Download or read book Is Religion Natural written by Dirk Evers and published by Bloomsbury Publishing. This book was released on 2012-06-28 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How natural is religion? Is it a phenomenon written in our genes or brains, naturally developing with the development of the human race? The book considers the findings of evolutionary psychology from scientific, philosophical and theological perspectives and critically examines the relation between empirical, epistemological and theological notions. Chapters in the book deal with the naturalness of religion and religious experiences as based on genetics, biology and social psychology. Other authors examine the relationship between religion, science and theology with regard to the naturalness of religion from a more general perspective. The last part of the book includes views from a Muslim scholar and a historian.
Download or read book Why Religion is Natural and Science is Not written by Robert N. McCauley and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2013-11 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comparison of the cognitive foundations of religion and science and an argument that religion is cognitively natural and that science is cognitively unnatural.
Download or read book Breaking the Spell written by Daniel C. Dennett and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2006-02-02 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The New York Times bestseller – a “crystal-clear, constantly engaging” (Jared Diamond) exploration of the role that religious belief plays in our lives and our interactions For all the thousands of books that have been written about religion, few until this one have attempted to examine it scientifically: to ask why—and how—it has shaped so many lives so strongly. Is religion a product of blind evolutionary instinct or rational choice? Is it truly the best way to live a moral life? Ranging through biology, history, and psychology, Daniel C. Dennett charts religion’s evolution from “wild” folk belief to “domesticated” dogma. Not an antireligious screed but an unblinking look beneath the veil of orthodoxy, Breaking the Spell will be read and debated by believers and skeptics alike.
Download or read book Battling the Gods written by Tim Whitmarsh and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2015-11-10 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How new is atheism? Although adherents and opponents alike today present it as an invention of the European Enlightenment, when the forces of science and secularism broadly challenged those of faith, disbelief in the gods, in fact, originated in a far more remote past. In Battling the Gods, Tim Whitmarsh journeys into the ancient Mediterranean, a world almost unimaginably different from our own, to recover the stories and voices of those who first refused the divinities. Homer’s epic poems of human striving, journeying, and passion were ancient Greece’s only “sacred texts,” but no ancient Greek thought twice about questioning or mocking his stories of the gods. Priests were functionaries rather than sources of moral or cosmological wisdom. The absence of centralized religious authority made for an extraordinary variety of perspectives on sacred matters, from the devotional to the atheos, or “godless.” Whitmarsh explores this kaleidoscopic range of ideas about the gods, focusing on the colorful individuals who challenged their existence. Among these were some of the greatest ancient poets and philosophers and writers, as well as the less well known: Diagoras of Melos, perhaps the first self-professed atheist; Democritus, the first materialist; Socrates, executed for rejecting the gods of the Athenian state; Epicurus and his followers, who thought gods could not intervene in human affairs; the brilliantly mischievous satirist Lucian of Samosata. Before the revolutions of late antiquity, which saw the scriptural religions of Christianity and Islam enforced by imperial might, there were few constraints on belief. Everything changed, however, in the millennium between the appearance of the Homeric poems and Christianity’s establishment as Rome’s state religion in the fourth century AD. As successive Greco-Roman empires grew in size and complexity, and power was increasingly concentrated in central capitals, states sought to impose collective religious adherence, first to cults devoted to individual rulers, and ultimately to monotheism. In this new world, there was no room for outright disbelief: the label “atheist” was used now to demonize anyone who merely disagreed with the orthodoxy—and so it would remain for centuries. As the twenty-first century shapes up into a time of mass information, but also, paradoxically, of collective amnesia concerning the tangled histories of religions, Whitmarsh provides a bracing antidote to our assumptions about the roots of freethinking. By shining a light on atheism’s first thousand years, Battling the Gods offers a timely reminder that nonbelief has a wealth of tradition of its own, and, indeed, its own heroes.
Download or read book Wittgenstein and Natural Religion written by Gordon Graham and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 2014 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Gordon Graham presents a bold new account of Wittgenstein's philosophy, which argues for its relevance to the study of religion and aims to revitalize the philosophy of 'true religion'. He uses Wittgenstein's conception of philosophy to argue in favour of the idea that 'true religion' is to be understood as human participation in divine life.
Download or read book Nature Religion in America written by Catherine L. Albanese and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1991-09-24 with total page 283 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Charts the multiple histories of American nature religion and explores the moral and spiritual responses the encounter with nature has provoked throughout American history. Traces the connections between movements and individuals. Includes figures from popular culture such as the Hutchinson Family Singers and Davy Crockett as well as Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau and John Muir.
