The Emergence of Religion in Human Evolution

The Emergence of Religion in Human Evolution PDF Author: Margaret Boone Rappaport
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000760553
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 251

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Book Description
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.

The Emergence of Religion in Human Evolution

The Emergence of Religion in Human Evolution PDF Author: Margaret Boone Rappaport
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000760553
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 251

Get Book

Book Description
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.

Religion in Human Evolution

Religion in Human Evolution PDF Author: Robert N. Bellah
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674252934
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 777

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Book Description
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

The Emergence and Evolution of Religion

The Emergence and Evolution of Religion PDF Author: Jonathan H. Turner
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 135162069X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 274

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Book Description
Written by leading theorists and empirical researchers, this book presents new ways of addressing the old question: Why did religion first emerge and then continue to evolve in all human societies? The authors of the book—each with a different background across the social sciences and humanities—assimilate conceptual leads and empirical findings from anthropology, evolutionary biology, evolutionary sociology, neurology, primate behavioral studies, explanations of human interaction and group dynamics, and a wide range of religious scholarship to construct a deeper and more powerful explanation of the origins and subsequent evolutionary development of religions than can currently be found in what is now vast literature. While explaining religion has been a central question in many disciplines for a long time, this book draws upon a much wider array of literature to develop a robust and cross-disciplinary analysis of religion. The book remains true to its subtitle by emphasizing an array of both biological and sociocultural forms of selection dynamics that are fundamental to explaining religion as a universal institution in human societies. In addition to Darwinian selection, which can explain the biology and neurology of religion, the book outlines a set of four additional types of sociocultural natural selection that can fill out the explanation of why religion first emerged as an institutional system in human societies, and why it has continued to evolve over the last 300,000 years of societal evolution. These sociocultural forms of natural selection are labeled by the names of the early sociologists who first emphasized them, and they can be seen as a necessary supplement to the type of natural selection theorized by Charles Darwin. Explanations of religion that remain in the shadow cast by Darwin’s great insights will, it is argued, remain narrow and incomplete when explaining a robust sociocultural phenomenon like religion.

The Origin and Evolution of Religion

The Origin and Evolution of Religion PDF Author: Albert Churchward
Publisher: Book Tree
ISBN: 9781585090785
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
Other than Sir James Frazer (The Golden Bough), Churchward is the only person to have written such a monumental work on religion. In it he encompasses the complete evolution of religious ideas over millions of years. The first humans from Africa worshipped elemental powers, progressed into ancestor worship, then finally began to recognize what we could term a Great Spirit. Some of our earliest mythological stories are told, including tales of Resurrection, journeys to the underworld, and the first hero stories. Also explored are the meanings and true origins of sun worship, tree worship, phallic worship, and serpent worship. Ends with something we should all take to heartour religious evolution is definitely not over.

The Epic of Evolution

The Epic of Evolution PDF Author: James Bradley Miller
Publisher: Prentice Hall
ISBN:
Category : Religion and science
Languages : en
Pages : 248

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Book Description
This volume is offered as an example of the potential for dialogue between science and religion that is possible beyond the more popular convictions that science and religion are mutually exclusive. The papers offer a better appreciation of the complexity of thinking in both scientific and religious traditions on evolution and the fertile common ground that is still in great need of exploration. The essays examine evolution and the science and religion dialogue, evolution on the grand scale, the evolution of life on earth, Darwin and neo-Darwinism, the appearance of "homo sapiens," the evolution of culture, society and religion, the evolution of ethics and morality, and human impact on the evolution of the environment. For those interested in evolutionary and religious theory.

