Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion

The Committee for the Scientific Examination of Religion (CSER) was based at the Center for Inquiry in Amherst, New York. According to its mission statement, CSER was a research consultation devoted "to the study of religion and ethics from the standpoint of philosophical naturalism and to the critical, nonparochial, and humanistic study of religious truth claims." The Committee professed to serve both a "watchdog" function in relation to church-state and educational issues, and the academic community through generating original research and promoting religious literacy. The CSER was disbanded in 2010.

CSER was described as a nonprofit educational organization which "locates its values in the humanistic principles of the American and European Enlightenment and the liberal critical traditions of post-Enlightenment culture." The Committee consisted of approximately one hundred elected fellows chosen from academe and the professions. Past fellows included Van Harvey, Joseph L. Blau, Carol Meyers, Morton Smith, Karen Armstrong, Vern Bullough, Joseph Fletcher, Lewis Feuer, Theodor Gaster, Gerd Luedemann, Antony Flew, John Hick, David Noel Freedman, John Dominic Crossan, Alan Ryan, Don Cupitt, Margaret Chatterjee, Richard Taylor, Susan Blackmore, Robert Carroll, Arthur Peacocke, Clinton Bennett and Peter Atkins.

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