Scientific Studies of Religion: Inquiry and Explanation – serie
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55 produkter
55 produkter
488 kr
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Religion is an evolutionary puzzle. It involves beliefs in counterfactual worlds and engagement in costly rituals. Yet religion is widespread across all human cultures and eras. This begs the question, why are so many people attracted to religion? In The Attraction of Religion, essays by leading scholars in evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and religious studies demonstrate how religion may be related to evolutionary adaptations because religious commitments involve fitness-enhancing behaviours that promote reproduction, kinship, and social solidarity. Could it be that religion is wide-spread, at least in the modern world, because it helps to facilitate cooperative breeding? International contributors explore the philosophical and theoretical arguments for and against the use of costly signalling, sexual selection, and related theories to explain religion, and empirical findings that support or disconfirm such claims. The first book-length treatment that focuses specifically on costly signalling, sexual selection, and related evolutionary theories to explain religion, The Attraction of Religion will be an important contribution to the field and will be of interest to researchers in the fields of evolutionary psychology, religion and science, the psychology of religion, and anthropology of religion.
1 703 kr
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Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson are considered the founders of the field of the cognitive science of religion. Since its inception over twenty years ago, the cognitive science of religion has raised questions about the philosophical foundations and implications of such a scientific approach. This volume from McCauley, including chapters co-authored by Lawson, is the first book-length project to focus on such questions, resulting in a compelling volume that addresses fundamental questions that any scholar of religion should ask.The essays collected in this volume are those that initially defined this scientific field for the study of religion. These essays deal with issues of methodology, reductionism, resistance to the scientific study of religion, and other criticisms that have been lodged against the cognitive science of religion. The new final chapter sees McCauley reflect on developments in this field since its founding. Tackling these debates head on and in one place for the first time, this volume belongs on the shelf of every researcher interested in this now established approach to the study of religion within a range of disciplines, including religious studies, philosophy, anthropology and the psychology of religion.
Religion Explained?
The Cognitive Science of Religion after Twenty-five Years
Inbunden, Engelska, 2017
1 703 kr
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With contributions from founders of the field, including Justin Barrett, E. Thomas Lawson, Robert N. McCauley, Paschal Boyer, Armin Geertz and Harvey Whitehouse, as well as from younger scholars from successive stages in the field’s development, this is an important survey of the first twenty-five years of the cognitive science of religion.Each chapter provides the author’s views on the contributions the cognitive science of religion has made to the academic study of religion, as well as any shortcomings in the field and challenges for the future. Religion Explained? The Cognitive Science of Religion after Twenty-five Years calls attention to the field whilst providing an accessible and diverse survey of approaches from key voices, as well as offering suggestions for further research within the field. This book is essential reading for anyone in religious studies, anthropology, and the scientific study of religion.
Cognitive Science of Religion
A Methodological Introduction to Key Empirical Studies
Häftad, Engelska, 2019
408 kr
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The Cognitive Science of Religion introduces students to key empirical studies conducted over the past 25 years in this new and rapidly expanding field. In these studies, cognitive scientists of religion have applied the theories, findings and research tools of the cognitive sciences to understanding religious thought, behaviour and social dynamics. Each chapter is written by a leading international scholar, and summarizes in non-technical language the original empirical study conducted by the scholar. No prior or statistical knowledge is presumed, and studies included range from the classic to the more recent and innovative cases.Students will learn about the theories that cognitive scientists have employed to explain recurrent features of religiosity across cultures and historical eras, how scholars have tested those theories, and what the results of those tests have revealed and suggest. Written to be accessible to undergraduates, this provides a much-needed survey of empirical studies in the cognitive science of religion.
