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
In less than a month, we will be able to lay our hands on Robert Bellah’s much anticipated Religion in Human Evolution: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age.
It will be the latest in a string of books over the last decade which purport to explain the origins and development of what we today call [...]
Tags:axial age·brain evolution·group size·Hegel·Kant·metaphysical idealism·Neolithic Revolution·Nietzsche·Religion in Human Evolution·Robert Bellah·Robin Dunbar·Templeton Foundation
While searching for something else yesterday, I came across the Chicago Maroon’s 2008 interview of Jonathan Z. Smith, a leading historian of religion and author of several important books in the field, including Map Is Not Territory, Imagining Religion, and Drudgery Divine. You can find the full text of the interview here. If you have [...]
Tags:comparative religious history·Drudgery Divine·Greek myth·Hegel·historian of religions·History·Imagining Religion·J.Z. Smith·Jonathan Z. Smith·Map Is Not Territory·New Testament·Supriya Sinhababu·Yale Divinity School
Though I have yet to view a single episode of PBS’ five part series “God in America,” I have been catching comments here and there which suggest it is worth watching. My avoidance to date is born of studied tedium — how much Cotton Mather and Ken Burns can one take in a lifetime?
Our correspondent [...]
Tags:Al-Qaeda·American evangelism·apocalypse·apocalyptic·artificial threats·atheism·Billy Graham·Brumaire·Cold War·communism·Cotton Mather·Dwight Eisenhower·farce·fear based religion·Fox News·God in America·Hegel·Karl Marx·Ken Burns·military-industrial complex·Osama bin Laden·PBS·politics of fear·propaganda·Puff Graham·Rupert Murdoch·Soul of a Nation·tragedy·Wall Street Journal·William Randolph Hearst
Today, while examining the key word searches that have led people to this blog, I noticed this interesting query: “Are tea partiers psychotic?” This Google search must have pulled up my post “Tea Parties and Monkey Gods,” in which I observed that Tea Partiers seem to be animated by a toxic combination of anger and [...]
Tags:anger·angst·autonomy·dependence·faith·fantasy·fear·fiction·free markets·fundamentalists·Hegel·identity·imaginary·individualism·J.M. Bernstein·libertarians·metaphysical·metaphysics·paranoia·Pierre Bourdieu·psychotic·rage·religious right·structuralism·sturm und drang·Tea Party·The Stone
