Genealogy of Religion

Exploring the Origins, History and Future of Religion

Entries Tagged as 'Methodology of Religion'

Myth as History — On Religious Texts

September 4th, 2010 · No Comments · History of Religions, Methodology of Religion

Among scholars and historians of religion, there has long been an unfortunate tendency to treat myth as mere text — disembodied, free-floating, timeless, and ahistorical.  In such non-contexts, myth is considered to be something universal or essential, that which captures and expresses archetypes, or even worse, an archaic and tentative approach to monotheism.
In the fifth [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:························

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 [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:············································

A Certain Kind of Islam and the Heinous Oppression of Women

July 31st, 2010 · 2 Comments · Classifications of Religion, Methodology of Religion, Morality and Religion, Power and Religion

Not long ago, I discussed an article on Islam by Cynthia Boaz.  In her article, Boaz attempted to correct several misconceptions regarding Islam and presented us with a progressive, liberal, and tolerant interpretation of Islam.  While there are Muslims outside of the US who interpret Islam in the way Boaz does, there are also Muslims [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:····························

Triumph of the Texts: Religion as Word

July 26th, 2010 · No Comments · Archaeology and Religion, Axial Age Religions, Classifications of Religion, Definitions of Religion, History of Religions, Hunter-Gatherers and Religion, Methodology of Religion, Shamans and Shamanism

Nearly 5,500 years ago or about 3,500 BCE, the Sumerians began writing about supernatural matters; in a sense, this marks the origin of what most people today understand as “religion.”  This relatively modern and provincially Western understanding of religion is on full display in Paul Raushenbush’s article introducing HuffPo Religion’s new series on religious texts [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:··································

Galileo: Religious or Secular Saint?

July 24th, 2010 · 2 Comments · Classifications of Religion, Definitions of Religion, History of Religions, Methodology of Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct, Shamans and Shamanism

In the New York Times Science section, Rachel Donadio reports on a museum in Florence that treats Galileo as both a “secular” and “religious” saint; the curators thus commingle two concepts (the secular/religious) that were being developed during the Renaissance and which reached fruition during the Enlightenment:
The Galileo case is often seen starkly as science’s [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:······················

The Nature of “Natural”: Foucault and Wittgenstein

July 14th, 2010 · No Comments · Emotions and Religion, Evolution and Selection, Methodology of Religion, Morality and Religion, Power and Religion

In my last two posts (The “Sin” of Sodomy and “Natural Moral Law“), I have been considering the naturalness of sexual physiologies and preferences.  By serendipitous accident, yesterday I read Bob Plant’s (2006) article, “The Confessing Animal in Foucault and Wittgenstein,” in which he observes that these famous philosophers are connected by their shared suspicion [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:·······················

What is Agnosticisim?

July 5th, 2010 · No Comments · Atheism and Religion, Classifications of Religion, Definitions of Religion, Methodology of Religion

Over at Slate, Ron Rosenbaum has penned a manifesto for the “new agnosticism,” which he sees as an alternative to credulous theism on the the one hand and strident atheism on the other.  Rosenbaum’s position deserves considerable merit and has some appeal, but I am not sure I can agree with him on this definition:
Agnosticism [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:····················

Hard Science Meets Soft Religion

July 3rd, 2010 · No Comments · Atheism and Religion, Cognition and Religion, Daily Devolutions, History of Religions, Methodology of Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Adaptation, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct, Ritual and Religion

Over at HuffPo Religion, Dr. Rustum Roy — a geochemist — accuses the media of criminal conduct in its reporting of the non-existent war between science and religion.  In the course of doing so, Roy tilts at several windmills and claims special authority for “hard” or “classical” science.
Roy begins by touting his credentials as a [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:·························

Do Hominid Burials Indicate a Belief in Spirits or Souls?

June 9th, 2010 · 1 Comment · Archaeology and Religion, Classifications of Religion, Cognition and Religion, Cultural Evolution of Religion, Definitions of Religion, Ecology of Religion, History of Religions, Methodology of Religion, Ritual and Religion

In light of yesterday’s post regarding the widespread and naturally explicable belief that humans have spirits or souls, I thought it would be appropriate to continue on a related topic.  It is often claimed, by enthusiastic archaeologists and anthropologists, that deliberate burial of the dead is a symbolic practice related to belief in the spirit [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:······················

The Recipe for Religion — Cooking Up Spiritual Experiences

May 27th, 2010 · No Comments · Cognition and Religion, Cultural Evolution of Religion, Emotions and Religion, Methodology of Religion, Religion as Evolutionary Byproduct

In the fourth installment in his series on memory and the work of Dr. Elizabeth Loftus, Slate’s William Saletan discusses “repressed memories” that have given rise to all sorts of injustice in courtrooms across America.  The title of today’s article is “The Recipe: A Cookbook for Memories of Sexual Abuse,” and includes this revelatory excerpt:
Loftus [...]

[Read more →]

Tags:··············