Cognitive Science of Religion
A Methodological Introduction to Key Empirical Studies
Inbunden, Engelska, 2019
1 343 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
The Cognitive Science of Religion introduces students to key empirical studies conducted over the past 25 years in this new and rapidly expanding field. In these studies, cognitive scientists of religion have applied the theories, findings and research tools of the cognitive sciences to understanding religious thought, behaviour and social dynamics. Each chapter is written by a leading international scholar, and summarizes in non-technical language the original empirical study conducted by the scholar. No prior or statistical knowledge is presumed, and studies included range from the classic to the more recent and innovative cases.Students will learn about the theories that cognitive scientists have employed to explain recurrent features of religiosity across cultures and historical eras, how scholars have tested those theories, and what the results of those tests have revealed and suggest. Written to be accessible to undergraduates, this provides a much-needed survey of empirical studies in the cognitive science of religion.
528 kr
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Radek Kundt compares the notion of evolution in cultural evolutionary theories with neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory to determine the value of the biological concept for studying culture. Contemporary Evolutionary Theories of Culture and the Study of Religion surveys the historical background of cultural evolution as used in the study of religion, pinpointing major objections to classical nineteenth-century theories. Radek Kundt argues that contemporary theories of cultural evolution do not repeat the same mistakes but that when they are evaluated in terms of fitting the core requirements of neo-Darwinian natural selection, it is clear that they are not legitimate extensions of neo-Darwinian theory. Rather, they are poor metaphors and misleading analogies which add little to conventional cause-and-effect historiographical work.This book also introduces an alternative evolutionary approach to the study of culture which does not claim that the principles of neo-Darwinian evolution should be applicable outside the biological domain. Radek Kundt shows that this alternative evolutionary approach nevertheless provides a deeply enriching line of enquiry that incorporates both biological evolutionary history as shaping cultural change and culture as a force acting on the gene.
1 703 kr
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Religious Evolution and the Axial Age describes and explains the evolution of religion over the past ten millennia. It shows that an overall evolutionary sequence can be observed, running from the spirit and shaman dominated religions of small-scale societies, to the archaic religions of the ancient civilizations, and then to the salvation religions of the Axial Age.Stephen K. Sanderson draws on ideas from new cognitive and evolutionary psychological theories, as well as comparative religion, anthropology, history, and sociology. He argues that religion is a biological adaptation that evolved in order to solve a number of human problems, especially those concerned with existential anxiety and ontological insecurity. Much of the focus of the book is on the Axial Age, the period in the second half of the first millennium BCE that marked the greatest religious transformation in world history. The book demonstrates that, as a result of massive increases in the scale and scope of war and large-scale urbanization, the problems of existential anxiety and ontological insecurity became particularly acute. These changes evoked new religious needs, especially for salvation and release from suffering. As a result entirely new religions—Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism—arose to help people cope with the demands of the new historical era.
488 kr
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The cross-cultural study of religion has always gone hand in hand with the worldview, sciences, or intellectual frameworks of the time. These frames, whether focused on psychology or politics, gender or colonialism, bring out perspectives for understanding religious behavior. Today one of our common civic worldviews is represented in the shift from scriptural to evolutionary history. This volume brings together in one place key essays by professor emeritus William Paden, showing a progression of steps he has taken in exploring bridgeworks between comparative religion and evolutionary models of religious behavior. One of the leading scholars in religious studies, Paden shows ways that religion can be contextualized as part of the natural world and thus seen as reflecting the ingrained sociality and world-making drive of the human species.Paden argues that although comparativism has been challenged as too culture-bound, too western, or too gendered, cross-over categories and concepts between religious traditions cannot be avoided. Arguing that there are recurrent patterns of human behavior common to our species and that thereby underlie all cultures, he proposes that the missing link in the Religion Evolution debate is comparative religion, a global, cross-cultural perspective on religious behaviours throughout time. Each article is contextualized within this overall trajectory of thought within Paden's work and the history of the discipline as a whole.
