Genealogy of Religion

Exploring the Origins, History and Future of Religion

Entries Tagged as 'Power'

Woe Unto Some Muslim Women

April 24th, 2012 · 5 Comments · Emotions, Power

Yesterday the Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia announced that the kingdom’s girls are, in the eyes of men and Allah, ready to marry at the age of 10 or 12. Rebuking those who called for the servitude marriage age to be raised, he noted that Islamic law doesn’t oppress women and cited the old ones as [...]

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Apocalyptic Bedfellows

March 19th, 2012 · 6 Comments · Power

Over at The Medium and the Message, Adam Curtis is doing some of the best work on the web. His multimedia stories are part history and part journalism, spliced together with narrative that doubles as commentary. In his most recent piece, Adam explores the parallel lives of religious fundamentalists in American and Iran.
It is an [...]

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Christianity Hot & Cold

February 28th, 2012 · 4 Comments · Axial Age, History, Power

Over at the New Yorker, Adam Gopnik has weighed in with his review of Elaine Pagels’ newest book, Revelations: Visions, Prophecy, and Politics in the Book of Revelations. In a previous post, I excerpted a lecture in which Pagels discusses the book and its themes. Gopnik’s review is a nice companion.
In keeping with a persistent [...]

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Scientists Sell Souls to Saudis

December 12th, 2011 · 9 Comments · Magic, Power

In today’s news we learn that Saudi Arabia is on the one hand buying Western academic prestige and on the other beheading a woman accused of practicing “sorcery and witchcraft.”
The state-run Saudi news agency announced that a woman named Amina bint Abdulhalim Nassar was publicly beheaded because she claimed to be a healer who could [...]

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Iroquois Religion & Group Level Selection

November 27th, 2011 · 4 Comments · Evolutionary Adaptation, Evolutionary Byproduct, Power

While browsing at my local bookstore yesterday and looking for a diversionary read, I serendipitously discovered The Ordeal of the Longhouse: The Peoples of the Iroquois League in the Era of European Colonization (1992) by Daniel Richter. Although I’m only halfway through, it seems to be the book for those interested in a comprehensive history [...]

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Nazi (Christian) Theism

November 26th, 2011 · 3 Comments · Philosophy, Power

Almost immediately after the German surrender in May 1945, people began trying to explain what had happened. The horrors of the Nazi regime were such that almost every explanation has been offered. The weakest of explanations is bewilderment. But Nazi depravity and German complicity is not inexplicable.
As the process of explication began to unfold, one [...]

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Blooming and Buzzing

November 17th, 2011 · 1 Comment · Power

Wondering whether this election will herald the coming of a presidential prophet, Harold Bloom is in rare form in this masterpiece of compression on Romney the Mormon. He hits all cylinders at the finish:
Mormonism’s best inheritance from Joseph Smith was his passion for education, hardly evident in the anti-intellectual and semi-literate Southern Baptist [...]

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The Non-Separation of Church & State

October 25th, 2011 · No Comments · Philosophy, Power

Review: Masking Hegemony: A Genealogy of Liberalism, Religion and the Private Sphere, by Craig Martin (Equinox Pub. 2010)
“Separation of church and state.”
It is revealing that this phrase, a shibboleth of sorts, means so many things to so many different people. In law, there are endless arguments over the extent to which government may entangle itself [...]

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Etruscan Rite & Roman Religion

September 24th, 2011 · 2 Comments · History, Neolithic, Power, Ritual

“Man is born free, and everywhere he is in chains.”
With this famous sentence, Jean-Jacques Rousseau begins his masterful critique of political power. Less well known is another sentence from The Social Contract (1762): “No State has ever been founded without Religion serving as its base.”
My reading of history is that Rousseau was right. State-formation [...]

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China as Neolithic Exemplar

September 11th, 2011 · 5 Comments · History, Neolithic, Power

The actor David Carradine may have led a troubled life but he experienced no such trouble as Kwai Chang Caine, a Buddhist monk on the move in the old American west. From 1972-1975, the Kung Fu series was must watch television for kids my age, even if we had no idea that Caine was a [...]

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