Genealogy of Religion

Exploring the Origins, History and Future of Religion

Entries Tagged as 'Cognition and Religion'

Critical Social Theory & Religion

August 26th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Atheism and Religion, Cognition and Religion, Economy and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct

As most social and critical theorists know, Karl Marx asserted that the “criticism of religion is the premise of all criticism” (Critique of Hegel, 1843).  This is a startling foundational statement coming from Marx, who also thought that the criticism of religion was complete — a key accomplishment which enabled him to proceed with his [...]

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Undergraduates and Religion

August 24th, 2010 · No Comments · Atheism and Religion, Cognition and Religion, History of Religions, Philosophy of Religion

Over at HuffPo Religion, Princeton’s dean of religious affairs explains how entering freshmen can “find their religion” during their four years at college by asking (and attempting to answer) three questions:
1. What do you believe?
2. What does your neighbor believe?
3. How do those beliefs affect the choices you and your neighbor are making about how [...]

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Bourdieu & Symbolic Power: The Archaeology of Proto-Religion

August 22nd, 2010 · No Comments · Archaeology and Religion, Cognition and Religion, History of Religions, Shamans and Shamanism

I just finished reading David Swartz’s superb article, “Bridging the Study of Culture and Religion: Pierre Bourdieu’s Political Economy of Symbolic Power” (open access), and must recommend it not only to cultural theorists but to archaeologists as well.  Several aspects of Bourdieu’s thought lend themselves readily to novel interpretations of what otherwise might appear to [...]

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The Art of Perception

August 15th, 2010 · No Comments · Archaeology and Religion, Cognition and Religion, Hunter-Gatherers and Religion, Shamans and Shamanism

How we perceive the external world is a fascinating subject that has long attracted the attention of great thinkers from Kant to Nietzsche.  Kant knew that we possessed some sort of interior filter that enables us to perceive the world and Nietzsche knew that this filtered perception was always an interpretation of the world.  Modern [...]

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The Weather Spirits

August 9th, 2010 · No Comments · Cognition and Religion, Ritual and Religion, Shamans and Shamanism

In a recent post on the quantum aspects of consciousness, I concluded by noting that not so long ago all humans explained weather in supernatural or spiritual terms, but weather is now — in most parts of the world — understood scientifically.  Weather has thus been removed from the realm of the spiritual and situated [...]

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Religion Reduces Anxiety — Sound Familiar?

August 3rd, 2010 · No Comments · Archaeology and Religion, Cognition and Religion, Emotions and Religion, History of Religions, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct, Ritual and Religion

“Religious distress is at the same time the expression of real distress and the protest against real distress.  Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of a spiritless situation. It is the opium of the people. The abolition of religion as the [...]

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Is “Quantum Consciousness” the Essence of “Spirituality”?

August 2nd, 2010 · No Comments · Classifications of Religion, Cognition and Religion, Definitions of Religion, Methodology of Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Shamans and Shamanism

In “Quantum Consciousness: The Way to Reconcile Science and Spirituality,” Kingsley Dennis elegantly discusses what has proven to the most intractable issue in neuroscience: consciousness.  Because fluctuations and altered states of consciousness are so often linked to the supernatural-religious, I have examined it in many posts, including Consciousness and the Supernatural, which provides a brief [...]

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Stephen Hawking on Religion: “Science Will Win”

July 19th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Archaeology and Religion, Axial Age Religions, Cognition and Religion, Cultural Evolution of Religion, History of Religions, Hunter-Gatherers and Religion, Neolithic Religions, Power and Religion

Over at ABC News, Ki Mae Heussner reports on a Diane Sawyer interview of the renowned physicist Stephen Hawking with this contentious headline: “Stephen Hawking on Religion: Science Will Win.”  This is an unfortunate banner.  During the interview, Sawyer asked if religion and science could be reconciled.  Hawking’s response was profoundly unhelpful:
“There is a fundamental [...]

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Near Death Experiences: Portal to Another Realm?

July 16th, 2010 · 4 Comments · Cognition and Religion, Emotions and Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct

There are many who believe that near death experiences (“NDE”) provide evidence of the existence of a spirit-soul and that those who have these close encounters with death have glimpsed another realm.  Over at Brain Blogger, Jennifer Gibson discusses some recent studies of NDEs in a post titled “Light at the End of the Tunnel [...]

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Ancestor Worship: The Epicurean Lucretius

July 10th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Atheism and Religion, Cognition and Religion, Cultural Evolution of Religion, Evolution and Selection, History of Religions, Philosophy of Religion

While doing some background research on the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume (1711-1776), I discovered that he had been much influenced by Lucretius, who lived in the first century BCE (around the time of Julius Caesar) and published a six-volume treatise titled On the Nature of Things. As if writing philosophy in narrative form were [...]

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