488 kr
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There are no atheists in foxholes; or so we hear. The thought that the fear of death motivates religious belief has been around since the earliest speculations about the origins of religion. There are hints of this idea in the ancient world, but the theory achieves prominence in the works of Enlightenment critics and Victorian theorists of religion, and has been further developed by contemporary cognitive scientists. Why do people believe in gods? Because they fear death.Yet despite the abiding appeal of this simple hypothesis, there has not been a systematic attempt to evaluate its central claims and the assumptions underlying them. Do human beings fear death? If so, who fears death more, religious or nonreligious people? Do reminders of our mortality really motivate religious belief? Do religious beliefs actually provide comfort against the inevitability of death? In Death Anxiety and Religious Belief, Jonathan Jong and Jamin Halberstadt begin to answer these questions, drawing on the extensive literature on the psychology of death anxiety and religious belief, from childhood to the point of death, as well as their own experimental research on conscious and unconscious fear and faith. In the course of their investigations, they consider the history of ideas about religion’s origins, challenges of psychological measurement, and the very nature of emotion and belief.
Unnatural History of Religions
Academia, Post-truth and the Quest for Scientific Knowledge
Inbunden, Engelska, 2018
1 572 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
An Unnatural History of Religions examines the origins, development, and critical issues concerning the history of religion and its relationship with science. The book explores the ideological biases, logical fallacies, and unwarranted beliefs that surround the scientific foundations (or lack thereof) in the academic discipline of the history of religions, positioning them in today’s ‘post-truth’ culture.Leonardo Ambasciano provides the necessary critical background to evaluate the most important theories and working concepts dedicated to the explanation of the historical developments of religion. He covers the most important topics and paradigm shifts in the field, such as phenomenology, postmodernism, and cognitive science. These are taken into consideration chronologically, each time with case studies on topics such as shamanism, gender biases, ethnocentrism, and biological evolution. Ambasciano argues that the roots of post-truth may be deep in human biases, but that historical justifications change each time, resulting in different combinations. The surprising rise of once-fringe beliefs, such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscientific claims, and so-called scientific creationism, demonstrates the alarming influence that post-truth ideas may exert on both politics and society. Recognising them before they spread anew may be the first step towards a scientifically renewed study of religion.
1 572 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
What role do texts play in religious practice? What is the relationship between these texts and cognition? Are some texts more successful because they are better adapted to our cognitive structures? Why is biblical interpretation necessary, and what is the cognitive process behind it? This book considers such questions, and fills the gap in research on religious texts and narratives in the cognitive science of religion.The study of ancient religions and biblical studies are dominated by textual evidence. However, the cognitive science of religion is lacking significant research on the language and textual interpretation of this literature. This book presents a systematic attempt to redefine the interpretation of religious texts in a cognitive framework, providing concrete textual analysis on a broad selection of biblical passages. It explores the ways that cognitive approaches to language and textual interpretation expand the disciplines of the cognitive science of religion and biblical studies.This book brings together methodology from the cognitive sciences, linguistics, philology, biblical studies, and religious studies, to offer a new perspective for biblical studies and cognitive sciences. It presents a renewed vision of textual interpretation - one that aligns hermeneutical reflection with our cognitive capacities.
1 476 kr
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How should we study religion? Must we be religious ourselves to truly understand it? Do we study religion to advance our knowledge, or should the study of religions help to reintroduce the sacred into our increasingly secularized world? Juraj Franek argues that the study of religion has long been split into two competing paradigms: reductive (naturalist) and non-reductive (protectionist). While the naturalistic approach seems to run the risk of explaining religious phenomena away, the protectionist approach appears to risk falling short of the methodological standards of modern science. Franek uses primary source material from Greek and Latin sources to show that both competing paradigms are traceable to Presocratic philosophy and early Christian literature. He presents the idea that naturalists are distant heirs, not only of the French Enlightenment, but also of the Ionian one. Likewise, he argues that protectionists owe much of their arguments and strategies, not only to Luther and the Reformation, but to the earliest Christian literature.This book analyses the conflict between reductive and non-reductive approach in the modern study of religions, and positions the Cognitive Science of Religion against a background of previous theories - ancient and modern - to demonstrate its importance for the revindication of the naturalist paradigm.
