As is the case with charismatic or evangelical forms of Christianity, some strands of Islam have a robust sense of supernatural agency that populates the world with all manner of malevolent spirits who are ostensibly responsible for real world afflictions. In a recent article, psychiatrist Amir Afkhami reports on an Islamic “faith healer” in Iraq [...]
Tags:Amir Afkhami·charismatic·Christianity·demons·evangelical·faith healing·folk beliefs·folk religion·Freud·hysteria·Iraq·Islam·jinns·Koran·Mullah Eskandar·Quran·shamanic healing·spirits
Several months ago, many of us were shocked when it appeared that Jurgen Habermas, one of the world’s leading philosophers and social theorists, set up a Twitter account and opened with this tweet: “It’s true that the internet has reactivated the grass-roots of an egalitarian public sphere of writers and readers.” Alas, it was a [...]
Tags:communication·Durkheim·Eduardo Mendieta·emancipation·ethics·Freud·Habermas and Religion·Jurgen Habermas·metaphysics·morals·primates·rationalization·religious grammar·religious syntax·The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere·The Theory of Communicative Action·Twitter·Weber
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, Wray Herbert asks whether religious belief soothes the worried mind and reports on some new research suggesting it does. Scholars have been asking this question for quite a long time, and many have simply assumed that religion does in fact sooth troubled minds. Freud reached this conclusion in Future of an [...]
Tags:Alexa Tullett·anxiety·burials·calming effects·deliberate burials·explanation·Freud·Future of An Illusion·hominids·Michael Inzlicht·Neanderthals·order·parsimony·Pascal Boyer·purpose·Reflecting on God·Scott Atran·souls·spirits·Wray Herbert
Having long been interested in art and aesthetics, I must confess to a morbid fascination with Thomas Kinkade’s paintings. Most are portrayals of settings that are utterly unreal, sort as if Maxwell Parrish visited Middle Earth while wearing rose-colored glasses and then decided to paint quaint little cottages in the Shire.
At other times I’ve thought [...]
Tags:aesthetics·angels·art·Christians·Currier & Ives·Freud·halos·heaven·luminosity·Maxwell Parrish·Middle Earth·painter of light·religious environment·The Shire·Thomas Kinkade·wish fulfillment
Another nice article in Slate today from William Saletan on memory researcher Dr. Elizabeth Loftus. As has been the case with the previous articles, the most recent entry — “Truth or Consequences?” — is relevant to supernaturalism and religions:
[Dr. Elizabeth Loftus] wrote with dismay of the “horrifying idea that our memories can be changed, inextricably [...]
Tags:brainsoothing·Elizabeth Loftus·false reality·Freud·Future of An Illusion·God's Brain·Lionel Tiger·memories·memory·Michael McGuire·Nietzsche·truth·William Saletan·wish fulfillment
There is a long history of assessing — and attempting to explain — religion in a functional manner. Marx and Engels figured that the function of religion was to disguise the realities of the underlying economic system and palliate the suffering of the laboring masses. Durkheim thought that the function of religion was to enable [...]
Tags:Civil Religion·Durkheim·Engels·ethics·Freud·function of religion·Marx·morals·Philip Goldberg·proximate cause·Robert Bellah·Thomas Hobbes·transcendence·ultimate cause
