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Religion Language And The Human Mind
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Book Synopsis Religion, Language, and the Human Mind by : Paul Anthony Chilton
Download or read book Religion, Language, and the Human Mind written by Paul Anthony Chilton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018 with total page 537 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Religion is a multi-faceted and complex human phenomenon, combining many different mental and social characteristics. Among these, language plays a crucial though often neglected role. This volume brings together groundbreaking work from linguistics, cognitive science and neuroscience, as well as from religious studies, in order to illuminate the origins and centrality of religion in human life.
Book Synopsis Language and Religion by : William Downes
Download or read book Language and Religion written by William Downes and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-11-25 with total page 290 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language and Religion offers an innovative theory of religion as a class of cultural representations, dependent on language to unify diverse capacities of the human mind. It argues that religion is widespread because it is implicit in the way the mind processes the world, as it determines what we ought to do, practically and morally, to achieve our goals. Focusing on the world religions, the book relates modern cognitive theories of language and communication to culture and its dissemination. It explains basic features of religion such as the supernatural, the normative, abstract and ideal theological concepts such as 'God', and religious feeling. It develops a linguistic theory, based on how utterances are understood, of metaphysical and moral 'mysteries' and their key role in thought and action. It shows how such concepts gain strength in the light of their successful use and, when tempered by criticism, can also have genuine authority.
Book Synopsis Religion, Language, and the Human Mind by : Paul Chilton
Download or read book Religion, Language, and the Human Mind written by Paul Chilton and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-04-03 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: What is religion? How does it work? Many natural abilities of the human mind are involved, and crucial among them is the ability to use language. This volume brings together research from linguistics, cognitive science and neuroscience, as well as from religious studies, to understand the phenomena of religion as a distinctly human enterprise. The book is divided into three parts, each part preceded by a full introductory chapter by the editors that discusses modern scientific approaches to religion and the application of modern linguistics, particularly cognitive linguistics and pragmatics. Part I surveys the development of modern studies of religious language and the diverse disciplinary strands that have emerged. Beginning with descriptive approaches to religious language and the problem of describing religious concepts across languages, chapters introduce the turn to cognition in linguistics and also in theology, and explore the brain's contrasting capacities, in particular its capacity for language and metaphor. Part II continues the discussion of metaphor - the natural ability by which humans draw on basic knowledge of the world in order to explore abstractions and intangibles. Specialists in particular religions apply conceptual metaphor theory in various ways, covering several major religious traditions-Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam and Judaism. Part III seeks to open up new horizons for cognitive-linguistic research on religion, looking beyond written texts to the ways in which language is integrated with other modalities, including ritual, religious art, and religious electronic media. Chapters in Part III introduce readers to a range of technical instruments that have been developed within cognitive linguistics and discourse analysis in recent years. What unfolds ultimately is the idea that the embodied cognition of humans is the basis not only of their languages, but also of their religions.
Book Synopsis Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology by : Justin L. Barrett
Download or read book Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology written by Justin L. Barrett and published by Templeton Press. This book was released on 2011-11-01 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology is the eighth title published in the Templeton Science and Religion Series, in which scientists from a wide range of fields distill their experience and knowledge into brief tours of their respective specialties. In this volume, well-known cognitive scientist Justin L. Barrett offers an accessible overview of this interdisciplinary field, reviews key findings in this area, and discusses the implications of these findings for religious thought and practice. Cognitive science is the interdisciplinary study of minds and mental activity, and as such, it addresses a fundamental feature of what it is to be human. Further, as religious traditions concern ideas and beliefs about the nature of humans, the nature of the world, and the nature of the divine, cognitive science can contribute directly and indirectly to these theological concerns. Barrett shows how direct contributions come from the growing area called cognitive science of religion (CSR), which investigates how human cognitive systems inform and constrain religious thought, experience, and expression. CSR attempts to answer questions such as: Why do humans tend to be religious? And why are specific ideas (e.g., the possibility of an afterlife) so cross-culturally recurrent? Barrett also covers the indirect implications that cognitive science has for theology, such as human similarities and differences with the animal world, freedom and determinism, and the relationship between minds and bodies. Cognitive Science, Religion, and Theology critically reviews the research on these fascinating questions and discusses the many implications that arise from them. In addition, this short volume also offers suggestions for future research, making it ideal not only for those looking for an overview of the field thus far but also for those seeking a glimpse of where the field might be going in the future.