1 276 kr
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How should ancient religious ideas be approached? Is "religion" an applicable term to antiquity? Should classicists, ancient historians, and religious studies scholars work more closely together?Nickolas P. Roubekas argues that there is a disciplinary gap between the study of Greek and Roman religions and the study of “religion” as a category—a gap that has often resulted in contradictory conclusions regarding Greek and Roman religion. This book addresses this lack of interdisciplinarity by providing an overview, criticism, and assessment of this chasm. It provides a theoretical approach to this historical period, raising the issue of the relationship between “theory of religion” and “history of religion,” and explores how history influences theory and vice versa. It also presents an in-depth critique of some crucial problems that have been central to the discussions of scholars who work on Graeco-Roman antiquity, encouraging us to re-examine how we approach the study of ancient religions.
1 572 kr
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In these essays, Donald Wiebe unveils a significant problem in the academic study of religion in colleges and universities in North America and Europe - that studies almost always exhibit a religious bias. To explore this issue, Wiebe looks at the religious and moral agendas behind the study of religion, showing that the boundaries between the objective study of religion and religious education as a tool for bettering society have become blurred. As a result, he argues, religious studies departments have fostered an environment where religion has become a learned or scholarly practice, rather than the object of academic scrutiny.This book provides a critical history of the failure of 20th- and 21st-century scholars to follow through on the 19th-century ideal of an objective scientific study of religious thought and behaviour. Although emancipated from direct ecclesiastical control and, to some extent, from sectarian theologizing, Wiebe argues that research and scholarship in the academic department of religious studies has failed to break free from religious constraints. He shows that an objective scientific study of religious thought and practice is not only possible, but the only appropriate approach to the study of religious phenomena.
1 343 kr
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In Understanding Religion through Artificial Intelligence, Justin E. Lane looks at the reasons why humans feel they are part of a religious group, despite often being removed from other group members by vast distances or multiple generations. To achieve this, Lane offers a new perspective that integrates religious studies with psychology, anthropology, and data science, as well as with research at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence (AI).After providing a critical analysis of approaches to religion and social cohesion, Lane proposes a new model for religious studies, which he calls the “Information Identity System.” This model focuses on the idea of conceptual ties: links between an individual’s self-concept and the ancient beliefs of their religious group. Lane explores this idea through real-world examples, ranging from the rise in global Pentecostalism, to religious extremism and self-radicalization, to the effect of 9/11 on sermons. Lane uses this lens to show how we can understand religion and culture today, and how we can better contextualize the changes we see in the social world around us.
474 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Robert N. McCauley and E. Thomas Lawson are considered the founders of the field of the cognitive science of religion. Since its inception over twenty years ago, the cognitive science of religion has raised questions about the philosophical foundations and implications of such a scientific approach. This volume from McCauley, including chapters co-authored by Lawson, is the first book-length project to focus on such questions, resulting in a compelling volume that addresses fundamental questions that any scholar of religion should ask.The essays collected in this volume are those that initially defined this scientific field for the study of religion. These essays deal with issues of methodology, reductionism, resistance to the scientific study of religion, and other criticisms that have been lodged against the cognitive science of religion. The new final chapter sees McCauley reflect on developments in this field since its founding. Tackling these debates head on and in one place for the first time, this volume belongs on the shelf of every researcher interested in this now established approach to the study of religion within a range of disciplines, including religious studies, philosophy, anthropology and the psychology of religion.
474 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
With contributions from founders of the field, including Justin Barrett, E. Thomas Lawson, Robert N. McCauley, Paschal Boyer, Armin Geertz and Harvey Whitehouse, as well as from younger scholars from successive stages in the field’s development, this is an important survey of the first twenty-five years of the cognitive science of religion.Each chapter provides the author’s views on the contributions the cognitive science of religion has made to the academic study of religion, as well as any shortcomings in the field and challenges for the future. Religion Explained? The Cognitive Science of Religion after Twenty-five Years calls attention to the field whilst providing an accessible and diverse survey of approaches from key voices, as well as offering suggestions for further research within the field. This book is essential reading for anyone in religious studies, anthropology, and the scientific study of religion.
