In the celebrated closing of the Origin of Species, Darwin hits his lyrical stride with a paradox:
Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of [...]
Tags:Arthur Schopenhauer·creation·cruelty·Darwin·destruction·dialectic·Friedrich Nietzsche·grandeur·life·nature·nihilism·omnibenevolence·Origin of Species·paradox·pessimism·red in tooth and claw·Richard Dawkins·Richard Schacht·suffering·theodicy·transcendence
The standard origins story of cultural anthropology includes two founders: Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917) and Henry Lewis Morgan (1818-1881). Unlike most founders, Tylor and Morgan are not widely acclaimed or accorded much honor. They have been relegated to a minor place in history because of their belief in progressive cultural evolution, a paradigm that combined [...]
Tags:animism·barbarism·civilization·cultural evolution·Darwin·Edward Burnett Tylor·Franz Boas·Henry Lewis Morgan·Herbert Spencer·J.G. Frazer: His Life and Work·magic·primitive·Robert Ackerman·science·survivals·The Golden Bough
At a fundamental level, evolutionary religious studies depend on geology. While this sounds a bit strange – What do rocks have to do with religion? — Darwin relied heavily on the work of pioneering geologists James Hutton (1726-1797) and Charles Lyell (1797-1875). Indeed it is safe to say that without Hutton and Lyell, Darwin might [...]
Tags:Annals of the Former World·Charles Lyell·Darwin·deep time·evolution·geology·James Hutton·John McPhee·natural selection·Paris Review·Peter Hessler
Over at Spiegel, Markus Becker and Frank Patalong have posted an interview with Richard Dawkins, whose latest book — The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution — has just been published in German and given an awful title: “The Creation Lie: Why Darwin is Right.” Two things come immediately to mind.
First, it is [...]
Tags:biological evolution·cultural evolution·Darwin·Dean Hamer·Frank Patalong·group level selection·Markus Becker·meme·memetics·Neolithic Revolution·Richard Dawkins·Ronald Numbers·The Ancestor's Tale·The Creation Lie·The Creationists·The God Gene·The Greatest Show on Earth·The Selfish Gene·theory of mind
As I noted in A Tale of Two Religion Scholars, Dr. Michael Blume’s research (which you can find at Homo religious) shows that religious groups out-reproduce their secular counterparts. The data are solid and correspond to the commandments of most religions: “Be fruitful and multiply.”
Given that religious people make more babies than secular people, Blume [...]
Tags:agnosticism·atheism·carrying capacity·confirmation bias·Darwin·extended lactation·fertility·fitness benefits·Freud·group level selection·group size·ideological causation·infanticide·John Hawks·Marx·Michael Blume·Nietzsche·Paleolithic shamanism·religious·reproduction·Rodney Stark·secular·secularism
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 [...]
Tags:Christopher Hitchens·classical science·cosmology·Daniel Dennett·Darwin·experimental science·facts lab science·geochemistry·hard science·Harvey Whitehouse·Ian Stevenson·Jeanne Achterberg·Jesse Bering·Justin Barrett·Larry Dossey·Nietzsche·Pascal Boyer·placebo·positivism·Richard Dawkins·Rustum Roy·Sam Harris·Scott Atran·shamanic healing·Stephen Hawkins·Stephen Weinberg
Over at HuffPo Religion, Deepak Chopra opines on the non-existent “war between science and religion.” Religion is of course being investigated by scientists and examined by historians, but this does not make the interrogation a war. Religion is simply another object or category of positivist inquiry.
Chopra’s piece begins with some surprising concessions:
What is the war [...]
Tags:awareness·consciousness·cosmos·creativity·Darwin·Deepak Chopra·evolution·experiment·fact·facts·faith·Genesis·godhead·intelligence·matter·mind·mysticism·New Age·observation·origins·positivism·premises·religion·replication·science·self-regulation·theory·universe·war