Download or read book Minds and Gods written by Todd Tremlin and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-05-07 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This provocative book explains the origins and persistence of religious ideas on the basis of common structures and functions of human thought. The first general introduction to the new "cognitive science of religion," Minds and Gods presents the major themes, theories, and thinkers involved in this revolutionary new approach to human religiosity. Arguing that we cannot understand what we think until we first understand how we think, the book pursues the evolutionary forces that molded the modern human mind and continue to shape our ideas and actions today. Todd Tremlin details many of the adapted features of the brain - illustrating their operation with examples of everyday human behavior - and shows how mental endowments inherited from our ancestral past lead people to naturally entertain religious ideas. Tremlin provides a clear and comprehensive account of the developing field of the cognitive science of religion. This accessible and engaging volume is an invaluable resource for anyone interested in the religious mind.
Book Synopsis Neuroscience and Religion by : Volney P. Gay
Download or read book Neuroscience and Religion written by Volney P. Gay and published by Rowman & Littlefield. This book was released on 2009 with total page 304 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is a unique set of multidisciplinary reflections on how the neurosciences shape our understanding of religious experience and religious institutions. Twelve scholars and scientists assess how advances in the neurosciences affect our traditional sense of mind, self, and soul.
Book Synopsis The Righteous Mind by : Jonathan Haidt
Download or read book The Righteous Mind written by Jonathan Haidt and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2013-02-12 with total page 530 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The acclaimed social psychologist challenges conventional thinking about morality, politics, and religion in a way that speaks to conservatives and liberals alike—a “landmark contribution to humanity’s understanding of itself” (The New York Times Book Review). Drawing on his twenty-five years of groundbreaking research on moral psychology, Jonathan Haidt shows how moral judgments arise not from reason but from gut feelings. He shows why liberals, conservatives, and libertarians have such different intuitions about right and wrong, and he shows why each side is actually right about many of its central concerns. In this subtle yet accessible book, Haidt gives you the key to understanding the miracle of human cooperation, as well as the curse of our eternal divisions and conflicts. If you’re ready to trade in anger for understanding, read The Righteous Mind.
Book Synopsis The Routledge Handbook of Language and Religion by : Stephen Pihlaja
Download or read book The Routledge Handbook of Language and Religion written by Stephen Pihlaja and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2023-12-14 with total page 449 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Routledge Handbook of Language and Religion is the first ever comprehensive collection of research on religion and language, with over 35 authors from 15 countries, presenting a range of linguistic and discourse analytic research on religion and belief in different discourse contexts. The contributions show the importance of studying language and religion and for bringing together work in this area across sub-disciplines, languages, cultures, and geographical boundaries. The Handbook focuses on three major topics: Religious and Sacred Language, Institutional Discourse, and Religious Identity and Community. Scholars from a variety of different disciplinary backgrounds investigate these topics using a range of linguistic perspectives including Cognitive Linguistics, Discourse Analysis, Sociolinguistics, Pragmatics, and Conversation Analysis. The data analysed in these chapters come from a variety of religious backgrounds and national contexts. Linguistic data from all the major world religions are included, with sacred texts, conversational data, and institutional texts included for analysis. The Handbook is intended to be useful for readers from different subdisciplines within linguistics, but also to researchers working in other disciplines including philosophy, theology, and sociology. Each chapter gives both a template for research approaches and suggestions for future research and will inspire readers at every stage of their career.
Book Synopsis How Religion Works by : Ilkka Pyysiäinen
Download or read book How Religion Works written by Ilkka Pyysiäinen and published by BRILL. This book was released on 2021-10-11 with total page 284 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Recent findings in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology provide important insights to the processes which make religious beliefs and behaviors such efficient attractors in and across various cultural settings. The specific salience of religious ideas is based on the fact that they are 'counter-intuitive': they contradict our intuitive expectations of how entities normally behave. Counter-intuitive ideas are only produced by a mind capable of crossing the boundaries that separate such ontological domains as persons, living things, and solid objects. The evolution of such a mind has only taken place in the human species. How certain kinds of counter-intuitive ideas are selected for a religious use is discussed from varying angles. Cognitive considerations are thus related to the traditions of comparative religion. This publication has also been published in paperback, please click here for details.
Book Synopsis Mind, Brain and the Elusive Soul by : Mark Graves
Download or read book Mind, Brain and the Elusive Soul written by Mark Graves and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2016-04-22 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Does science argue against the existence of the human soul? Many scientists and scholars believe the whole is more than the sum of the parts. This book uses information and systems theory to describe the "more" that does not reduce to the parts. One sees this in the synapses”or apparently empty gaps between the neurons in one's brain”where informative relationships give rise to human mind, culture, and spirituality. Drawing upon the disciplines of cognitive science, computer science, neuroscience, general systems theory, pragmatic philosophy, and Christian theology, Mark Graves reinterprets the traditional doctrine of the soul as form of the body to frame contemporary scientific study of the human soul.
