Download or read book The Emergence of Religion in Human Evolution written by Margaret Boone Rappaport and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2019-12-09 with total page 251 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religious capacity is a highly elaborate, neurocognitive human trait that has a solid evolutionary foundation. This book uses a multidisciplinary approach to describe millions of years of biological innovations that eventually give rise to the modern trait and its varied expression in humanity’s many religions. The authors present a scientific model and a central thesis that the brain organs, networks, and capacities that allowed humans to survive physically also gave our species the ability to create theologies, find sustenance in religious practice, and use religion to support the social group. Yet, the trait of religious capacity remains non-obligatory, like reading and mathematics. The individual can choose not to use it. The approach relies on research findings in nine disciplines, including the work of countless neuroscientists, paleoneurologists, archaeologists, cognitive scientists, and psychologists. This is a cutting-edge examination of the evolutionary origins of humanity’s interaction with the supernatural. It will be of keen interest to academics working in Religious Studies, Neuroscience, Cognitive Science, Anthropology, Evolutionary Biology, and Psychology.
Download or read book Religion as a Human Capacity written by Timothy Light and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2018-08-14 with total page 479 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Prepared in honor of E. Thomas Lawson, the essays in Religion as a Human Capacity offer a broad range of cognitivist theoretical explorations of religion, as well as cutting-edge applications of cognitive and other contemporary theories to religious data.
Download or read book Religion in Human Evolution written by Robert N. Bellah and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2017-05-08 with total page 777 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice An ABC Australia Best Book on Religion and Ethics of the Year Distinguished Book Award, Sociology of Religion Section of the American Sociological Association Religion in Human Evolution is a work of extraordinary ambition—a wide-ranging, nuanced probing of our biological past to discover the kinds of lives that human beings have most often imagined were worth living. It offers what is frequently seen as a forbidden theory of the origin of religion that goes deep into evolution, especially but not exclusively cultural evolution. “Of Bellah’s brilliance there can be no doubt. The sheer amount this man knows about religion is otherworldly...Bellah stands in the tradition of such stalwarts of the sociological imagination as Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Only one word is appropriate to characterize this book’s subject as well as its substance, and that is ‘magisterial.’” —Alan Wolfe, New York Times Book Review “Religion in Human Evolution is a magnum opus founded on careful research and immersed in the ‘reflective judgment’ of one of our best thinkers and writers.” —Richard L. Wood, Commonweal
Download or read book Why We Believe written by Agustin Fuentes and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2019-09-24 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A wide-ranging argument by a renowned anthropologist that the capacity to believe is what makes us human Why are so many humans religious? Why do we daydream, imagine, and hope? Philosophers, theologians, social scientists, and historians have offered explanations for centuries, but their accounts often ignore or even avoid human evolution. Evolutionary scientists answer with proposals for why ritual, religion, and faith make sense as adaptations to past challenges or as by-products of our hyper-complex cognitive capacities. But what if the focus on religion is too narrow? Renowned anthropologist Agustín Fuentes argues that the capacity to be religious is actually a small part of a larger and deeper human capacity to believe. Why believe in religion, economies, love? A fascinating intervention into some of the most common misconceptions about human nature, this book employs evolutionary, neurobiological, and anthropological evidence to argue that belief—the ability to commit passionately and wholeheartedly to an idea—is central to the human way of being in the world.
Download or read book Religion and the Human Prospect written by Alexander Saxton and published by Aakar Books. This book was released on 2006 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Since September 11, 2001, Religion Has Been At The Center Of Debates About The Global Future. Religion And The Human Prospect Relates These Issues Systematically To A Path-Breaking Interpretation Of The History Of Religion, Its Part In Human Development, And Its Potential Role In Preventing Or Enabling Global Catastrophe.Religion Has Made Possible Critical Transitions In The Emergence And Development Of Human Society. At The Moment When Our Humanoid Ancestors Became Aware Of The Inevitability Of Death, Religion Interposed The Belief In Spiritual Beings Who Gave It New Significance. When Individual Self-Interest And Collective Survival Conflicted, Religion Defended Collective Survival By Codifying Its Requirements As Morality. When Inequalities Of Wealth And Power Developed, Religion Extended Moral Codes To Include Obligations Of Dominance And Submission. Religion Enabled A Species Facing Constant Hunger And Scarcity To Adapt And Spread. Today, However, Facing Ecological Disaster, Exhaustion Of Essential Natural Resources, And The Proliferation Of Nuclear, Chemical And Biological Weapons, Religion No Longer Provides A Collective Defense Mechanism For The Human Species. Instead, The Solutions It Has Provided Have Now Become Central To The Problem Of Human Survival.This Magisterial And Compelling Work Weaves Together Evolutionary Theory, Anthropology, Reflection On Theological Treatments Of The Problem Of Evil, And Ideas From Literature And Philosophy Into An Account Of The Human Prospect That Is Truly Epic In Its Ambition And Explanatory Power.
