Ever since humans began thinking and talking about the world, they have had ideas about its nature and cosmic placement. Cosmological thinking surely goes back to the Upper Paleolithic and has been fodder for debate for perhaps 45,000 years. Systematic thinking on the subject began 2,500 years ago when a group of thinkers (mostly in [...]
Tags:cosmology·directed evolution·directional evolution·Full House·mathematic fallacy·microbial world·mode of life·nature of universe·progressivism·progressivist·Stephen Jay Gould·teleology·Tim Maudlin
As Cold War propaganda in the West would have it, communist states were to be despised because they were atheist and Godless. The reality, however, was quite different. In the Soviet Union, the Russian Orthodox Church never went away and popular belief was often at odds with official state doctrine. It is doubtful that the [...]
Tags:ancestor worship·atheism·China·Chinese religion·Confucian·cosmology·D. Howard Smith·dualism·evil·good·Manichean·monism·monotheism·naturalism·Russian Orthodox Church·shamanic·Shang Dynasty·Taoism·Trickster·yang·yin·yinyang
There are many ways to think and write about heavy metal music, but few have tapped its dark heart better than James Parker. Over at The Atlantic, Parker makes the beautifully haunting (or floridly disturbing) case that metal keeps its listeners sane. And he does so in terms that clearly connect it to something deep, [...]
Tags:Black Sabbath·cosmology·demons·depression·Drang·Geezer Butler·heavy metal·James Frazer·James Parker·Ozzy Osbourne·saints·Somerset Maugham·Sturm·subterranean·The Golden Bough·The Razor's Edge·Tommi Iommi
From time to time I find it salutary to make confessions, even if the acknowledgment brands me as a philistine. One such confession is that I love Ray Bradbury. I was reminded of this while reading an interview he gave to The Paris Review.
After dismissing James Joyce as a writer who lacked ideas and could [...]
Tags:A Sound of Thunder·cosmology·ideas·James Joyce·metaphor·Ray Bradbury·speaking in tongues·stories·storytelling·world religions
It is a well known fact that in many pre-state or small-scale societies where shamanic practices prevail, shamans are expert storytellers and keepers of traditional knowledge. As I noted in a previous post on the evolution of narrative, stories contain information critical for survival.
While reading an article on Inuit shamanism yesterday, this passage offered confirmation:
Shamanic [...]
Tags:animals·arctic·cosmology·foraging·hunter-gatherers·Inuit·Jarich Oosten·narrative·shamanic·shamanism·shamans·social knowledge·storytelling
The story is familiar and follows a similar trajectory wherever people have made the transition from foraging to agriculture: surpluses enable social stratification that is legitimized as part of the ritual order. Elites claim the cosmological sanction of the supernatural.
In a recent study of mortuary practices at Chaco Canyon that appears in PNAS, Stephen Plog [...]
Tags:Amerindians·Anasazi·ancestors·Carrie Heitman·Chaco Canyon·cosmology·elites·grave goods·In the Hands of the Great Spirit·Jake Page·mortuary practices·Pueblos·ritual order·Southwestern archaeology·Stephen Plog·stratification·surplus·theocracies·theocracy
Physicists having difficulty with the elusive Higgs boson and mysterious dark matter may wish to look for an alternative explanation: the effect that Adam and Eve’s original sin had on the universe. Whatever this hypothesis lacks in plausibility it makes up for with childish parsimony.
As Karl Giberson explains in Christianity and Extraterrestrial Life, there are [...]
Tags:Adam·aliens·Answers in Genesis·apple·cosmology·Creation Museum·dark matter·entropy·Eve·Garden of Eden·geocentrism·Higgs boson·Karl Giberson·Ken Ham·literalist Christianity·Mother Earth·Native Americans·original sin·physics·Ptolemaic universe·Romans·Second Law of Thermodynamics·tree of knowledge·Young Earth Creationists
Although it seems odd on the surface, coyotes play a major role in Native American ceremonies, mythology, legend, and cosmology. Of all the magnificent animals from which they could choose — wolf, bear, bison, eagle — why the coyote?
Given that Native Americans were renowned for their knowledge of animal behaviors, one thing is certain: there [...]
Tags:Amerindian ethnohistory·Apache·Carol Kaesuk Yoon·Cheyenne outbreak·Comanche·cosmology·coyote·Coyote at the Kitchen Door·coyotes·Crazy Horse·Creator·Dull Knife·First Americans·Ft. Robinson·Mysteries that Howl and Hunt·mythology·Native Americans·Trickster
For those interested in traditional or historic Native American cosmologies, supernaturalism, rituals, and religions, the most prolific and authoritative researcher is Ake Hultkrantz, the Swedish cultural anthropologist and professor of comparative religions at the University of Stockholm who passed away in 2006.
It has always seemed a bit odd that the primary authority in this vast [...]
Tags:Ake Hultkrantz·Amerindians·Arapaho·Arapahoe·comparative religions·cosmogony·cosmology·ethnohistory·ethnology·First Americans·Gifford Lectures·mythology·Native Americans·Natural Theology·religions·rituals·Shoshone·Shoshoni·supenaturalism·Swedish cultural anthropologist·The Religions of the American Indians
Archaeologists working in Europe have it good, really good. Depending on one’s interests, you can research just about anything. Paleoanthropologists can work on hominid evolution (i.e., Homo heidelbergensis, H. antecessor, H. neanderthalensis), while their colleagues can study a host of fascinating subjects, including the Upper Paleolithic transition, mesolithic hunter-gatherers, incipient agriculturalists, and the usual smattering [...]
Tags:afterlife·axes·barrows·celts·complex hunter-gatherers·cosmology·European archaeology·flints·folk beliefs·grave goods·hominid evolution·Homo antecessor·Homo heidelbergensis·Homo neanderthalensis·Iron Age·Kate Ravilious·Kwakiutl·magic·megaliths·mesolithic·mortuary practices·mythology·myths·Neanderthals·oldest house in Britain·pagans·ritual objects·ritualism·Romans·Sean Coughlan·sedentism·shamanist·shamans·soul·spirit·Stone Age·superstition·talismans·thunderstones·Upper Paleolithic·Vikings
