having me!

(I say a week later, haha. Haven't been on here much)

I regret to inform you that the "onion on my belt" joke has become an onion on the belt

The eternal struggle

To that student, I salute you 🫡

That was the sickest burn! I fucking cackled!

Armed with THAMES, 80% of my students predicted that my shitty old Science study wouldn't replicate 🤘

Concerns cited: Cute assumptions, validity, weak results, cultural alternatives.

This was a lot of fun

Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Nov 8th is #Evening for #BlueSkyArtShow

2" painting of evening in the Canadian boreal forest.

#Art #Artist #ArtYear #ArtShow #SmArtist #BskyArt #Painting #NatureArt #Landscape
@bsky.art

Reposted by Will M. Gervais

🪸 Larger Pacific Striped Octopus 🐙 Sculpture

#ArtYear #Art #ArtGallery #Sculpture #Octopus #MarineLife #ArtSale #BSNM #Invertebrates 🦑🐡

Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Pterosauria tree (vintage edition) ~ 🦅🌳
.
Alongside my ‘black edition’, I have also tested how my pterosaur illustration would look with a ‘vintage’ natural history illustration background’
.
What do you guys think? Which version do you prefer? The black or vintage background?

#paleoart

Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Another view from the magnificent Stokksnes, with the peaks of Vestrahorn and Brunnhorn visible.

#Iceland

Reposted by Will M. Gervais

Folks, if you are hungry, please contact your local Sikh gurdwara. Or just show up for langar, which most gurdwaras do several times a week, for a free meal. Lots also do weekly or monthly drives giving out groceries.

No conversion necessary. Feeding anyone who is hungry is a key part of Sikhism.
A lady on TikTok has been calling churches pretending to be a mother with a baby who needs formula and several churches turned her away. But wouldn’t you know that when she called a Mosque (Islamic Center of Charlotte) they immediately said yes.

[Source: www.tiktok.com/t/ZTMpoxsaW/ ]
Islamic Center of Charlotte in Charlotte NC. Would help feed a starving baby no hesitation 🥰🥰🥰 #fyp #fypシ #fypシ゚viral #testingyourchurch #church #faith #religion #baby #hungrybabytest #viral #viralvid...
TikTok video by Nikalie 🌈
www.tiktok.com
Reactions to the "debunking" of the original 1956 cognitive dissonance work baffles me. A whole area doesn't die just bec the first work is faulty. That's novelty bias & theory ownership in psych talking. Mendelian genetics did not die when Mendel's original results were found too good to be true.

Thomas Ligotti with a new line for all the Reviewer 2s out there
Flying Squirrel Loves It Every Time

Reposted by Will M. Gervais

forgot to post my annual pumpkin
#art
Nature suggests you use their "Manuscript Adviser" bot to get advice before submitting

I uploaded the classic Watson & Crick paper about DNA structure, and the Adviser had this to say about one of the greatest paper endings of the century: