“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes, but in having new eyes.”
– Marcel Proust
This morning I recalled the taste of a bit of madeleine dunked in a linden-flower tea which my aunt used to give me (although I did not yet know why this memory made me so happy). What [...]
Tags:archival·Daniel Engber·data·evolutionary religious studies·history·Marcel·memory·originality·Proust·publication·rediscovery·repetition·research·science·synthesis
As serendipity would have it, during the past few weeks I have been immersed in arguments about the Upper Paleolithic transition some 45,000 years ago. Something critical and different seems to have occurred about this time, but what that something was is the subject of considerable dispute. Because clear indicators of supernatural belief and ritual [...]
Tags:agency·co-evolution·FOXP2·gradualist·grammar·history·intentionality·intersubjectivity·John Hawks·language·Marvin Harris·Michael Tomasello·Ofer Bar-Josef·ratchet effect·recursion·revolution·Richard Klein·saltational·Upper Paleolithic
Among scholars and historians of religion, there has long been an unfortunate tendency to treat myth as mere text — disembodied, free-floating, timeless, and ahistorical. In such non-contexts, myth is considered to be something universal or essential, that which captures and expresses archetypes, or even worse, an archaic and tentative approach to monotheism.
In the fifth [...]
Tags:ahistorical·archaic·archetype·Carl Jung·disembodied·history·Homo faber·Homo religiosus·Imagining Religion·incipient monotheism·interpretation·Io·Io myth·Jonathan Z. Smith·Karl Marx·Maori cosmology·Maori creation myth·Mircea Eliade·monotheism·myth·native·primordial·text·timeless·universal
In my last two posts (The “Sin” of Sodomy and “Natural Moral Law“), I have been considering the naturalness of sexual physiologies and preferences. By serendipitous accident, yesterday I read Bob Plant’s (2006) article, “The Confessing Animal in Foucault and Wittgenstein,” in which he observes that these famous philosophers are connected by their shared suspicion [...]
Tags:Bob Plant·dogma·expertise·Foucault·gender ambiguity·genealogy·history·homosexuality·human nature·moral law·natural·natural science·Naturalization·naturalizing·Nietzsche·opinions·sexual physiology·sexual preferences·sexuality·social construction·sodomy·the body·The Confessing Animal·Wittgenstein
Over at Pharyngula, PZ Myers discusses the case of a professor — teaching at a public university — who presented his Catholic views, disguised as philosophy, on homosexuality to his students. One student complained to the administration, calling the professor’s position “hate speech.” PZ Myers disagrees and calls it “stupid speech.” Myers then proceeds to [...]
Tags:berdache·biology·bisexuality·Catholic·Catholic belief·Catholic Church·Catholic dogma·Catholic Moral Law·Catholic theology·essentialism·ethnographic record·evolutionary fitness·extended kinship·fictive kinship·genetics·hermaphrodites·history·homosexuality·Kenneth J. Howell·Missives from Marx·moral·morality·mystification·Native Americans·natural moral law·Naturalization·nature·nuclear family·Pharyngula·procreation·PZ Myers·reality·Reification·reproduction·sexual anatomy·sexual development·sexual ontogeny·sexual physiology·sexual preferences·sexual variation·sexuality·social construction·societies that accept homosexuality·Two Spirits·University of Illinois·utilitarianism
