Over the past decade there has been a sea change in the way we assess moral reasoning, judgment, and behavior. The old view, developed and championed largely by introspective philosophers, was that people actually reason about choices before making decisions that have moral or ethical impacts. While some decisions are in fact made this way, [...]
Tags:ethics·evolution of morals·innate morality·intuitive morality·John Rawls·Jonathan Haidt·Kant·moral judgment·moral psychology·moral reasoning·prosociality
Creation myths do psychological and cultural work. Because all known societies have creation myths, the number and variety is staggering. There are entire encyclopedias of creation myths and even dictionaries for creation myths. Given this seemingly endless variety, it is unsurprising there have been several kinds of efforts to impose order on the mass. Folklorists [...]
Tags:Anna Birgitta Rooth·archetypes·creation myths·cultural diffusion·earth diver·Edenic myth·North American Indians·structural-functional·transformer·Ymir
In religious studies and popular usage, the term “universal” is used to describe religions which are open to all and transcend ethnic, geographic, political, and cultural boundaries. Three religions are usually cited as universal: Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam. Some newer religions, such as Mormonism and Bahá’í, would also qualify. But if we take a longer [...]
Tags:Bahai·Buddhism·Carmen Blacker·Christianity·Islam·Japan·Jason Josephson·Jomon·kami·Lori Meeks·Meiji period·miko·Mormon·neo-shamanism·premodern Japan·Robert Bellah·shamanic·shamanism·superstitition·The Catalpa Bow·Tokugawa·universal religion
At the conclusion of Elaine Pagels’ lecture on the Book of Revelation, the first question someone asked her was why does religion persist? Pagels answered: “I think because this is about emotion. This isn’t conceptual. People who talk about it as if it matters whether you believe in God or not, have got [...]
Tags:attachment·Elaine Pagels·emotions·fear·Future of An Illusion·Revelation·Robert Fuller·separation anxiety·Sigmund Freud·Spirituality in the Flesh
Elaine Pagels is an unlikely celebrity. It is not often that professors of religion write books which so thoroughly and successfully straddle the professional/popular divide. Pagels has written many such books:
The Gnostic Gospels
Adam, Eve, and the Serpent: Sex and Politics in Early Christianity
The Origin of Satan: How Christians Demonized Jews, Pagans, and [...]
Tags:apocalypse·bible·Book of Revelation·canonization·Catholic Church·Christian history·Constantine·Elaine Pagels·exegesis·Gnostic Gospels·John of Patmos·Left Behind·prophecy·rapture·Revelation·Satan·the Beast
China is big, old, and fascinating. Its importance in the larger scheme of things is such that there should be what I call “The China Rule.” This rule would apply as follows. If a scholar claims that history unfolds directionally or according to general rules, s/he must specifically test the claim using China as datum. [...]
Tags:ancestors·canonization·China·Chinese religion·Confucian Cult·Confucius·Imperial Cult·ritual·ritual feasting·sacrifice·spirit feeding·Temple of Culture·The China Rule·Thomas Wilson
Over at Salon the MIT physicist and novelist Alan Lightman recently asked whether God exists, a question he poses in the service of reconciling science with religion and lambasting Richard Dawkins. Although he is an atheist, Lightman’s accomodationist query prompted a predictable response from Daniel Dennett, to which Lightman has responded.
It is a thoughtful exchange [...]
Tags:Abrahamic God·Alan Lightman·atheism·Christianity·Daniel Dennett·deism·existence of God·God·god concept·interventionist God·Islam·Judaism·monotheism·monotheistic God·Richard Dawkins
In the Göbekli Tepe series opener, I noted that several claims have been made about this 11,000 year old archaeological site:
It was built by nomadic hunter-gatherers rather than sedentary or village agriculturalists.
It was a religious or ritual pilgrimage center that attracted people from far and wide.
The massive stone pillars or megaliths were “temples” or “shrines.”
Göbekli [...]
Tags:Anna Belfer-Cohen·complex hunter-gatherers·Edward Banning·Gobekli Tepe·houses·Klaus Schmidt·Levant·megaliths·monoliths·Neolithicization·Neolithization·Nigel Goring-Morris·shrines·So Fair a House·temples
In the series introduction, I asked whether Göbekli Tepe was (as the excavator Klaus Schmidt suggests) an archaeological or metaphorical Stairway to Heaven. Continuing the Led Zeppelin riff, a better question for today might be whether Göbekli’s megalithic structures were Houses of the Holy.
E.B. Banning suggests something along these lines in “So Fair a House: [...]
Tags:E.B. Banning·Gobekli Tepe·Klaus Schmidt·So Fair a House
In 1994 Klaus Schmidt discovered Göbekli Tepe and in 1995 he began the ongoing excavations. In 1998 Schmidt published his first site report. To date, Schmidt has published close to 20 articles or reports (about half of which are in German) and others working with Schmidt have published more. For this Schmidt deserves considerable praise. [...]
Tags:Edward Banning·Emile Durkheim·Gobekli Tepe·Gordon Childe·Jacques Cauvin·Klaus Schmidt·Neolithic Revolution·Neolithicization·profane·sacred
