How Religion Evolved

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How Religion Evolved

Author : Robin Dunbar
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0197631827
Total Pages : 353 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (976 download)

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Book Synopsis How Religion Evolved by : Robin Dunbar

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,

Religion in Human Evolution

Author : Robert N. Bellah
Publisher : Harvard University Press
ISBN 13 : 0674252934
Total Pages : 777 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (742 download)

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Book Synopsis Religion in Human Evolution by : Robert N. Bellah

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

The Faith Instinct

Author : Nicholas Wade
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 1101155671
Total Pages : 314 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (11 download)

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Book Synopsis The Faith Instinct by : Nicholas Wade

Download or read book The Faith Instinct written by Nicholas Wade and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2009-11-12 with total page 314 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Noted science writer Nicholas Wade offers for the first time a convincing case based on a broad range of scientific evidence for the evolutionary basis of religion.

Supernatural Selection

Author : Matt Rossano
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0199798788
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (997 download)

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Book Synopsis Supernatural Selection by : Matt Rossano

Download or read book Supernatural Selection written by Matt Rossano and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-28 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2006, scientist Richard Dawkins published a blockbuster bestseller, The God Delusion. This atheist manifesto sparked a furious reaction from believers, who have responded with numerous books of their own. By pitting science against religion, however, this debate overlooks what science can tell us about religion. According to evolutionary psychologist Matt J. Rossano, what science reveals is that religion made us human. In Supernatural Selection, Rossano presents an evolutionary history of religion. Neither an apologist for religion nor a religion-basher, he draws together evidence from a wide range of disciplines to show the valuable--even essential--adaptive purpose served by systematic belief in the supernatural. The roots of religion stretch as far back as half a million years, when our ancestors developed the motor control to engage in social rituals--that is, to sing and dance together. Then, about 70,000 years ago, a global ecological crisis drove humanity to the edge of extinction. It forced the survivors to create new strategies for survival, and religious rituals were foremost among them. Fundamentally, Rossano writes, religion is a way for humans to relate to each other and the world around them--and, in the grim struggles of prehistory, it offered significant survival and reproductive advantages. It emerged as our ancestors' first health care system, and a critical part of that health care system was social support. Religious groups tended to be far more cohesive, which gave them a competitive advantage over non-religious groups, and enabled them to conquer the globe. Rather than focusing on one aspect of religion, as many theorists do, Rossano offers an all-encompassing approach that is rich with surprises, insights, and provocative conclusions.

Religion Evolving

Author : Benjamin Grant Purzycki
Publisher : Advances in the Cognitive Science of Religion
ISBN 13 : 9781800500525
Total Pages : 262 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (5 download)

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Book Synopsis Religion Evolving by : Benjamin Grant Purzycki

Download or read book Religion Evolving written by Benjamin Grant Purzycki and published by Advances in the Cognitive Science of Religion. This book was released on 2022 with total page 262 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The scientific study of religion has made significant advances in recent decades, explaining how the mind produces religious ideas, the motivations underlying religious behaviour, and the transmission of religious cultures within and across generations. In Religion Evolving: Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics, Purzycki and Sosis argue that further progress requires integration of isolated research findings on the various components - ritual, supernatural agent belief, myth, taboo, and so forth - that constitute religion. Religions, they contend, need to be understood as adaptive systems. Drawing from a wealth of ethnographic and experimental evidence, they situate religious systems within their local socioecological contexts, showing how religious culture adaptively responds to economic, environmental, and human health problems, as well as costly threats to cooperation and reproduction. Based in the evolutionary, cognitive, and anthropological sciences, Religion Evolving offers a holistic approach that attends to the complex, interacting features of religious systems.

Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion

Author : Lee A. Kirkpatrick
Publisher : Guilford Press
ISBN 13 : 9781593850883
Total Pages : 428 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (58 download)

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Book Synopsis Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion by : Lee A. Kirkpatrick

Download or read book Attachment, Evolution, and the Psychology of Religion written by Lee A. Kirkpatrick and published by Guilford Press. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 428 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this provocative and engaging book, Lee Kirkpatrick establishes a broad, comprehensive framework for approaching the psychology of religion from an evolutionary perspective. Kirkpatrick argues that religion is a collection of byproducts of numerous psychological mechanisms and systems that evolved for other functions.

The Origin and Evolution of Religion (Routledge Revivals)

Author : Albert Churchward
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317587693
Total Pages : 518 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (175 download)

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Book Synopsis The Origin and Evolution of Religion (Routledge Revivals) by : Albert Churchward

Download or read book The Origin and Evolution of Religion (Routledge Revivals) written by Albert Churchward and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-06-03 with total page 518 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Churchward’s The Origin and Evolution of Religion, first published in 1924, explores the history and development of different religions worldwide, from the religious cults of magic and fetishism to contemporary religions such as Christianity and Islam. This text is ideal for students of theology.

Religion Explained

Author : Pascal Boyer
Publisher : Basic Books
ISBN 13 : 046500461X
Total Pages : 406 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (65 download)

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Book Synopsis Religion Explained by : Pascal Boyer

Download or read book Religion Explained written by Pascal Boyer and published by Basic Books. This book was released on 2007-03-21 with total page 406 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of our questions about religion, says the internationally renowned anthropologist Pascal Boyer, were once mysteries, but they no longer are: we are beginning to know how to answer questions such as "Why do people have religion?" and "Why is religion the way it is?" Using findings from anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary biology, Boyer shows how one of the most fascinating aspects of human consciousness is increasingly admissible to coherent, naturalistic explanation. And Man Creates God tells readers, for the first time, what religious feeling is really about, what it consists of, and how it originates. It is a beautifully written, very accessible book by an anthropologist who is highly respected on both sides of the Atlantic. As a scientific explanation for religious feeling, it is sure to arouse controversy.

Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods

Author : E. Fuller Torrey
Publisher : Columbia University Press
ISBN 13 : 0231544863
Total Pages : 338 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (315 download)

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Book Synopsis Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods by : E. Fuller Torrey

Download or read book Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods written by E. Fuller Torrey and published by Columbia University Press. This book was released on 2017-09-05 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religions and mythologies from around the world teach that God or gods created humans. Atheist, humanist, and materialist critics, meanwhile, have attempted to turn theology on its head, claiming that religion is a human invention. In this book, E. Fuller Torrey draws on cutting-edge neuroscience research to propose a startling answer to the ultimate question. Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods locates the origin of gods within the human brain, arguing that religious belief is a by-product of evolution. Based on an idea originally proposed by Charles Darwin, Torrey marshals evidence that the emergence of gods was an incidental consequence of several evolutionary factors. Using data ranging from ancient skulls and artifacts to brain imaging, primatology, and child development studies, this book traces how new cognitive abilities gave rise to new behaviors. For instance, autobiographical memory, the ability to project ourselves backward and forward in time, gave Homo sapiens a competitive advantage. However, it also led to comprehension of mortality, spurring belief in an alternative to death. Torrey details the neurobiological sequence that explains why the gods appeared when they did, connecting archaeological findings including clothing, art, farming, and urbanization to cognitive developments. This book does not dismiss belief but rather presents religious belief as an inevitable outcome of brain evolution. Providing clear and accessible explanations of evolutionary neuroscience, Evolving Brains, Emerging Gods will shed new light on the mechanics of our deepest mysteries.

