A place for everything and everything in its place. This is not just a mantra for those with obsessive tendencies. It also describes the drive that some have toward a system: a unified theory of everything.
Before the Enlightenment, there was no need for such a theory. God served this purpose and everything was explained by [...]
Tags:Darwinian monism·David Sloan Wilson·dualism·EO Wilson·Ernst Haeckel·Hegel·Kant·metaphysics·metatheory·monism·Neil deGrasse Tyson·Nietzsche·Niles Holt·science as religion·systematization·theory of everything·unified theory
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
“It has long been recognized that any interpretation of prehistoric religious behavior should be based on concrete archaeological evidence. Yet evidence for Paleolithic belief systems is extremely scanty, and that which does exist is usually enigmatic — or as [Mircea] Eliade has expressed it, semantically opaque” (Freeman & Echegaray 1981).
Three lines of evidence are typically [...]
Tags:Cantabria·cave·dualism·El Juyo·El Juyo face·figurine·J. Gonzalez Echegaray·L.G. Freeman·Magdalenian·mask·methodology·Mircea Eliade·mobiliary·Orc·overinterpretation·Paleolithic·parietal·parsimony·ritual·Rorschach·sanctuary·Spain·temple
No stranger to the angst arising from the meta-and-physical dichotomy of sacred/profane, the inimitable Christopher Hitchens recently evaluated similar sorts of tensions in the life of India’s hagiographic hero. Whilst reviewing Joseph Lelyveld’s new book, Great Soul: Mahatma Gandhi and His Struggle with India, Hitchens pours cold pragmatic water on the man and his myths.
Despite [...]
Tags:caste·Christopher Hitchens·commonsense dualism·Dalit·David Pizarro·Descartes·dualism·false binary·false dichotomy·Great Soul·Hindu·Homer's Soul·India·Joseph Lelyveld·Mahatma Gandhi·metaphysics·mind-body·monism·Paul Bloom·soul beliefs·The Simpsons·untouchables·Vedic·Yoga
Anyone who has watched an episode of “I Survived: Beyond and Back” on the Biography Channel knows that accounts of near death experiences mesmerize the public. They also drive ratings. The typical “I Survived” vignette features someone whose heart has stopped beating and is considered “clinically dead.”
Because everyone who appears on the show is very [...]
Tags:Biography Channel·body·brain death·clinical death·dissociation·dreaming·drug use·dualism·fasting·folk psychology·I Survived·J. Allan Cheyne·ketamine·Leanne Wilkins·lesions·mind·NDE·near death experiences·NMDA receptor antagonist·OBE·Olaf Blanke·out of body autoscopy·out of body experiences·out of body feeling·pan-human neurology·psychotropic·R. Saxe·rave·ravers·schizophrenia·sensory integration·shamans·soul flights·temporo-parietal junction·theory of mind·Todd Girard·trance dance·visions
On rare occasion, one encounters a thinker and writer of extraordinary talent; the author, intellectual, and sociologist Daniel Bell is one such person. Bell is perhaps most famous for his 1976 book, Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism. It was with great interest, therefore, that I read his 1977 Hobhouse Memorial Lecture, “The Return of the Sacred? [...]
Tags:Christianity·consumption·Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism·Daniel Bell·dualism·Emile Durkheim·fundamentalism·Harvard·high culture·human nature·human universals·Immanuel Wallerstein·intellectuals·intelligentsia·Janus·late capitalism·materialism·modernity·morality·mythical past·New York City elites·nostalgia·science·sociologist·sociology·The Return of the Sacred? The Argument on the Future of Religion·the sacred·Western culture·Whore of Babylon·world system
In yesterday’s post, I asked “What is Spirituality?“ Naturally, today’s post asks “What is the Spirit?” It is a related and timely question, especially given Eric Simpson’s recent post over at HuffPo Religion, “The Tyranny of the Body in the Quest for Spiritual Life.” In keeping with the Western metaphysical tradition, Simpson simply assumes there [...]
Tags:Aquinas·Augustine·Cartesian dualism·chimera·Christianity·commonsense dualism·dualism·Eric Simpson·folk psychology of souls·Immanuel Kant·Jesse Bering·metaphysics·mind-body·Paul Bloom·Plato·pre-Socratic·Rene Descartes·soul·spirit·Western metaphysical tradition
In recent decades, some of the best work on the origins of religion deal with the cognitive architecture which supports supernatural beliefs. Most researchers in this area think that supernatural or religious thinking naturally arises from the workings of the brain-mind. Seen from this perspective, religion is a “byproduct” of normal cognition. There was not, [...]
Tags:agency attribution·byproduct theorists·cognition·dualism·pattern imposition
