This seminar is about religion and embodiment -- in detail. We begin with an introduction to the major religion-relevant themes of both critical social theory and the evolutionary cognitive neuroscience, which are often taken to be opposed ways of seeing human life--we will investigate this claim of incompatibility throughout the seminar. We then continue by working through research articles on a variety of fascinating and vital topics related to brains, bodies, and religions, first focusing on evolution of religion and subsequently on sex, gender, and race. Through reading these research articles, class presentations, writing a paper, and seminar discussions, seminar participants will learn about the evolutionary and cultural origins of religion and morality, the interplay of virtually species-wide cognitive- emotional tendencies and flexible cultural creativity in cultures and religions, the exploitation of the human cognitive-emotional system in economic practices, religion and violence, the embodied and socially constructed qualities of religious beliefs and practices, the neurological and cultural aspects of religious ritual and spiritual experience, and the interplay of biology and culture in human sexuality and sexual identity, race and racism, aesthetics and morality. Bodies matter, and bodies matter for religion --on those points critical social theory and the evolutionary cognitive neuroscience are in agreement. (Clusters 1 and 2)