Evolution and Christian Faith

Author : Joan Roughgarden
Publisher : Island Press
ISBN 13 : 1597261572
Total Pages : 167 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (972 download)

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Book Synopsis Evolution and Christian Faith by : Joan Roughgarden

Download or read book Evolution and Christian Faith written by Joan Roughgarden and published by Island Press. This book was released on 2006-08-01 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Click here to visit evolutionandchristianfaith.org "I'm an evolutionary biologist and a Christian," states Stanford professor Joan Roughgarden at the outset of her groundbreaking new book, Evolution and Christian Faith: Reflections of an Evolutionary Biologist. From that perspective, she offers an elegant, deeply satisfying reconciliation of the theory of evolution and the wisdom of the Bible. Perhaps only someone with Roughgarden's unique academic standing could examine so well controversial issues such as the teaching of intelligent design in public schools, or the potential flaws in Darwin's theory of evolution. Certainly Roughgarden is uniquely suited to reference both the minutiae of scientific processes and the implication of Biblical verses. Whether the topic is mutation rates and lizards or the hidden meanings behind St. Paul's letters, Evolution and Christian Faith distils complex arguments into everyday understanding. Roughgarden has scoured the Bible and scanned the natural world, finding examples time and again, not of conflict, but of harmony. The result is an accessible and intelligent context for a Christian vision of the world that embraces science. In the ongoing debates over creationism and evolution, Evolution and Christian Faith will be seen as a work of major significance, written for contemporary readers who wonder how-or if-they can embrace scientific advances while maintaining their traditional values.

God

Author : Reza Aslan
Publisher : Random House
ISBN 13 : 0553394738
Total Pages : 321 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (533 download)

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Book Synopsis God by : Reza Aslan

Download or read book God written by Reza Aslan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of Zealot explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God. In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.” But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments. More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle

Darwin's Cathedral

Author : David Wilson
Publisher : University of Chicago Press
ISBN 13 : 9780226901350
Total Pages : 280 pages
Book Rating : 4.9/5 (13 download)

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Book Synopsis Darwin's Cathedral by : David Wilson

Download or read book Darwin's Cathedral written by David Wilson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2003-10 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the great intellectual battles of modern times is between evolution and religion. Until now, they have been considered completely irreconcilable theories of origin and existence. David Sloan Wilson's Darwin's Cathedral takes the radical step of joining the two, in the process proposing an evolutionary theory of religion that shakes both evolutionary biology and social theory at their foundations. The key, argues Wilson, is to think of society as an organism, an old idea that has received new life based on recent developments in evolutionary biology. If society is an organism, can we then think of morality and religion as biologically and culturally evolved adaptations that enable human groups to function as single units rather than mere collections of individuals? Wilson brings a variety of evidence to bear on this question, from both the biological and social sciences. From Calvinism in sixteenth-century Geneva to Balinese water temples, from hunter-gatherer societies to urban America, Wilson demonstrates how religions have enabled people to achieve by collective action what they never could do alone. He also includes a chapter considering forgiveness from an evolutionary perspective and concludes by discussing how all social organizations, including science, could benefit by incorporating elements of religion. Religious believers often compare their communities to single organisms and even to insect colonies. Astoundingly, Wilson shows that they might be literally correct. Intended for any educated reader, Darwin's Cathedral will change forever the way we view the relations among evolution, religion, and human society.

Thank God for Evolution

Author : Michael Dowd
Publisher : Penguin
ISBN 13 : 9780670020454
Total Pages : 452 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (24 download)

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Book Synopsis Thank God for Evolution by : Michael Dowd

Download or read book Thank God for Evolution written by Michael Dowd and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2008 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Presents a philosophy that unifies evolution and religion, discussing evolution as a divine process, how to use insights derived from evolution to improve spiritual life, and how to work for systemic change within this framework.

In Gods We Trust

Author : Scott Atran
Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 019988434X
Total Pages : 748 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (998 download)

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Book Synopsis In Gods We Trust by : Scott Atran

Download or read book In Gods We Trust written by Scott Atran and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2004-12-09 with total page 748 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This ambitious, interdisciplinary book seeks to explain the origins of religion using our knowledge of the evolution of cognition. A cognitive anthropologist and psychologist, Scott Atran argues that religion is a by-product of human evolution just as the cognitive intervention, cultural selection, and historical survival of religion is an accommodation of certain existential and moral elements that have evolved in the human condition.