Download or read book Theologies of American Exceptionalism written by Winnifred Fallers Sullivan and published by Religion and the Human. This book was released on 2021-09-07 with total page 154 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Together these essays challenge the reader to think America anew.
Download or read book Religion and the Human Future written by David E. Klemm and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-01-30 with total page 216 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This powerful manifesto outlines a vision called theological humanism based on the idea that that the integrity of life provides a way to articulate the meaning of religion for the human future. Explores a profound quest to understand the meaning and responsibility of our shared and yet divided humanity amidst the uncertainty of modern society Articulates the idea that human beings are mixed creatures striving for integrity not only trying to conform to God's will Sets forth a dynamic and robust vision of human life beyond the divisions that haunt the humanities, social sciences, theology, and religious studies
Download or read book Religion without God written by Ronald Dworkin and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2013-10-01 with total page 71 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In his last book, Ronald Dworkin addresses questions that men and women have asked through the ages: What is religion and what is God’s place in it? What is death and what is immortality? Based on the 2011 Einstein Lectures, Religion without God is inspired by remarks Einstein made that if religion consists of awe toward mysteries which “manifest themselves in the highest wisdom and the most radiant beauty, and which our dull faculties can comprehend only in the most primitive forms,” then, he, Einstein, was a religious person. Dworkin joins Einstein’s sense of cosmic mystery and beauty to the claim that value is objective, independent of mind, and immanent in the world. He rejects the metaphysics of naturalism—that nothing is real except what can be studied by the natural sciences. Belief in God is one manifestation of this deeper worldview, but not the only one. The conviction that God underwrites value presupposes a prior commitment to the independent reality of that value—a commitment that is available to nonbelievers as well. So theists share a commitment with some atheists that is more fundamental than what divides them. Freedom of religion should flow not from a respect for belief in God but from the right to ethical independence. Dworkin hoped that this short book would contribute to rational conversation and the softening of religious fear and hatred. Religion without God is the work of a humanist who recognized both the possibilities and limitations of humanity.
Download or read book Religion as Communication written by Enzo Pace and published by Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.. This book was released on 2011 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why do gods persist in contemporary society? This book provides an insight on a new approach to religious studies, drawn from systems theory to consider religion as a means of communication, and offers a critical alternative to the secularization theory to explain why religion persists in modernity.
Download or read book A Secular Age written by Charles Taylor and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 889 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The place of religion in society has changed profoundly in the last few centuries, particularly in the West. In what will be a defining book for our time, Taylor takes up the question of what these changes mean, and what, precisely, happens when a society becomes one in which faith is only one human possibility among others.
Download or read book How Religion Evolved written by Robin Dunbar and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2022 with total page 353 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "For as long as history has been with us, religion has been a feature of human life. There is no known culture for which we have an ethnographic or an archaeological record that does not have some form of religion. Even in the secular societies that have become more common in the past few centuries, there are people who consider themselves religious and aspire to practise the rituals of their religion. These religions vary in form, style and size from small cults numbering a few hundred people centred around a charismatic leader to worldwide organizations numbering tens, or even hundreds, of millions of adherents with representations in every country. Some, like Buddhism, take an individualistic stance (your salvation is entirely in your own hands), some like the older Abrahamic religions view salvation as more of a collective activity through the performance of appropriate rituals, and a few (Judaism is one) have no formal concept of an afterlife. Some like Christianity and Islam believe in a single all- powerful God,
Download or read book Religious Affects written by Donovan O. Schaefer and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-11-13 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Religious Affects Donovan O. Schaefer challenges the notion that religion is inextricably linked to language and belief, proposing instead that it is primarily driven by affects. Drawing on affect theory, evolutionary biology, and poststructuralist theory, Schaefer builds on the recent materialist shift in religious studies to relocate religious practices in the affective realm—an insight that helps us better understand how religion is lived in conjunction with systems of power. To demonstrate religion's animality and how it works affectively, Schaefer turns to a series of case studies, including the documentary Jesus Camp and contemporary American Islamophobia. Placing affect theory in conversation with post-Darwinian evolutionary theory, Schaefer explores the extent to which nonhuman animals have the capacity to practice religion, linking human forms of religion and power through a new analysis of the chimpanzee waterfall dance as observed by Jane Goodall. In this compelling case for the use of affect theory in religious studies, Schaefer provides a new model for mapping relations between religion, politics, species, globalization, secularism, race, and ethics.
