Professor E. Thomas Lawson received his Ph.D. in Philosophy of Religion from University of Chicago.  He is the co-author (with Robert N. McCauleyu) of RethinkingReligion: Connecting Cognition and Culture and Bringing Ritual  to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms  and now is a Distinguished International Fellow at the Institute of Cognition and Culture, School of History and Anthropology at Queen’s University, Belfast, Northern Ireland .He is the Executive Editor of the Journal of Cognition and Culture, and the President of the International Association for the Cogdnitive Science of Religion.