1 572 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
In this book, Glenn Barenthin provides a new solution to a key question in the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion: why do humans cooperate? What led humans, uniquely among animals, to have large-scale civilizations with unprecedented cooperation? One explanation, propagated by the Big God Proponents (BGP), argues that a moralizing God is the crucial motivator for the pro-social behaviour necessary for large scale civilization. To explore this idea, Barenthin provides a critical assessment of the evidence provided by the BGP, and also discusses the place of God in our moral thinking.However, using evidence from anthropology, history, cognitive science, psychology and game theory, Barenthin presents a new theory: that the evolutionary pressures faced by our forebears paved the way for emerging humans to engage in what he terms ‘thin cooperation’. This type of cooperation requires individuals to comprehend the reasons for their actions, and it is often done with others in mind. Finally, Barenthin argues that humans also have the capacity for ‘thick cooperation’, which is made possible by those fighting for the rights of strangers in an attempt to make the world a fairer place for a greater number of people.
1 476 kr
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In this book, Veronika Rybanska explores how ritual participation affects the cognitive abilities of children. Rybanska argues that, far from being a simple matter of mindless copying, ritual participation in childhood requires rigorous computation by cognitive mechanisms. In turn, this computation can improve a child’s ‘executive functioning’: a set of cognitive skills that are essential for successful cognitive, social and psychological development.After providing a critique of existing literature on religion and ritual, Rybanska presents a new interdisciplinary approach that draws from anthropology, psychology and cognitive neuroscience. Using cross-cultural examples, including a comparison between Melanesian culture and Western culture, Rybanska shows that some of the most socially important effects of rituals seem to be universal. The implications of this research suggest that we should rethink multiple aspects of child-rearing and educational policy, and shows that the presence of some form of ritual during childhood could have positive evolutionary benefits.
474 kr
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Religious Evolution and the Axial Age describes and explains the evolution of religion over the past ten millennia. It shows that an overall evolutionary sequence can be observed, running from the spirit and shaman dominated religions of small-scale societies, to the archaic religions of the ancient civilizations, and then to the salvation religions of the Axial Age.Stephen K. Sanderson draws on ideas from new cognitive and evolutionary psychological theories, as well as comparative religion, anthropology, history, and sociology. He argues that religion is a biological adaptation that evolved in order to solve a number of human problems, especially those concerned with existential anxiety and ontological insecurity. Much of the focus of the book is on the Axial Age, the period in the second half of the first millennium BCE that marked the greatest religious transformation in world history. The book demonstrates that, as a result of massive increases in the scale and scope of war and large-scale urbanization, the problems of existential anxiety and ontological insecurity became particularly acute. These changes evoked new religious needs, especially for salvation and release from suffering. As a result entirely new religions—Zoroastrianism, Judaism, Christianity, Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism—arose to help people cope with the demands of the new historical era.
1 343 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Building on critical work in biblical studies, which shows how a historically-bounded heretical tradition called Gnosticism was ‘invented’, this work focuses on the following stage in which it was “essentialised” into a sui generis, universal category of religion. At the same time, it shows how Gnosticism became a religious self-identifier, with a number of sizable contemporary groups identifying as Gnostics today, drawing on the same discourses.This book provides a history of this problematic category, and its relationship with scholarly and popular discourse on religion in the twentieth century. It uses a critical-historical method to show how and why Gnosis, Gnostic and Gnosticism were taken up by specific groups and individuals – practitioners and scholars – at different times. It shows how ideas about Gnosticism developed in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, drawing from continental phenomenology, Jungian psychology and post-Holocaust theology, to be constructed as a perennial religious current based on special knowledge of the divine in a corrupt world.David G. Robertson challenges how scholars interact with the category Gnosticism, and contributes to our understanding of the complex relationship between primary sources, academics and practitioners in category formation.