Spiritual Evolution

Author : George Vaillant
Publisher : Harmony
ISBN 13 : 0767926587
Total Pages : 257 pages
Book Rating : 4.7/5 (679 download)

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Book Synopsis Spiritual Evolution by : George Vaillant

Download or read book Spiritual Evolution written by George Vaillant and published by Harmony. This book was released on 2009-06-09 with total page 257 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In our current era of holy terror, passionate faith has come to seem like a present danger. Writers such as Richard Dawkins, Sam Harris, and Christopher Hitchens have been happy to throw the baby out with the bathwater and declare that the danger is in religion itself. God, Hitchens writes, is not great. But man, according to George E. Vaillant, M.D., is great. In Spiritual Evolution, Dr. Vaillant lays out a brilliant defense not of organized religion but of man’s inherent spirituality. Our spirituality, he shows, resides in our uniquely human brain design and in our innate capacity for emotions like love, hope, joy, forgiveness, and compassion, which are selected for by evolution and located in a different part of the brain than dogmatic religious belief. Evolution has made us spiritual creatures over time, he argues, and we are destined to become even more so. Spiritual Evolution makes the scientific case for spirituality as a positive force in human evolution, and he predicts for our species an even more loving future. Vaillant traces this positive force in three different kinds of “evolution”: the natural selection of genes over millennia, of course, but also the cultural evolution within recorded history of ideas about the value of human life, and the development of spirituality within the lifetime of each individual. For thirty-five years, Dr. Vaillant directed Harvard’s famous longitudinal study of adult development, which has followed hundreds of men over seven decades of life. The study has yielded important insights into human spirituality, and Dr. Vaillant has drawn on these and on a range of psychological research, behavioral studies, and neuroscience, and on history, anecdote, and quotation to produce a book that is at once a work of scientific argument and a lyrical meditation on what it means to be human. Spiritual Evolution is a life’s work, and it will restore our belief in faith as an essential human striving.

Why We Believe

Author : Agustin Fuentes
Publisher : Yale University Press
ISBN 13 : 030024925X
Total Pages : 281 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (2 download)

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Book Synopsis Why We Believe by : Agustin Fuentes

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.

How Religion Evolved

Author : Brian J. McVeigh
Publisher : Transaction Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1412862361
Total Pages : 187 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (128 download)

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Book Synopsis How Religion Evolved by : Brian J. McVeigh

Download or read book How Religion Evolved written by Brian J. McVeigh and published by Transaction Publishers. This book was released on 2016-06-30 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why did many religious leaders—Moses, Old Testament prophets, Zoroaster—claim they heard divine voices? Why do ancient civilizations exhibit key similarities, e.g., the “living dead” (treating the dead as if they were still alive); “speaking idols” (care and feeding of effigies); monumental mortuary architecture and “houses of gods” (pyramids, ziggurats, temples)? How do we explain strange behavior such as spirit possession, speaking in tongues, channeling, hypnosis, and schizophrenic hallucinations? Are these lingering vestiges of an older mentality? Brian J. McVeigh answers these riddles by updating “bicameralism.” First proposed by the psychologist Julian Jaynes, this theory postulates that an earlier mentality existed: a “human” (the brain’s left hemisphere) heard voices of “gods” or “ancestors” (the brain’s right hemisphere). Therefore, ancient religious texts reporting divine voices were recountings of audiovisual hallucinations—a method of social control when early populations expanded. As growing political economic complexity destabilized god-governed states in the late second millennium BCE, divine voices became inadequate. Eventually, humans had to culturally acquire new cognitive skills (modern religions) to accommodate increasing social pressures: selves replaced the gods and history witnessed an “inward turn.” This psychological interiorization of spiritual experience laid the foundations for the world’s great religions and philosophies that arose in India, China, Greece, and the Middle East in the middle of the first millennium BCE.