Download or read book Health and Human Flourishing written by Carol R. Taylor and published by Georgetown University Press. This book was released on 2006-06-20 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What, exactly, does it mean to be human? It is an age-old question, one for which theology, philosophy, science, and medicine have all provided different answers. But though a unified response to the question can no longer be taken for granted, how we answer it frames the wide range of different norms, principles, values, and intuitions that characterize today's bioethical discussions. If we don't know what it means to be human, how can we judge whether biomedical sciences threaten or enhance our humanity? This fundamental question, however, receives little attention in the study of bioethics. In a field consumed with the promises and perils of new medical discoveries, emerging technologies, and unprecedented social change, current conversations about bioethics focus primarily on questions of harm and benefit, patient autonomy, and equality of health care distribution. Prevailing models of medical ethics emphasize human capacity for self-control and self-determination, rarely considering such inescapable dimensions of the human condition as disability, loss, and suffering, community and dignity, all of which make it difficult for us to be truly independent. In Health and Human Flourishing, contributors from a wide range of disciplines mine the intersection of the secular and the religious, the medical and the moral, to unearth the ethical and clinical implications of these facets of human existence. Their aim is a richer bioethics, one that takes into account the roles of vulnerability, dignity, integrity, and relationality in human affliction as well as human thriving. Including an examination of how a theological anthropology—a theological understanding of what it means to be a human being—can help us better understand health care, social policy, and science, this thought-provoking anthology will inspire much-needed conversation among philosophers, theologians, and health care professionals.
Download or read book How God Changes Your Brain written by Andrew Newberg, M.D. and published by Ballantine Books. This book was released on 2010-03-23 with total page 369 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: God is great—for your mental, physical, and spiritual health. Based on new evidence culled from brain-scan studies, a wide-reaching survey of people’s religious and spiritual experiences, and the authors’ analyses of adult drawings of God, neuroscientist Andrew Newberg and therapist Mark Robert Waldman offer the following breakthrough discoveries: • Not only do prayer and spiritual practice reduce stress, but just twelve minutes of meditation per day may slow down the aging process. • Contemplating a loving God rather than a punitive God reduces anxiety and depression and increases feelings of security, compassion, and love. • Fundamentalism, in and of itself, can be personally beneficial, but the prejudice generated by extreme beliefs can permanently damage your brain. • Intense prayer and meditation permanently change numerous structures and functions in the brain, altering your values and the way you perceive reality. Both a revelatory work of modern science and a practical guide for readers to enhance their physical and emotional health, How God Changes Your Brain is a first-of-a-kind book about faith that is as credible as it is inspiring.
Download or read book Biology Religion and Philosophy written by Michael Peterson and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-04-08 with total page 285 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A comprehensive and accessible survey of the major issues at the biology-religion interface.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion written by Peter Clarke and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-02-04 with total page 1063 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Sociology of Religion draws on the expertise of an international team of scholars providing both an entry point into the sociological study and understanding of religion and an in-depth survey into its changing forms and content in the contemporary world. The role and impact of religion and spirituality on the politics, culture, education and health in the modern world is rigorously discussed and debated. The study of the sociology of religion forges interdisciplinary links to explore aspects of continuity and change in the contemporary interface between society and religion. Using a combination of theoretical, methodological and content-led approaches, the fifty-seven contributors collectively emphasise the complex relationships between religion and aspects of life from scientific research to law, ecology to art, music to cognitive science, crime to institutional health care and more. The developing character of religion, irreligion and atheism and the impact of religious diversity on social cohesion are explored. An overview of current scholarship in the field is provided in each themed chapter with an emphasis on encouraging new thinking and reflection on familiar and emergent themes to stimulate further debate and scholarship. The resulting essay collection provides an invaluable resource for research and teaching in this diverse discipline.
Download or read book Religion That Heals Religion That Harms written by James L. Griffith and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 2010-08-09 with total page 289 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From James L. Griffith, well known for his work on harnessing the healing potential of religion and spirituality, this book helps clinicians to intervene effectively in situations where religion is causing harm. Vivid examples illustrate how religious beliefs and practices may propel suicide, violence, self-neglect, or undue suffering in the face of medical or emotional challenges. Griffith also unravels the links between psychiatric illness and distorted religious experience. He demonstrates empathic, respectful ways to interview patients who disdain contact with mental health professionals, yet whose religious lives put themselves or others at risk. The book incorporates cutting-edge research on the psychology of religion and social neuroscience.