Unnatural History of Religions
Academia, Post-truth and the Quest for Scientific Knowledge
Häftad, Engelska, 2020
461 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
An Unnatural History of Religions examines the origins, development, and critical issues concerning the history of religion and its relationship with science. The book explores the ideological biases, logical fallacies, and unwarranted beliefs that surround the scientific foundations (or lack thereof) in the academic discipline of the history of religions, positioning them in today’s ‘post-truth’ culture.Leonardo Ambasciano provides the necessary critical background to evaluate the most important theories and working concepts dedicated to the explanation of the historical developments of religion. He covers the most important topics and paradigm shifts in the field, such as phenomenology, postmodernism, and cognitive science. These are taken into consideration chronologically, each time with case studies on topics such as shamanism, gender biases, ethnocentrism, and biological evolution. Ambasciano argues that the roots of post-truth may be deep in human biases, but that historical justifications change each time, resulting in different combinations. The surprising rise of once-fringe beliefs, such as conspiracy theories, pseudoscientific claims, and so-called scientific creationism, demonstrates the alarming influence that post-truth ideas may exert on both politics and society. Recognising them before they spread anew may be the first step towards a scientifically renewed study of religion.
1 276 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book argues that religion has emerged over evolutionary time as a strategy for managing the transmission, contraction, and eradication of infectious disease.From purity and pollution codes to blood sacrifices and irrational beliefs, the book shows how religion supports not only the physiological immune system, but the behavioral and psychological immune systems as well. The book also addresses those moments when it appears that religion becomes maladaptive, that is, when religion causes “autoimmune problems,” such as celibacy and anti-vaccination.Engaging material ranging from evolutionary and social psychology to human behavioral ecology, biological anthropology, Darwinian medicine, and religious studies, the book proposes that in order to understand the human animal’s enduring fascination with religion, one must take into account the enduring need to manage infectious disease.
1 209 kr
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Why did Egyptian cults, especially those dedicated to the goddess Isis and god Sarapis, spread so successfully across the ancient Mediterranean after the death of Alexander the Great? How are we limited by the established methodological apparatus of historiography and which innovative methods from other disciplines can overcome these limits?In this book, Tomáš Glomb shows that while the interplay of different factors such as the economy, climate, and politics created favorable conditions for the early spread of the Isiac cults, the use of innovative quantitative methods can shed new light and help disentangle the complex interplay of individual factors.Using a combination of geospatial modeling, mathematical modeling, and network analysis, Glomb determines that, at least in the regions of the Hellenistic Aegean and western Asia Minor, the political channels created by the Ptolemaic dynasty were a dominant force in the local spread of the Isiac cults. An important contribution to the historiography of the ancient Mediterranean, this book answers the specific question of “how it happened” as well as, “how can we answer it beyond the limits of the established methodological apparatus in historiography.”
408 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
Why did Egyptian cults, especially those dedicated to the goddess Isis and god Sarapis, spread so successfully across the ancient Mediterranean after the death of Alexander the Great? How are we limited by the established methodological apparatus of historiography and which innovative methods from other disciplines can overcome these limits?In this book, Tomáš Glomb shows that while the interplay of different factors such as the economy, climate, and politics created favorable conditions for the early spread of the Isiac cults, the use of innovative quantitative methods can shed new light and help disentangle the complex interplay of individual factors.Using a combination of geospatial modeling, mathematical modeling, and network analysis, Glomb determines that, at least in the regions of the Hellenistic Aegean and western Asia Minor, the political channels created by the Ptolemaic dynasty were a dominant force in the local spread of the Isiac cults. An important contribution to the historiography of the ancient Mediterranean, this book answers the specific question of “how it happened” as well as, “how can we answer it beyond the limits of the established methodological apparatus in historiography.”
448 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
What role do texts play in religious practice? What is the relationship between these texts and cognition? Are some texts more successful because they are better adapted to our cognitive structures? Why is biblical interpretation necessary, and what is the cognitive process behind it? This book considers such questions, and fills the gap in research on religious texts and narratives in the cognitive science of religion.The study of ancient religions and biblical studies are dominated by textual evidence. However, the cognitive science of religion is lacking significant research on the language and textual interpretation of this literature. This book presents a systematic attempt to redefine the interpretation of religious texts in a cognitive framework, providing concrete textual analysis on a broad selection of biblical passages. It explores the ways that cognitive approaches to language and textual interpretation expand the disciplines of the cognitive science of religion and biblical studies.This book brings together methodology from the cognitive sciences, linguistics, philology, biblical studies, and religious studies, to offer a new perspective for biblical studies and cognitive sciences. It presents a renewed vision of textual interpretation - one that aligns hermeneutical reflection with our cognitive capacities.