Download or read book A Religion of Nature written by Donald A. Crosby and published by State University of New York Press. This book was released on 2012-02-01 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The beauty, sublimity, and wonder of nature have been justly celebrated in all of the religious traditions of the world, but usually these traditions have focused on beings or powers presumed to lie behind nature, providing nature's ultimate explanation and meaning. In a radical departure, Donald A. Crosby makes an eloquent case for regarding nature itself as the focus of religion, conceived without God, gods, or animating spirits of any kind, and argues that nature is metaphysically ultimate. He explores the concept of nature, the place of humans in nature, the responsibilities of humans to one another and to their natural environments, and offers a religious vision that grants to nature the kind of reverence, awe, love, and devotion formerly reserved for God. Crosby also shares his personal journey from theistic faith to a religion of nature.
Download or read book Is Religion Natural written by Dirk Evers and published by A&C Black. This book was released on 2012-10-06 with total page 220 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An exploration of the relationship between evolutionary psychology, naturalism, and theological reflections, published by ESSSAT, the European Society for the Study of Science and Theology.
Download or read book Natural Religion and the Nature of Religion written by Peter Byrne and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-05-02 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study offers students of religion and philosophy introductory chapters concerning the concept of natural religion. It holds that we can’t engage in useful discussion about the present concept of religion without a knowledge of the philosophical history that has shaped that concept. This is discussed with reference to the notion of natural religion to illustrate certain aspects of deism and its legacy. Originally published in 1989.
Download or read book Religion and the Order of Nature written by Seyyed Hossein Nasr and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 1996-09-26 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The current ecological crisis is a matter of urgent global concern, with solutions being sought on many fronts. In this book, Seyyed Hossein Nasr argues that the devastation of our world has been exacerbated, if not actually caused, by the reductionist view of nature that has been advanced by modern secular science. What is needed, he believes, is the recovery of the truth to which the great, enduring religions all attest; namely that nature is sacred. Nasr traces the historical process through which Western civilization moved away from the idea of nature as sacred and embraced a world view which sees humans as alienated from nature and nature itself as a machine to be dominated and manipulated by humans. His goal is to negate the totalitarian claims of modern science and to re-open the way to the religious view of the order of nature, developed over centuries in the cosmologies and sacred sciences of the great traditions. Each tradition, Nasr shows, has a wealth of knowledge and experience concerning the order of nature. The resuscitation of this knowledge, he argues, would allow religions all over the globe to enrich each other and cooperate to heal the wounds inflicted upon the Earth.
Download or read book Cicero on the Philosophy of Religion written by J. P. F. Wynne and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2019-10-17 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Do the gods love you? Cicero gives deep and surprising answers in two philosophical dialogues on traditional Roman religion.
Download or read book Natural Religion written by Frederick Turner and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2011-12-31 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is widespread belief that the world's religions con- tradict each other. It follows that if one religion is true, the others must be false--an assumption that implies, and may actually create, religious strife. In Natural Religion, acclaimed poet, critic and essayist Frederick Turner sets out to show that the natural world offers grounds for stating that all religions are, in some respect, true. Through the ages, various ways have been proposed to resolve religious differences. Some argue for the destruction of all religions but one's own. Others substitute an abstract principle for the real ritual and moral practice of religion. Still others doubt all religious truth and, consequently, all truth. Others accept a kind of pluralistic relativism. This book explores syncretism, whereby all religions are seen as grasping the same strange and complex reality, but by very different means and handles. The idea that all religions are true raises a supervening question: if so, what must the real physical universe be like? Turner approaches these questions in terms of scientific inquiry. There is not enough room in space itself to fit in all theologies; but there may be enough room in time if new scientific descriptions of time's nature are to be believed. Turner argues that in the time-models of contemporary cosmological and evolutionary science all times may be connected and time may be infinitely branched and causally looped so that both forward-in-time and backward-in-time factors may be in operation in the same event. Thus, the fundamental substance of the universe may be information rather than matter or energy. The universe is more like a vast living organism than a vast machine. Turner argues that all existing religions can be shown to fit into this model, which in turn points to deeper implications of religious doctrines, languages and practices. There would be plenty of "room" in such a view of time for a tree of different yet linked religious worlds and poetic language may be the most effective tool for describing the divine.
