Does this article actually say anything? To me it sounds like a bunch of nice words without any message.
Which is sure is true, just like you can learn a lot watching a used car salesmen with the tools he or she uses. Robert Cialdini wrote some great books about that topic.
The author is how ever mixing up things here on purpose, best seen with the title.
>What Science Can Learn from Religion
It should read what Psychology can learn by studying religious groups. Those two are very different things.
Sciencey people think religions are wrong, so they are prone to acting like all ideas to come out of religion are bunk. They shouldn't, so the hostility of sciencey people toward religion hurts science.
It's funny how hardly anyone in this comment thread seems to have taken away this message. I do however see a whole lot of rather defensive comments about how religion is useless and bad for this reason or that reason, or attacking the article (which I thought was very reasonably written) for religious apology. I think that offers a visible example of the phenomenon under discussion - any suggestion of positive things flowing from religion is met with a kind of allergic reaction.
To do so is considered heresy or worse. More so if done with required irreverence of science where anything can be shown wrong.
The problems start when religion attempts to "fix" others against their will.