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 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many of our questions about religion, says renowned anthropologist Pascal Boyer, are no longer mysteries. We are beginning to know how to answer questions such as "Why do people have religion?" Using findings from anthropology, cognitive science, linguistics, and evolutionary biology, Religion Explained shows how this aspect of human consciousness is increasingly admissible to coherent, naturalistic explanation. This brilliant and controversial book gives readers the first scientific explanation for what religious feeling is really about, what it consists of, and where it comes from.
Book Synopsis Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion by : Malcolm Jeeves
Download or read book Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion written by Malcolm Jeeves and published by Templeton Foundation Press. This book was released on 2009-03-01 with total page 173 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion is the second title published in the new Templeton Science and Religion Series. In this volume, Malcolm Jeeves and Warren S. Brown provide an overview of the relationship between neuroscience, psychology, and religion that is academically sophisticated, yet accessible to the general reader. The authors introduce key terms; thoroughly chart the histories of both neuroscience and psychology, with a particular focus on how these disciplines have interfaced religion through the ages; and explore contemporary approaches to both fields, reviewing how current science/religion controversies are playing out today. Throughout, they cover issues like consciousness, morality, concepts of the soul, and theories of mind. Their examination of topics like brain imaging research, evolutionary psychology, and primate studies show how recent advances in these areas can blend harmoniously with religious belief, since they offer much to our understanding of humanity's place in the world. Jeeves and Brown conclude their comprehensive and inclusive survey by providing an interdisciplinary model for shaping the ongoing dialogue. Sure to be of interest to both academics and curious intellectuals, Neuroscience, Psychology, and Religion addresses important age-old questions and demonstrates how modern scientific techniques can provide a much more nuanced range of potential answers to those questions.
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 2011-09-15 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
Book Synopsis Analysing Religious Discourse by : Stephen Pihlaja
Download or read book Analysing Religious Discourse written by Stephen Pihlaja and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2021-07-08 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Language plays a key role in religion, framing how people describe spiritual experience and giving structure to religious beliefs and practices. Bringing together work from a team of world-renowned scholars, this volume introduces contemporary research on religious discourse from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives. It introduces methods for analysis of a range of different kinds of text and talk, including institutional discourse within organised religions, discourse around spirituality and spiritual experience within religious communities, media discourse about the role of religion and spirituality in society, translations of sacred texts, political discourse, and ritual language. Engaging and easy-to-read, it is accessible to researchers across linguistics, religious studies, and other related disciplines. A comprehensive introduction to all the major research approaches to religious language, it will become a key resource in the emerging inter-disciplinary field of language and religion.
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.
Book Synopsis Reflections on Philosophy and Religion by : Alan Donagan
Download or read book Reflections on Philosophy and Religion written by Alan Donagan and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How can an infinite number of sentences be generated from one human mind? How did language evolve in apes? In this book Donald Loritz addresses these and other fundamental and vexing questions about language, cognition, and the human brain. He starts by tracing how evolution and natural adaptation selected certain features of the brain to perform communication functions, then shows how those features developed into designs for human language. The result -- what Loritz calls an adaptive grammar -- gives a unified explanation of language in the brain and contradicts directly (and controversially) the theory of innateness proposed by, among others, Chomsky and Pinker.
Book Synopsis Phenomenological Approaches to Religion and Spirituality by : Essien, Essien D.
Download or read book Phenomenological Approaches to Religion and Spirituality written by Essien, Essien D. and published by IGI Global. This book was released on 2021-01-29 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is an interesting knowledge trajectory that God remains incomprehensible, not imperceptible. This lends credence to the fact that religious study since the Enlightenment has dedicated itself almost entirely to the problem of reconciling the non-existence of God in the physical world with his necessary existence in the metaphysical world. When seriously examined, it would be discovered that these two aspects are logically contradictory, and this is a problem with no solution. But interpreting God not as a physical being but as a phenomenological thing changes the nature of the problem enough that a solution emerges almost automatically. In this phenomenological model, the crux of the matter is that God does not exist, but God is real. Therefore, it is imperative to return to experience and verifiability, hence, purging it of unexamined and often hidden assumptions. Phenomenological Approaches to Religion and Spirituality brings together the different disciplines and research approaches to provide a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenology of God and spirituality, as well as offering an effective epistemological apparatus capable of dealing with this concept. The book employs multidisciplinary approaches from religious studies, theology, philosophy, anthropology, and other segments to dissect the subject matter for efficient evaluation and all-inclusive findings. While covering various aspects of religion such as the testaments of the Bible, the church, the religious experience, and various aspects of spirituality, this book is intended for theologians, philosophers, religious leaders, policymakers, academicians, researchers, students, public institutions, and agencies with a special interest in religious matters, values, knowledge, and truth.