The Challenge of Evolution to Religion

The Challenge of Evolution to Religion PDF Author: Johan De Smedt
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108626815
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This Element focuses on three challenges of evolution to religion: teleology, human origins, and the evolution of religion itself. First, religious worldviews tend to presuppose a teleological understanding of the origins of living things, but scientists mostly understand evolution as non-teleological. Second, religious and scientific accounts of human origins do not align in a straightforward sense. Third, evolutionary explanations of religion, including religious beliefs and practices, may cast doubt on their justification. We show how these tensions arise and offer potential responses for religion. Individual religions can meet these challenges, if some of their metaphysical assumptions are adapted or abandoned.

The Significance of Ancient Religions in Relation to Human Evolution and Brain Development

The Significance of Ancient Religions in Relation to Human Evolution and Brain Development PDF Author: Ernest Noel Reichardt
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Psychology, Religious
Languages : en
Pages : 488

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Book Description


The Emergence of Religion in Human Evolution

The Emergence of Religion in Human Evolution PDF Author: La Civiltà Cattolica
Publisher: ucanews
ISBN:
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
A collection of 10 articles from the November 2020 edition of La Civiltà Cattolica, the highly respected and oldest Catholic journal published from Rome. Dominik Markl a professor at the Pontifical Bible Institute discusses the keys to Saint Jerome’s success such as his geographical and linguistic approach to the Bible: he studied Latin in Rome, Greek in Constantinople and Antioch, and Hebrew in Syria and Palestine. Many argue rejection of the world and the condemnation of earthly life are essential elements of Medieval asceticism, in the latest issue Fr Giancarlo Pani considers another option found in a letter from St Francis of Assisi to one of his brethren in “All is Grace” : Saint Francis and the Weight of the World. We have two free articles, both profiles. First Fr Nicolas Kluiters a Duch missionary in Lebanon, who was killed mysteriously in 1985 during the civil war, and a testimonial of Fr Bartolomeo Sorge director of La Civiltà Cattolica from 1973 – 1985. Jean-Pierre Sonnet’s article considers COVID-19 in the context of the Book of Genesis, the story of creation and our relationship with other living beings. Giovanni Cucci looks at Pope Francis’ recently launched strategy for a Global Education Pact.

Significance of Ancient Religions in Relation to Human Evolution and Brain Development

Significance of Ancient Religions in Relation to Human Evolution and Brain Development PDF Author: E. Noel Reichardt
Publisher: Literary Licensing, LLC
ISBN: 9781498095051
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 480

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Book Description
This Is A New Release Of The Original 1912 Edition.

The Significance of Ancient Religions in Relation to Human Evolution and Brain Development

The Significance of Ancient Religions in Relation to Human Evolution and Brain Development PDF Author: Ernest Noel Reichardt
Publisher: Theclassics.Us
ISBN: 9781230350509
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 128

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Book Description
This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1912 edition. Excerpt: ...satisfy the obligation laid on him by the growth of the religious idea that to-day we possess irrefragable evidence of the extent of his material knowledge and a very extensive vision of the daily events of his life. The attitude of the dynastic Egyptian was that of one who is certain of a future life because he actually is, or possesses something in himself that is, immortal. It was natural for him to believe that he had the same power over his destiny in the future life as he had in the present one; for the one was to him merely a necessary continuation of the other; so real in its certainty was the future that it belonged to the same category of things, and was governed by the same laws, as the present. Hence the elaborate means employed by the worshippers of Ra to preserve the body and its resting-place, to furnish the disembodied spirit with passports to eternity which could not be denied, and to provide it with visions of earthly scenes that assured it the satisfaction of familiar surroundings; hence, in short, the mode of behaviour which has made his tomb-chamber a storehouse of information for us. But for the pre-dynastic Egyptian the case was very different; and it is because of this difference that it was not till the fourth dynasty that the material equipment of this remote period took the form which makes it capable of revealing itself to our eyes at the present day. In the pre-dynastic period the sense of eternal life had manifested itself to the point of creating a fear of death and a longing for immortality, and a sense that immortality might be achieved; but there was no certainty in the matter, for there did not yet exist in the human being that assured confidence in his own immortality that later on became one of the...