Construction of the Supernatural in Euro-American Cultures
Something Nice about Vampires
Inbunden, Engelska, 2021
1 276 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book describes aspects of the concept of the supernatural from the intellectual history of Euro-American cultures. These samplings shed light on issues in the study of religions and religion rather than attempting to provide either a lineally coherent or exhaustive account of a somewhat fraught and complicated notion. Observations include uses of the term among the ancient Greeks and medieval Christian theologians and 19th- and 20th-century social scientists. This book highlights more recent academics who draw on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences in attempting to make sense of recurrent features of the representations and meta-representations of different cultures. This includes such counter-intuitive notions as “the mysterious” among the Wayuu of Columbia and Venezuela and “vampires” in Europe and North America.These observations are concluded in a final essay – “Toward a Realistic and Relevant Science of Religion” – which presents considered opinions on how we might draw on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences to establish the foundations for a genuinely scientific study of religions and religion.Benson Saler sadly passed away shortly after writing this book. An appreciation of his work, written by Armin W. Geertz, is included in this volume.
Construction of the Supernatural in Euro-American Cultures
Something Nice about Vampires
Häftad, Engelska, 2023
408 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
This book describes aspects of the concept of the supernatural from the intellectual history of Euro-American cultures. These samplings shed light on issues in the study of religions and religion rather than attempting to provide either a lineally coherent or exhaustive account of a somewhat fraught and complicated notion. Observations include uses of the term among the ancient Greeks and medieval Christian theologians and 19th- and 20th-century social scientists. This book highlights more recent academics who draw on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences in attempting to make sense of recurrent features of the representations and meta-representations of different cultures. This includes such counter-intuitive notions as “the mysterious” among the Wayuu of Columbia and Venezuela and “vampires” in Europe and North America.These observations are concluded in a final essay – “Toward a Realistic and Relevant Science of Religion” – which presents considered opinions on how we might draw on the cognitive and evolutionary sciences to establish the foundations for a genuinely scientific study of religions and religion.Benson Saler sadly passed away shortly after writing this book. An appreciation of his work, written by Armin W. Geertz, is included in this volume.
408 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
In Understanding Religion through Artificial Intelligence, Justin E. Lane looks at the reasons why humans feel they are part of a religious group, despite often being removed from other group members by vast distances or multiple generations. To achieve this, Lane offers a new perspective that integrates religious studies with psychology, anthropology, and data science, as well as with research at the forefront of Artificial Intelligence (AI).After providing a critical analysis of approaches to religion and social cohesion, Lane proposes a new model for religious studies, which he calls the “Information Identity System.” This model focuses on the idea of conceptual ties: links between an individual’s self-concept and the ancient beliefs of their religious group. Lane explores this idea through real-world examples, ranging from the rise in global Pentecostalism, to religious extremism and self-radicalization, to the effect of 9/11 on sermons. Lane uses this lens to show how we can understand religion and culture today, and how we can better contextualize the changes we see in the social world around us.
448 kr
Skickas inom 10-15 vardagar
In this book, Glenn Barenthin provides a new solution to a key question in the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion: why do humans cooperate? What led humans, uniquely among animals, to have large-scale civilizations with unprecedented cooperation? One explanation, propagated by the Big God Proponents (BGP), argues that a moralizing God is the crucial motivator for the pro-social behaviour necessary for large scale civilization. To explore this idea, Barenthin provides a critical assessment of the evidence provided by the BGP, and also discusses the place of God in our moral thinking.However, using evidence from anthropology, history, cognitive science, psychology and game theory, Barenthin presents a new theory: that the evolutionary pressures faced by our forebears paved the way for emerging humans to engage in what he terms ‘thin cooperation’. This type of cooperation requires individuals to comprehend the reasons for their actions, and it is often done with others in mind. Finally, Barenthin argues that humans also have the capacity for ‘thick cooperation’, which is made possible by those fighting for the rights of strangers in an attempt to make the world a fairer place for a greater number of people.