Download or read book Ramified Natural Theology in Science and Religion written by Rodney Holder and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-10-15 with total page 214 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a rationale for a new ‘ramified natural theology’ that is in dialogue with both science and historical-critical study of the Bible. Traditionally, knowledge of God has been seen to come from two sources, nature and revelation. However, a rigid separation between these sources cannot be maintained, since what purports to be revelation cannot be accepted without qualification: rational argument is needed to infer both the existence of God from nature and the particular truth claims of the Christian faith from the Bible. Hence the distinction between ‘bare natural theology’ and ‘ramified natural theology.’ The book begins with bare natural theology as background to its main focus on ramified natural theology. Bayesian confirmation theory is utilised to evaluate competing hypotheses in both cases, in a similar manner to that by which competing hypotheses in science can be evaluated on the basis of empirical data. In this way a case is built up for the rationality of a Christian theist worldview. Addressing issues of science, theology and revelation in a new framework, this book will be of keen interest to scholars working in Religion and Science, Natural Theology, Philosophy of Religion, Biblical Studies, Systematic Theology, and Science and Culture.
Download or read book Why We Need Religion written by Stephen T. Asma and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-05-09 with total page 288 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How we feel is as vital to our survival as how we think. This claim, based on the premise that emotions are largely adaptive, serves as the organizing theme of Why We Need Religion. This book is a novel pathway in a well-trodden field of religious studies and philosophy of religion. Stephen Asma argues that, like art, religion has direct access to our emotional lives in ways that science does not. Yes, science can give us emotional feelings of wonder and the sublime--we can feel the sacred depths of nature--but there are many forms of human suffering and vulnerability that are beyond the reach of help from science. Different emotional stresses require different kinds of rescue. Unlike secular authors who praise religion's ethical and civilizing function, Asma argues that its core value lies in its emotionally therapeutic power. No theorist of religion has failed to notice the importance of emotions in spiritual and ritual life, but truly systematic research has only recently delivered concrete data on the neurology, psychology, and anthropology of the emotional systems. This very recent "affective turn" has begun to map out a powerful territory of embodied cognition. Why We Need Religion incorporates new data from these affective sciences into the philosophy of religion. It goes on to describe the way in which religion manages those systems--rage, play, lust, care, grief, and so on. Finally, it argues that religion is still the best cultural apparatus for doing this adaptive work. In short, the book is a Darwinian defense of religious emotions and the cultural systems that manage them.
Download or read book A Natural History of Natural Theology written by Helen De Cruz and published by MIT Press. This book was released on 2024-06-11 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An examination of the cognitive foundations of intuitions about the existence and attributes of God. Questions about the existence and attributes of God form the subject matter of natural theology, which seeks to gain knowledge of the divine by relying on reason and experience of the world. Arguments in natural theology rely largely on intuitions and inferences that seem natural to us, occurring spontaneously—at the sight of a beautiful landscape, perhaps, or in wonderment at the complexity of the cosmos—even to a nonphilosopher. In this book, Helen De Cruz and Johan De Smedt examine the cognitive origins of arguments in natural theology. They find that although natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality. Using evidence and theories from disciplines including the cognitive science of religion, evolutionary ethics, evolutionary aesthetics, and the cognitive science of testimony, they show that these intuitions emerge early in development and are a stable part of human cognition. De Cruz and De Smedt analyze the cognitive underpinnings of five well-known arguments for the existence of God: the argument from design, the cosmological argument, the moral argument, the argument from beauty, and the argument from miracles. Finally, they consider whether the cognitive origins of these natural theological arguments should affect their rationality.
Download or read book Supernatural as Natural written by Michael Winkelman and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-09-04 with total page 378 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book provides a general introduction to the biological and evolutionary bases of religion and is suitable for introductory level courses in the anthropology and psychology of religion and comparative religion. Why did human ancestors everywhere adopt religious beliefs and customs? The presence and persistence of many religious features across the globe and time suggests that it is natural for humans to believe in the supernatural. In this new text, the authors explore both the biological and cultural dimensions of religion and the evolutionary origins of religious features.
Download or read book Intelligent Design and Religion as a Natural Phenomenon written by John S. Wilkins and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-03-02 with total page 559 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past decade a strident public debate has arisen about the nature and origin of religions. Controversies include how exactly religion evolved, whether by individual or group selection, if it is adaptive, and if not, whether and how it is a side effect of evolution. This volume focuses on the issue of naturalizing religion: on the ways in which cognitive science and social sciences have treated religion as a natural phenomenon. It questions whether religious behaviour, institutions, and experiences can be explained in natural terms. The editor brings together some of the best published work on the definition of 'religion', intelligent design and the evolution of religion.
